रोहिणी Rohiṇī

Burgess: the Hyades group (ε, δ, γ, ν, α Tauri); α 'the most easterly (v. 19) and the brightest of the group — being the brilliant star of the first magnitude known as Aldebaran — is the junction-star'. Verse 8.13 concerns splitting Rohiṇī's wain (śakaṭa).

'The red one', deity Prajāpati; universally identified with the bright red star Aldebaran. Also TS 4.4.10.1, TB 1.5.1.1, TB 3.1.1.1-2 ('rohiṇī devy udagāt purastāt' - the goddess Rohini has risen in the east), AV 19.7.2, and AB 3.33 where the female deer (rohit) of the Prajāpati myth is Rohiṇī.

FIVE stars, wagon-shaped (śakaṭākṛti-saṃsthāna), deity Prajāpati, gotra Bhāradvāja. The five-star wagon is the Hyades V (α, θ¹, γ, δ, ε Tauri) — strong corroboration of the cluster reading, and of the śakaṭa ('wain') that Sūrya Siddhānta 8.13 speaks of splitting. Colebrooke independently glosses Amarakośa's rauhiṇeya = Mercury with 'Budha, son of Soma (or the moon) by Rohini (or the Hyades)', the earliest public-domain equation of Rohiṇī with the cluster rather than Aldebaran alone.

IAST verbatim from the GRETIL Mahābhāṣya plaintext (text in pausā). The first sentence is Kātyāyana's vārttika, which the GRETIL source marks in bold in its HTML original. Patañjali's parallel at 1.2.63 reads '(p_1,2.63) ka_i,231.14-232.7 {2/24} kṛttikārohiṇyaḥ .'

IMPORTANT DISTINCTION: Rohiṇī is NOT named in Pāṇini's sūtra text at all — a sandhi-tolerant search of both independent recensions returns zero. She enters only through (a) the gaṇapāṭha, where the gaurādi gaṇa on 4.1.41 lists 'रोहिणीनक्षत्रे' explicitly 'in the sense of the asterism' (and the śubhrādi gaṇa on 4.1.123 and suṣāmādi on 8.3.98 list rohiṇī / rohiṇī-ṣeṇaḥ), and (b) Patañjali, who on 1.2.63 gives kṛttikā-rohiṇyaḥ as his standard example of an asterism dvandva that does NOT fall under the tiṣya-punarvasu rule. Kātyāyana's vārttika on 2.2.34 uses the same pair — 'ṛtu-nakṣatrāṇām ānupūrvyeṇa samānākṣarāṇām' with the example kṛttikā-rohiṇyaḥ, i.e. seasons and asterisms of equal syllable-count are compounded in their NATURAL ORDER. So the securely datable attestation here is c. 150 BCE (Patañjali) / c. 3rd c. BCE (Kātyāyana), not Pāṇini. The vārttika is significant beyond the name: it presupposes a fixed canonical sequence of nakṣatras, and its example puts Kṛttikā before Rohiṇī.

Devanagari transcribed by the compiler from the page FACSIMILE of the Ray edition (Calcutta 1899), scan leaf n216 = printed p. 114–115: https://archive.org/download/in.ernet.dli.2015.292705/page/n216.jpg . The archive.org OCR of this volume is unusable for Devanagari, so no verse here is taken from the OCR text; every figure was re-read at full scan resolution and cross-checked against a second independent scan of the same edition (https://archive.org/download/siddhantadarpanachandrashekarsimha1897_252_Z/page/n217.jpg). Round brackets and the figures in them are the PRINTED EDITION'S own: (n) is the serial number of the asterism/star and the figure following it is the edition's decoding of the bhūtasaṅkhyā word-numeral that precedes it. These are the two printed segments of the dhruva list (vv. 2–6) and the śara list (vv. 7–10) that carry this asterism's own figures; the complete verses are given under db_id 'yogatara-catalog'.

SIDDHĀNTA DARPAṆA XII (Sāmanta, 1869): dhruva (polar longitude) 46°30', śara (polar latitude) 5°30' south. The direction comes from XII.11, which makes the śara southern for the asterisms numbered 4, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14, 16–21 and 24 and northern for all the rest; XII.12–13 give the asterism 5 star(s). TRUE VALUES for 1870 CE, reduced to Sāmanta's OWN sidereal zero (his Citrā = 179°, i.e. Spica; implied ayanāṃśa 22°12'), as polar longitude / polar latitude: α Tau 46°38' / -5°32'. VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2.1–2 (904 CE) puts the same junction star at Go 19½° (= 49°30' measured from the sidereal origin) with a śara of 5°00' south (VIII.2.5–6, direction by VIII.2.8).

This is the printed segment of the continuous dhruvaka list (VIII.2.1–2) that carries this star's own figure; the star's kṣepa is item no. 4 of the unbroken numeral run of VIII.2.5–6, which cannot be split, so the whole passage is also given verbatim under db_id 'yogatara-catalog'. Devanagari transcribed by the compiler from the page FACSIMILE of K. S. Shukla's INSA edition of the Sanskrit text, scan leaf n317 = printed p. 293: https://archive.org/download/VatesvaraSiddhantaSanskritText/page/n317.jpg . The archive.org OCR is unusable for Devanagari. The SQUARE brackets and the figures inside them are the EDITION'S own decoding of the bhūtasaṅkhyā word-numerals, reproduced here so that no numeral is silently converted. Shukla's English translation and notes are in copyright: they are neither quoted nor relied on here — only the constituted mūla text and the edition's numeric glosses.

VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2 (904 CE) gives the junction star's dhruvaka (polar longitude) as Go 19½° — Vaṭeśvara states the dhruvakas as degrees WITHIN each zodiacal sign, not as absolute longitudes, so this is 49°30' from the sidereal origin — and its kṣepa (polar latitude, VIII.2.5–6) as 5°00', south by the rule of VIII.2.8 (a verse the edition notes is identical with Brahmagupta's Khaṇḍakhādyaka I.9.13). TRUE VALUES for 904 CE reduced to Vaṭeśvara's own sidereal zero (his Citrā = 3° of Libra = 183°), as polar longitude / polar latitude: α Tau 51°08' / -5°43'. For comparison Sāmanta (1869) gives 46°30' / 5°30' south. Vaṭeśvara's list is essentially the inherited Sūrya-Siddhānta/Brahmagupta set: it is a fourth independent witness to those values rather than a fresh observation.

Verbatim parallels from the two earlier Chinese versions of the same Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna material, and the Tang commentator's note on the Chinese star-count: 摩登伽經 (Mātaṅga-sūtra) T21n1300, T21.0404c12: 「畢有五星，形如飛雁，於一日半與月共行，麋肉以祭，屬於梵王，姓婆羅婆。」 | 舍頭諫太子二十八宿經 T21n1301, T21.0415b09: 「其長養宿，有五要星，其形如車，行四十五須臾而侍從矣，牛肉為食，主有信天，姓號俱曇。」 | Yang Jingfeng's interlinear note in T21n1299 at T21.0388c21: 「景風曰：中國天文畢八星，主邊兵，西方之宿也」

Chinese lunar lodge (xiu) 畢 Bi; T1301 renders the name semantically as 長育/長養 ('Nurturing'). FIVE stars, and T1299's 半車 'half a cart' plus T1301's 形如車 'form like a cart' render the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna's śakaṭākṛti-saṃsthānam exactly — independent confirmation that Rohiṇī is the Hyades wain and not Aldebaran alone. T1299 transcribes the deity as 鉢闍鉢底 = Prajāpati (the same transcription it uses for the tithi-deity at T21.394a18), matching prajāpati-daivatam; T1300 translates it 梵王 'Brahmā-king'. The 45-muhūrta value (一日半 / 四十五須臾) matches pañca-catvāriṃśan-muhūrta-yogam. Deer/elk-flesh = mṛgamāṃsāhāram. Chinese astronomy gives Bi eight stars (Yang Jingfeng's note).

CE lines 06,002.032a/032c. CE chapter 6.2 = vulgate Bhīṣma Parva Section II; the numbering happens to coincide here.

Rohiṇī is the epic's most frequently personified asterism. Three data worth recording: (a) at MBh 3.219.8 she is Abhijit's ELDER sister and the object of Abhijit's envy, and at 3.219.10 she is named as the head of a pre-Dhaniṣṭhā list; (b) the Saturn-afflicts-Rohiṇī omen recurs twice, at Bhīṣma 6.2.32 and Udyoga 5.141.7, and is the epic's stock war-portent; (c) in the Rāmāyaṇa (Yuddha 6.90.27) she is called the PRĀJĀPATYA nakṣatra and 'the moon's beloved' (śaśinaḥ priyā) — see the separate prajapatya entry. Aldebaran's identity is not in dispute and is supplied from the siddhānta entries.

IAST from GRETIL; canto 8 was not obtainable in Devanagari in this session.

Rohini named only obliquely, through the moon's stock epithet rohiṇīpati, 'the husband of Rohini' - evidence that by Kalidasa's date the marriage of the Moon and Rohini was so standard that it could serve as a bare synonym for the moon. Siva lying on his couch beside Parvati is 'like Rohini's lord upon an autumn cloud'.

Devanagari from Sanskrit Wikisource, with the wiki indentation markers ('::') and one stray dash removed; the wording is unaltered and matches GRETIL word for word (smṛtibhinnamohatamaso diṣṭyā pramukhe sthitāsi me sumukhi / uparāgānte śaśinaḥ samupagatā rohiṇī yogam).

The central kavya statement of the Rohini myth: Dusyanta, his memory restored, compares Sakuntala's return to 'Rohini come to conjunction (yoga) with the moon at the END OF AN ECLIPSE (uparāgānte)'. Both technical terms - uparaga for eclipse, yoga for conjunction - mark this as astronomy, not merely a woman's name: the moon swallowed by Rahu is reunited with his favourite wife when he emerges. Aldebaran lies close enough to the ecliptic for an eclipsed moon to be seen beside it.

IAST from GRETIL, with GRETIL's inline variant apparatus '(dṛśīṃ c dṛśaṃ)' resolved to the main reading tatsadṛśīṃ; the independent GRETIL 'alt' e-text reads 'somabhāryā ca rohiṇīm / tasmāttatsadṛśī lebhe lopāmudrāmiti śrutiḥ'.

The EARLIEST datable statement located in this survey that Rohini is the Moon's wife: 'somabhāryāṃ ... rohiṇīm', c. 100 CE. It stands in Udayin's catalogue of sages overcome by desire, between Indra-and-Ahalya and Brhaspati-and-Mamata, so Rohini is being treated as a mythological person - but the person IS the asterism, and the same verse couples her with Agastya, the star of the south, and with Lopamudra, from whom the database's Canopus-name Lopamudravallabha derives. Star-name and wife-myth are already fused this early.

A clause excerpted from a long prose sentence; IAST exactly as printed in the GRETIL e-text, including its hyphenation and circumflex-sandhi conventions.

Bana's prose gives the Rohini-Moon marriage its most anxious form: the bride Rajyasri gazes at the groom's hand 'as Rohini gazes, her mind trembling with fear, at the moon whose eclipse (grahaṇa) is near' - with a pun, since grahana is both 'eclipse' and 'the taking' of the bride's hand. Cowell and Thomas note ad loc.: 'The naksatras are the moon's wives.' Bana uses the pair repeatedly: elsewhere the moon is rohiṇī-ramaṇa, 'Rohini's lover', and is 'dejected with longing for Rohini, who has set first'.

Sentence excerpted verbatim from the GRETIL prose e-text.

Rohini named as one term of a moon-epithet in a nightfall description that is explicitly astronomical around it - the quarters strew their constellations, Airavata's track shines dust-grey in the sky, the moon's rays go over the ten quarters. Cowell and Thomas gloss: 'Rohiniramanas, the moon'.