स्वाती Svātī

Not individually named in ch. 8 (single-star asterism; sthūla rule 8.19; positions 8.2/8.7). Burgess: 'The star intended is plainly α Bootis, or Arcturus'.

ONE star, tilaka-shaped, deity Vāyu, gotra Kātyāyanīya. Single-star count decisive for Arcturus; the Vāyu lordship agrees with the Vedic lists and with Niṣṭya already on file.

See the bahula entry for the three-witness collation of this sūtra.

Named by Pāṇini himself in the ten-asterism list at 4.3.34, in the form svāti (short final i) rather than the later svātī. The archaic alternative Niṣṭya/Nistyā, which the database records from the Vedic lists, does NOT occur in the Aṣṭādhyāyī — so by Pāṇini's time Svāti had already displaced it, which is a useful terminus for that replacement.

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) 193°00', śara (polar latitude) 33°00' north. 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 1 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 Boo 192°31' / 32°58'. VAṬEŚVARA-SIDDHĀNTA VIII.2.1–2 (904 CE) puts the same junction star at Tulā 18° (= 198°00' measured from the sidereal origin) with a śara of 37°00' south (VIII.2.5–6, direction by VIII.2.8). Sāmanta's 193° / 33° N is a large and correct downward revision of the Sūrya Siddhānta's 199° / 37° N: Arcturus stands at 192°31' / 32°58' in his frame, so his figures are right to 29' and 2'. Arcturus has the largest proper motion of any bright star in the catalogue, which makes the inherited value visibly stale by the nineteenth century.

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. 15 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 Tulā 18° — Vaṭeśvara states the dhruvakas as degrees WITHIN each zodiacal sign, not as absolute longitudes, so this is 198°00' from the sidereal origin — and its kṣepa (polar latitude, VIII.2.5–6) as 37°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 Boo 198°28' / 34°15'. For comparison Sāmanta (1869) gives 193°00' / 33°00' north. 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, T21.0405a01: 「亢宿一星，酥麥{#CB00595}祭之，一日及月，屬咀吒神，姓曰赤氏。」 | 舍頭諫太子二十八宿經 T21n1301, T21.0415c02: 「善元宿者，有一要星，形圓色黃，行十五須臾而侍從矣，以果為食，主于風天，姓善所乘。」 | Yang Jingfeng's interlinear note in T21n1299 at T21.0389c05: 「景風曰：中國天文，亢四星，主兵，東方之宿也」

Chinese lunar lodge (xiu) 亢 Kang; T1301 renders the name semantically as 善元 ('Good Origin'). ONE star in all three witnesses and the WIND deity in T1299 (風神) and T1301 (主于風天) — matching the Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna's eka-tāraṃ tilaka-saṃsthānaṃ … vāyudaivatam and the Vedic Niṣṭya/Vāyu link already on file. T1301's 15-muhūrta value also matches. Decisive for the single bright star Arcturus, against the four-star Chinese Kang lodge (Yang Jingfeng: 亢四星). T1300 alone repeats 咀吒神 here, evidently by dittography from the two preceding entries.

CE lines 05,109.012a/012c. CE Udyoga 5.109 = Ganguli's vulgate Udyoga Parva Section CXI — the chapter numbers do NOT match. The Bhīṣma parallel is 06,003.016c 'citrāsvātyantare caiva dhiṣṭhitaḥ paruṣo grahaḥ'; the Rāmāyaṇa parallel is R_5,055.002 'airāvatamahādvīpaṃ svātīhaṃsaviloḍitam'.

Four epic occurrences, three of them useful. (a) MBh 6.3.16 'a harsh planet stationed in the interval between Citrā and Svāti' — a positional statement that treats Citrā and Svāti as neighbouring points on the ecliptic, consistent with α Vir and α Boo. (b) MBh 5.109.12, in the description of the northern quarter: 'here stands Svāti, here her rising is known' — Ganguli: 'It is here that the constellation Swati is to be seen, and it is here that it first rises to the view'; α Boötis has a markedly northern declination, so this fits. (c) Rāmāyaṇa 5.55.2, in Hanumān's sky-as-lake simile, 'stirred by Svātī the swan' (svātī-haṃsa-viloḍitam). (d) Rāmāyaṇa 6.15.22 compares Nala's causeway to 'the svātī-patha in the sky' — the sense of svātīpatha is disputed (the straight path traced by Svāti? a parting of the sky? the Milky Way?) and it is flagged here rather than relied on. The Arcturus identification is imported from the Sūrya Siddhānta entry.

Devanagari from Sanskrit Wikisource's Nitisataka. It agrees word for word with the independent GRETIL e-text of the Satakatraya, which numbers the verse bharst_1.67 and reads 'svātyāṃ sāgara-śukti-madhya-patitaṃ tan-mauktikaṃ jāyate'. The Wikisource text runs the two halves together without the danda after 'rājate'.

THE SVATI-PEARL TROPE, located verbatim. Star-sense certain: svātyām is a locative of time ('when the moon stands in Svati'), the standard naksatra construction, and the whole point is that the SAME water is worthless, pretty or precious according to where it falls and when. Bhartrhari's Nitisataka is the earliest datable text in which this survey could verify the verse: the poet is placed c. 5th century CE, though the sataka collections are textually fluid and no critical apparatus was available in this session. SEE THE CAVEATS: the trope is NOT in Kalidasa, and it is NOT in Varahamihira.

IAST exactly as in the GRETIL e-text (ed. Ramchandra Jha, Chowkhamba Vidyabhavan, 6th ed. 1991), including its reading 'mukta-kāratayā' for the expected muktākāratayā.

The same floating subhasita embedded in the vulgate Pancatantra, with svātau for svātyāṃ, śukti-kukṣi for śukti-madhya and saṃvāsataḥ for saṃsargataḥ. IMPORTANT FOR DATING: the verse is ABSENT from the Tantrakhyayika, the oldest surviving Pancatantra recension (books 1-2 checked on GRETIL: no svati, no sukti, no mauktika anywhere in it). So it entered the Pancatantra tradition later and cannot be used to push the trope back to the lost c. 300 CE original.

IAST exactly as printed in the GRETIL e-text of MSS verses 1-9979.

A second, independent form of the trope, and the one that names the star most directly: 'pearls in this world would simply not be born without the Svati cloud-water' (svāti-ghana-rasa). Here Svati qualifies the RAIN itself, which is how the belief is normally stated in later Sanskrit and in the modern vernaculars. Sternbach's Mahasubhasitasamgraha is an anthology of undated floating verses, so this attests the currency of the trope, not its date.