तारका Tārakā

Diminutive of tārā, and the word the Atharvaveda uses of Vicṛtau (tārake, 'the two stars') and Amarakośa of the Ilvalāḥ. Kauṭilya uses it in the sharpest ancient Indian statement against astral determinism, Arthaśāstra 9.4.26: 'wealth is the asterism of wealth — what will the stars do?' (kiṃ kariṣyanti tārakāḥ).

IAST verbatim from the GRETIL Mahābhāṣya plaintext (text in pausā). The first sentence is Kātyāyana's vārttika (bold in the GRETIL HTML original), the rest Patañjali's exposition. Note that the GRETIL sūtra-number marker 7,3.45 does not necessarily match the vulgate numbering; the Kielhorn volume/page reference iii.325.2-326.9 is the reliable pointer. The Aṣṭādhyāyī sūtra reads ५.२.३६ तद् अस्य संजातंतारका आदिभ्यः इतच् (Wikisource, de-sandhied; GRETIL: 'tad asya sañjātaṃ tārakā-ādibhya itac').

Two layers. (i) Pāṇini names tārakā as the head of the tārakādi gaṇa at 5.2.36 tad asya sañjātaṃ tārakā-ādibhya itac — but the sūtra is about the affix itac in the sense 'has arisen for him', and the gaṇa's other members (puṣpa, mukula, kaṇṭaka, pipāsā, sukha, duḥkha…) suggest a bodily/experiential sense, so Pāṇini's tārakā here may be 'pupil of the eye' rather than 'star'; I do not claim it. (ii) The unambiguous attestation is Kātyāyana's vārttika preserved in the Mahābhāṣya on 7.3.45: 'tārakā jyotiṣi' — 'tārakā, when it means a heavenly body' — with the explicit contrast 'tārikā dāsī', 'tārikā [is] a maidservant'. The vārttika exists precisely to keep the -ā form for the star sense against the -ikā form. That is a datable attestation of tārakā = 'star' at c. 3rd century BCE (Kātyāyana), quoted by Patañjali c. 150 BCE, well before the Amarakośa reference currently in the database.