Watch the Moon on clear nights for a month and you will see it drift eastward through the stars, a little further each evening, until it returns to where it began about twenty-seven days later. The ancient sky-watchers of India marked its path into twenty-seven rest-houses, one for each night, and called them nakshatras. Long before the twelve signs of the zodiac reached India, these were the stations by which time was told, rites were fixed and children were named.
Most Hindus still carry a nakshatra with them without knowing much about it. A grandmother knows the "star" under which each grandchild was born, and a Tamil or Malayali birthday is kept by it rather than by the calendar date. This article sets out what the nakshatras are, where their stories come from, and how they are used.
Twenty-seven houses for the Moon
The Moon takes roughly twenty-seven and a third days to complete one circuit against the fixed stars. Divide the circle of 360 degrees into twenty-seven equal parts and each is 13 degrees 20 minutes of arc: the width of a nakshatra. Each is named after a prominent star or star group lying within it: Krittika is the Pleiades, Rohini the red star Aldebaran, Chitra is Spica, Jyeshtha is Antares. The panchang names the nakshatra the Moon currently occupies, and the Moon moves on to the next about every twenty-four hours.
An older scheme counted twenty-eight, placing Abhijit, the bright star Vega, between Uttara Ashadha and Shravana. Abhijit was dropped from the equal division long ago but survives in the almanac's Abhijit muhurta, the favourable window around noon.
The Moon's nakshatra at the moment of birth is the janma nakshatra, the birth star, and on it rests a great deal: the planetary period a person begins life in, the matching of horoscopes for marriage, and the first sound of the child's name.
Daksha's daughters and the waning Moon
The Puranas tell why the Moon visits each mansion in turn. The twenty-seven nakshatras are daughters of Daksha Prajapati, one of the lords of creation, and he gave all of them in marriage to Chandra, the Moon. Chandra promised to treat them equally, but fell wholly in love with Rohini and lingered in her house night after night. The neglected sisters complained to their father. Daksha warned his son-in-law; Chandra could not help himself; and Daksha cursed him with a wasting sickness that drained his light away.
As Chandra faded, the plants and the tides faded with him, and the gods pleaded for a remedy. In the version most often told, Chandra worshipped Shiva at Prabhas on the Gujarat coast, where the Somnath temple stands today (the name means "Lord of Soma", Soma being the Moon), and Shiva set him upon his own head. The curse could not be lifted entirely, so it was turned into a rhythm: Chandra would wane for a fortnight and wax for a fortnight, for ever. That is why the Moon wears away and is restored, and why he still spends one night a month in each sister's house, though Rohini remains his favourite.
The birth star and the first syllable
When a baby is born, the family notes the Moon's nakshatra at that moment. At the naming ceremony, the namakarana samskara, the priest consults the birth star to find the opening syllable of the child's name. Each nakshatra is divided into four quarters called padas, each of 3 degrees 20 minutes, and each pada has its own sound. A child born in the first pada of Ashwini should have a name beginning with "chu", in the second "che", in the third "cho", in the fourth "la". Many families use this nakshatra nama as a private or second name and choose the everyday name freely; others search for a name to fit the syllable.
The padas also tie the nakshatras to the zodiac: 108 padas across twelve signs gives nine to each sign, which is the basis of the navamsa chart that astrologers consult for marriage.
The mansions in brief
Each nakshatra has a presiding deity drawn from the Vedic pantheon and a planetary lord drawn from the nine grahas. The lords run in a cycle of nine (Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury), repeated three times. In order from the start of the zodiac:
- Ashwini, the twin horsemen (Ashwini Kumaras), lord Ketu
- Bharani, Yama, lord Venus
- Krittika, Agni, lord Sun
- Rohini, Brahma as Prajapati, lord Moon
- Mrigashira, Soma, lord Mars
- Ardra, Rudra, lord Rahu
- Punarvasu, Aditi, lord Jupiter
- Pushya, Brihaspati, lord Saturn
- Ashlesha, the serpents (Nagas), lord Mercury
- Magha, the ancestors (Pitris), lord Ketu
- Purva Phalguni, Bhaga, lord Venus
- Uttara Phalguni, Aryaman, lord Sun
- Hasta, Savitr the life-giving Sun, lord Moon
- Chitra, Tvashtar the divine craftsman, lord Mars
- Swati, Vayu, lord Rahu
- Vishakha, Indra and Agni together, lord Jupiter
- Anuradha, Mitra, lord Saturn
- Jyeshtha, Indra, lord Mercury
- Mula, Nirriti, lord Ketu
- Purva Ashadha, the Waters (Apas), lord Venus
- Uttara Ashadha, the Vishvadevas, lord Sun
- Shravana, Vishnu, lord Moon
- Dhanishtha, the eight Vasus, lord Mars
- Shatabhisha, Varuna, lord Rahu
- Purva Bhadrapada, Aja Ekapada, lord Jupiter
- Uttara Bhadrapada, Ahir Budhnya, lord Saturn
- Revati, Pushan, lord Mercury
The names are small poems in themselves: Mrigashira is "the deer's head", Hasta "the hand", Mula "the root", Shatabhisha "a hundred physicians", Shravana "the ear".
Krittika, Rohini and two divine births
Krittika is the Pleiades, the tight cluster that Indian eyes saw as six sisters. When Shiva's fiery seed, carried by Agni and then by the Ganga, produced the infant who would become the general of the gods, the six Krittikas nursed him. The child grew six faces to drink from all of them at once and took their name: Kartikeya, "son of the Krittikas", also called Shanmukha, "six-faced", and in the Tamil country Murugan. The month of Kartika is named for the full moon that falls in this star group.
Rohini, the Moon's beloved, is the birth star of Krishna, born at midnight on the eighth day of the dark fortnight with the Moon in Rohini. Many communities keep Janmashtami by the nakshatra as much as by the tithi. (The Rohini who was mother of Krishna's brother Balarama is a different lady, though the name is no accident.)
Which stars for which work
Muhurta, the science of choosing a time, leans heavily on the nakshatras, and the lists vary somewhat by region and text. Broadly:
- For marriage, Rohini, Mrigashira, Magha, Uttara Phalguni, Hasta, Swati, Anuradha, Mula, Uttara Ashadha, Uttara Bhadrapada and Revati are favoured.
- For travel, Ashwini, Mrigashira, Punarvasu, Pushya, Hasta, Anuradha, Shravana, Dhanishtha and Revati are the usual choices; Ashwini, the horsemen, is thought especially apt for setting out.
- For beginning study, Ashwini, Punarvasu, Pushya, Hasta, Chitra, Swati, Anuradha, Shravana and Revati are commonly named.
Pushya, ruled by Brihaspati, teacher of the gods, is held to be the most auspicious of all for almost any undertaking, with the one well-known exception of marriage. Ardra, Ashlesha, Jyeshtha and Mula are treated with caution for beginnings, though each has its proper uses.
The oldest layer of Indian astronomy
The nakshatras are older than the zodiac in India by many centuries. The Rig Veda already knows some by name; its wedding hymn speaks of cattle being killed in Magha and the bride led home in the Phalgunis. The complete list appears in the Yajur Veda and the Atharva Veda, and the Vedanga Jyotisha, the earliest Indian text devoted to astronomy, uses the nakshatras alone to fix the ritual calendar. The twelve signs, which came to India from the Hellenistic world in the early centuries of the Common Era, were laid on top of this older framework.
A curious detail shows how old the system is. The Vedic lists begin with Krittika, not Ashwini; the Vedanga Jyotisha places the winter solstice at the start of Dhanishtha; the later tradition begins at Ashwini. These are not errors. The slow wobble of the Earth's axis, precession, shifts the equinox backwards through the stars by about one nakshatra every thousand years, and each list records where the sky stood when it was made. The sequence of starting points is a fossil record of Indian observation across more than two millennia. China and the Arab world kept twenty-eight lunar mansions of their own, which suggests how natural it is to count the Moon's nights against the stars.
To reflect on
Find your own janma nakshatra; a parent or a horoscope will know it, and any panchang can work it out from your birth time and place. Then go outside on a night when the Moon is in it and look for the star it is named after. Krittika's cluster, Rohini's red eye, Chitra's clean white point: these are the same lights the rishis watched, and the Moon still keeps its appointment with each of them.