अनुराधा
Anurādhā Nakṣatra
Mitra is the god of friendship and of the word that binds people together. He refused to kill when the other gods asked him, because he was the friend of all. Anuradha is his star. Its name means the success that follows, and its first work, in the old books, is friendship.
At a Glance
The Name
In the Atharvaveda the star before this one is still called Radha. Anu means after, so Anuradha is the star that comes after Radha. Radha itself comes from a root that means to succeed, to come out well, to win someone's favour. The Taittiriya Brahmana plays on that root when it explains the name.
अन्व् एषाम् अरात्स्मेति तद् अनूराधाः ॥
anv eṣām arātsmeti tad anūrādhāḥ ||
Translation — 'We have prospered after them': that is the Anuradhas.
Explanation — The Brahmana explains each star's name with a short saying. For this one, people say, 'we prospered after them.' The verb is radh, to succeed, to come out well. Anu means after, following. So the name means the success that follows. It also follows Radha, the old name of the star before it, Vishakha.
— Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa 1.5.2.8 — why the star is called Anūrādhā
The teachers each pick up a different side of the root. Dr Arjun Pai says radha means devotion and also accomplishment, so the name is the devotion and the success that follow. Vic DiCara reads it as the reward of love, the result of giving oneself to something. Komilla Sutton takes anu as small and radha as a spark, the little spark that starts a change in a life. Abhigya Anand calls it the star of success, of contracts and of peace.
Varahamihira never uses the name in his star lists. He calls it maitra, Mitra's, after its god. In the south the star is Anusham in Tamil and Anizham in Malayalam. The Veda speaks of it in the plural, the Anuradhas, as it does with several of the stars.
Where the Star Stands
Anuradha lies wholly inside Scorpio, from 3 degrees 20 minutes to 16 degrees 40 minutes. Mars owns the sign and Saturn owns the star, so every planet here works under two hard masters. Kapiel Raaj sums up the star in two words, stability and chaos. Scorpio stirs everything up, and Saturn slows it down and makes it settle.
Scorpio is the sign where the Moon falls. Its exact point of fall, Scorpio 3 degrees, lies just behind this star, twenty minutes inside Vishakha, but the whole of Anuradha sits in the sign of the Moon's fall. No planet has its exact exaltation or fall inside the star. The four navamshas run from Leo to Scorpio, so the fourth quarter is vargottama, Scorpio in Scorpio. The second quarter, Virgo, is a pushkara navamsha, and the pushkara degree of Scorpio, 11 degrees in the usual table, falls in the third.
The Sun passes through the star from about 20 November to 3 December each year. Its marker star, the yogatara, is delta Scorpii, at Scorpio 8 degrees 43 minutes on the Lahiri reckoning, inside the second quarter. The Sun crosses it around 25 November. Beta and pi Scorpii stand within a degree of it, and the three make a short line across the head of the Scorpion.
Antares, the red star of the next nakshatra, Jyeshtha, actually stands at Scorpio 15 degrees 54 minutes on the same reckoning. That puts it inside Anuradha's last quarter, forty-six minutes before Jyeshtha begins. The nakshatras are equal slices of the sky, each 13 degrees 20 minutes wide, while the stars that name them sit wherever they sit.
A Heap of Rice
Muhurta Chintamani gives every star a shape and a number of stars. Anuradha has four stars, and its shape is balinibham, like a bali, an offering. The Hindi commentary on the verse says a heap of cooked rice. The rite for the star in the Taittiriya Brahmana is a pot of rice cooked for Mitra. The Shatapatha Brahmana gives Mitra the unbroken grains when the rice is split for an offering.
Most modern books give the star a lotus, and many add a triumphal arch. The lotus is the teachers' symbol. Achala, Shanti and Komilla Sutton all build their reading of the star on it, a flower that rises clean out of mud. The arch comes from the older books, and Muhurta Chintamani gives it to Vishakha, the star before.
Varahamihira fixes the karma class, the varna, the body part and the direction of this star, and the Brahmana fixes its god. The guna, the dosha, the gender, the element and the colour come only from the later tables. The tables call the star Shudra, while Varahamihira's own list puts it with the cultivators. For the direction the tables say south, while Varahamihira's map of the lands puts the group headed by Swati, which includes Anuradha, in the south-west. The Brahmana names no shakti. Radhana is David Frawley's name for it.