अश्विनी
Aśvinī Nakṣatra
The Ashvins were twin horsemen and the doctors of the gods. They gave an old sage his youth back, put an iron leg on a wounded warrior and were born to a mother who had become a mare. Varahamihira puts their star first in the zodiac and calls it light and swift, good for medicine and journeys.
At a Glance
The Name
Ashwini means the one with horses. The word comes from ashva, horse, and the Ashvins are the horse gods. Yaska, the oldest commentator on the Veda, also hears the root ash in it, to reach and to fill. He says the twins reach everything, one with moisture and one with light.
The Taittiriya Brahmana does not use the name Ashwini. It calls the star Ashvayujau, the two horse-yokers, and the Atharvaveda and Varahamihira still call it Ashvayuj. The Indian month Ashwin, or Ashvayuja, takes its name from this star, since its full moon falls in or beside it.
Where the Star Stands
Ashwini runs from Aries 0 degrees to Aries 13 degrees 20 minutes. It is the first of the twenty-seven stars in the zodiac that Varahamihira and the later books use.
अश्विन्यो ऽथ भरण्यो बहुलापादश् च कीर्त्यते मेषः ॥
aśvinyo 'tha bharaṇyo bahulāpādaś ca kīrtyate meṣaḥ ||
Translation — Ashwini, then Bharani, and a quarter of Krittika: this is called Aries.
Explanation — Varahamihira marks out each sign by the stars inside it. Aries takes all of Ashwini, all of Bharani and the first quarter of Krittika. Ashwini comes first in his list, so the zodiac he uses begins with this star.
— Bṛhat Saṃhitā 102.1ab (Kern; Tripāṭhī 101.1ab) — the stars that make Aries
The Sun's deepest exaltation, Aries 10 degrees, falls exactly where the third quarter ends and the fourth begins. No other point of exaltation or fall is inside the star. Its first quarter has Aries in both the sign and the navamsha, so it is vargottama.
The star that marks Ashwini is usually given as Sheratan, beta Arietis, which stands at Aries 10 degrees 7 minutes on the Lahiri reckoning, inside the fourth quarter. Hamal, alpha Arietis, is the brightest star in the group, but it stands at Aries 13 degrees 48 minutes, just past the edge, in Bharani. The Surya Siddhanta puts Ashwini's marker star ten degrees north of the Sun's path and says it is the northern star of the group (8.6, 8.16). Hamal's latitude is ten degrees north.
The Sun passes through Ashwini from about 14 to 27 April. Its entry into Aries, Mesha Sankranti, starts the solar year in much of India. It is Puthandu in Tamil Nadu, Vishu in Kerala and Pana Sankranti in Odisha, and Bohag Bihu in Assam and Baisakhi in Punjab fall on it too.
The Horse's Head
Muhurta Chintamani gives every star a shape and a count of stars. Ashwini has three stars, and its shape is turagasya, a horse's face. Varahamihira gives it three stars too. Dr Arjun Pai points out that the head holds all the paired organs, the two eyes, the two ears and the two nostrils, and the teachers give every pair to the twin gods.
Vic DiCara notes that in the Vedic lists Krittika comes first and Ashwini near the end. Ashwini took first place about two thousand years ago, when Indian astronomy began its zodiac at Aries.
Varahamihira fixes the karma class, the body part, the varna, the earthquake circle and the direction of this star, and the Brahmana fixes its gods and its old name. The guna, the gender, the colour and the pada syllables come only from the later tables. The shakti name shighra vyapani is David Frawley's reading.