Hasta is the thirteenth nakshatra, from 160 to 173 degrees 20 minutes of the sidereal zodiac within Virgo. Its Vimshottari ruler is the Moon, its presiding deity is Savitr, the solar deity of the vivifying, impelling power of the Sun, and its symbol is a hand or open palm. The name simply means the hand. Jyotisha reads Hasta through skill, craft, dexterity, and the capacity to grasp and hold, what the hand can make, heal, or seize, and classes it as Deva gana. Savitr's association lends it a quality of skilful, well-directed effort and the blessing that comes of applied dexterity. These are interpretive conventions of the tradition; the underlying stars are the small quadrilateral in Corvus that Indian astronomy counts in this segment.
Hasta's padas fall in Leo, Virgo, Libra and Scorpio. Savitr is frequently treated in Vedic literature as an aspect or epithet of the Sun rather than a fully separate deity, most famously invoked in the Gayatri mantra addressed to Savitr as the vivifying solar power, so Hasta's presiding deity connects it to solar energy in its active, impelling sense even though its Vimshottari ruler is the Moon rather than the Sun. Corvus, the small quadrilateral asterism underlying this mansion, is one of the more compact and easily recognised star groups used across several ancient sky traditions, its four principal stars forming a distinctive uneven square that several cultures independently read as a bird or a container, an image loosely consonant with Hasta's own symbol of a cupped, grasping hand.