Punarvasu is the seventh nakshatra, straddling the Gemini-Cancer boundary from 80 to 93 degrees 20 minutes of the sidereal zodiac, near the twin stars Castor and Pollux. Its Vimshottari ruler is Jupiter, its presiding deity is Aditi, mother of the gods and goddess of boundless space, and its symbol is a bow and quiver. The name means the return of the good or the light again, puna meaning again, and jyotisha reads it as a mansion of renewal, safe return, and replenishment after the storm of Ardra. It is classed as Deva gana. Aditi's association gives it an expansive, sheltering, abundant quality that suits its Jupiter rulership. These are interpretive conventions of the tradition, laid over the region of the Gemini twins that Indian astronomy counts in this segment.
Punarvasu's padas fall in Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. Aditi, mother of the Adityas, is one of the oldest deities named in the Rigveda, invoked there as boundless freedom itself, and her presence as presiding deity gives Punarvasu a claim to genuine antiquity within the nakshatra scheme distinct from later Puranic accretions found in some other mansions. The mansion is unusual in straddling not just two signs but two very different classical readings of the Gemini-Cancer boundary, since Punarvasu belongs mostly to Gemini's airy, communicative nature in its earlier degrees before crossing into Cancer's nurturing water in its last pada, a shift jyotishis read as the mansion itself enacting its own theme of return and transition.