Swati is the fifteenth nakshatra, from 186 degrees 40 minutes to 200 degrees of the sidereal zodiac in Libra, and its star is Arcturus. Its Vimshottari ruler is Rahu, its presiding deity is Vayu, the wind-god, and its symbol is a young shoot swaying in the breeze, or in some lists a piece of coral. The name is glossed as the independent or self-going one. Jyotisha reads Swati through Vayu's air: independence, movement, flexibility, and the scattering, dispersing quality of wind, also trade, since goods move on the wind. It is classed as Deva gana. The swaying shoot gives it a theme of resilient, adaptable growth. These attributions are the tradition's interpretive layer over Arcturus, the bright northern star that Indian astronomy counts in this segment.
Swati's padas fall in Aries, Taurus, Gemini and Cancer. Vayu ranks among the more senior deities of the Vedic pantheon, closely associated with Indra and later identified in some traditions as the father of both Hanuman and Bhima, giving the wind-god's presence as presiding deity a heroic pedigree beyond the elemental force itself. Arcturus, unusually for a nakshatra star, lies well off the ecliptic to the north, which some historians of Indian astronomy take as evidence that the mansion was originally defined by a less prominent star nearer the Moon's actual path and only later associated with the far brighter Arcturus by proximity, though this remains an inference rather than a documented textual claim.