Origin 1200 BCE to 900 BCE
Uttara Phalguni, the twelfth nakshatra, spans 146 degrees 40 minutes to 160 degrees, bridging Simha (Leo) and Kanya (Virgo). Its Vimshottari ruler is Surya (the Sun) and its presiding deity is Aryaman, god of patronage, contracts, and noble friendship. Its symbol is the back legs of a bed, its gana Manushya (human). The latter reddish one, Uttara Phalguni complements the pleasure of its predecessor with commitment, generosity, and lasting union; it favors marriage, alliances, and helpful giving. Natives are kind, reliable, and principled, generous benefactors who honor their word and support others.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period1200 BCE to 900 BCE 1Tradition: Taittiriya Samhita, where the nakshatra series begins with Krittika Origin Period600 to 800 CE 1Tradition: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra Origin Periodc. 1200 to 900 BCE: named among the nakshatras of the earliest Vedic lists, the Taittiriya Samhita and Taittiriya Brahmana, in the sequence that opens with Krittika rather than Ashwini. 1Tradition: Taittiriya Samhita, where the nakshatra series begins with Krittika Origin Periodc. 600 to 800 CE: carried forward into the classical Jyotisha literature the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra represents, by which point precession had shifted the sequence's starting point from Krittika to Ashwini. 1Tradition: Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra Origin of the Name'Phalguni' derives from phalgu, a Sanskrit adjective meaning reddish or dim, itself of uncertain further derivation; the pair's names give their own name in turn to the lunar month Phalguna. 'Uttara', latter, marks this as the later of the pair. 3 Identity
Astronomical DefinitionIdentified with Denebola (Beta Leonis). 1 Zodiacal Span Order
Position in the Sequence10 1Tradition: Taittiriya Samhita, where the nakshatra series begins with Krittika Attestation
HistoricityOne of the twenty seven nakshatras named in the earliest Vedic lists, the Taittiriya Samhita and Taittiriya Brahmana and the Atharvaveda's own nakshatra hymn, and retained without interruption into every later classical Jyotisha catalogue, carrying the Vimshottari dasha, gana and panchanga assignments the working twenty seven still use. 2 Attributions
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Uttara Phalguni, the Back of the Bed
Uttara Phalguni is the twelfth nakshatra, straddling the Leo-Virgo boundary from 146 degrees 40 minutes to 160 degrees of the sidereal zodiac, near the star Denebola. Its Vimshottari ruler is the Sun, its presiding deity is Aryaman, god of patronage, contracts, and honourable friendship, and its symbol is the back legs of a bed. Where its pair Purva Phalguni carries the pleasure of union, Uttara Phalguni carries the commitment and the contract that follows, Aryaman presides over the vows of marriage and the bonds of hospitality. Jyotisha reads it as a mansion of stable partnership, generosity, and dependable friendship, classed as Manushya gana. These attributions are the tradition's interpretive layer over the Leo-Virgo border stars that Indian astronomy assigns here.
Uttara Phalguni's padas run through Aries, Taurus, Gemini and Cancer. Aryaman appears in the Rigveda as one of the Adityas specifically overseeing hospitality, contracts and the customs binding host to guest, a narrower and more juridical office than Bhaga's general bestowal of fortune in the paired mansion before it, and this distinction, delight given freely against obligation formally undertaken, is what jyotisha commentators point to in explaining why Purva Phalguni is read for romance and pleasure while Uttara Phalguni is read for the more binding commitment of marriage itself. Denebola, the mansion's associated star, marks the tail of Leo and was itself sometimes read in older Arabic star-lore as an unlucky degree, a separate tradition from the Sanskrit nakshatra doctrine attached to the same point of sky.
The Four Padas of Uttara Phalguni
A nakshatra spans thirteen degrees twenty minutes, which is a wide gate. The four padas that quarter it are what make the division precise enough to be worked with. Uttara Phalguni runs from 146 degrees 40 minutes to 160 degrees 00 minutes of the sidereal circle, and its four padas are three degrees twenty minutes each: the first from 26 degrees 40 minutes of Leo, the second from 0 degrees 00 minutes of Virgo, the third from 3 degrees 20 minutes of Virgo and the fourth from 6 degrees 40 minutes of Virgo. The Moon crosses a single pada in roughly six hours, so a birth an afternoon apart can fall in two of them.
The arithmetic hides a coincidence that is not one. Twenty seven nakshatras of four padas make one hundred and eight divisions of the zodiac, and the navamsha, the ninth-part chart that jyotisha treats as the most important of all the divisional charts, also cuts the circle into one hundred and eight. They are the same cut. A pada is a navamsha, and naming the pada names the navamsha sign without any further calculation. The four padas of Uttara Phalguni fall in Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces in that order.
Two cautions attach to those degrees. They are sidereal, measured from a fixed point among the stars rather than from the equinox, so they depend on the ayanamsha chosen to locate that point; the Lahiri, Raman and Krishnamurti values differ by up to about a degree, which is a fifth of a pada and enough to move a chart across a boundary. And the equal arcs are a scheme laid over the sky rather than a description of it: the star the nakshatra is named for sits somewhere inside its arc rather than filling it, and for several nakshatras that identification is itself disputed.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Named as the presiding deity of the lunar mansion Uttara Phalguni.
Classification
One of the nine nakshatras this atlas assigns to the gana. The gana is a statement about temperament for marriage matching, not about the star.
Originates in Language
Sources
1. Jyotihsastra: Astral and Mathematical Literature
David Pingree, Otto Harrassowitz, 1981On the nakshatra system, its Vedic antecedents, and the twenty-seven and twenty-eight fold divisionsView the Source 2. Encyclopedia of Hinduism
Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.), Routledge, 2008View the Source 3. A Sanskrit-English Dictionary
4. Atharva-Veda Samhita
William Dwight Whitney, Harvard Oriental Series, 1905Book 19, hymn 7: the list of the asterisms, which begins with KrittikaView the Source History of Dharmasastra, Volume V
P. V. Kane, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1958Vol. V, on the nakshatras, their presiding deities, and their use in muhurtaView the Source Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra
Sage Parashara (attributed), Ranjan Publications, 1984On the nakshatras, their lords, and the Vimshottari dasha reckoned from the natal MoonView the Source The Yavanajataka of Sphujidhvaja
David Pingree, Harvard University Press, 1978On the Greek material absorbed into Sanskrit horoscopy, and what in the nakshatra scheme predates itView the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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