Lesson 3 of 14
The 27 nakshatras and their padas
The same circle cut finer: twenty-seven stars of 13°20′, each in four quarters.
The twelve rasis are a coarse division of the sky. The older, finer one is the : twenty-seven stars, each covering 13 degrees 20 minutes. The Moon moves about 13 degrees a day, so it passes through roughly one star a day and round all twenty-seven in a month. That is why the star is the Moon’s calendar, and why the birth star, the the Moon was in at birth, is the first thing a Tamil family writes on a horoscope.
The stars run from at the start of Mesham to at the end of Meenam. In between come names every family knows: , , , , , , , , , , and the rest. Several are also festival days, because a festival fixed by a star falls on the day that star is running at sunrise.
Padas: the quarters
Each star is cut into four of 3 degrees 20 minutes. Twenty-seven stars times four gives 108 padas, and 108 divided by the twelve rasis is exactly nine, so each rasi holds nine padas, two and a quarter stars. The diagram shows Mesham: all four padas of Aswini, all four of and the first pada of . Karthigai’s other three padas are in Rishabam.
That is why some stars belong to two rasis. Karthigai, , , , , , , and each straddle a sign boundary, and for those stars the pada decides the rasi. A horoscope that gives the star without the rasi is incomplete for these nine.
What the pada is used for
The pada gives the first syllable of a child’s name in the custom. Poosam’s four padas give Hu, He, Ho and Da, so a child born in Poosam pada 1 is traditionally given a name beginning with Hu. The pada also gives the sign, the chart a later lesson calls the most important of the divisions.
Star lords
Each star has a lord, and the lords repeat in a fixed order of nine: , , , , , , , and . Aswini, Magam and Moolam belong to Ketu; Bharani, and to Sukran; and so on round the circle three times. The lord of the birth star decides which a life begins in, which is the subject of lesson 8.
The star in matching
Each star also carries a temperament group, the , an animal, the , a body group, the , and a . These are the raw material of , the Tamil matching of two stars. Poosam, for instance, is Deva gana, a male sheep, Uru rajju and Madhya nadi. None of these is a judgement of character; they are the almanac’s way of comparing two stars quickly.