On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 07:53:16 +0100, Arjun Ray wrote:

In , Gautam Majumdar
wrote:
| On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 05:42:27 +0100, Arjun Ray wrote:

| There is a strong tradition about these names, but no reliable
| evidence that what these names signify today are the same as what
| they did long ago.
|
| Look in some History of Indian Astronomy book. Names of the
| Nakshatryas with their Arabic names are often given in those books.

I haven't seen a single one of them back that up with *analysis*. They
all simply parrot the received tradition, for which the hard evidence
peters out a little before Aryabhat - which is on the order of at least
a millenium - that's a thousand freaking years, by the way - after the
times that my post was about.

| The rest is useed only for astrology - so deleted.

Wrong. Astrology is what the received tradition is about. If you had
bothered to read my post, I was interested in the *original* provenance
of the names, not their use (or misuse) in latter days.

Sorry if I offended you by mentioning astrology. But part of your post did
suggest to me that you are after some astrological info.

Anyway, a quick google search revealed a number of interesting sites. I
suggest you look at

http://www.geocities.com/vijayabalak...akshathra.html

This site gives details of all 27 Nakshatras with their Arabic/Latin names
where available, SAO & HD catalogue numbers, brightness, etc. From that it
should be easy to find them on any planetarium program. Abhijita (Vega),
the 28th Nakshatra, is not mentioned though, probably because it was added
later to get the lunar cycle in sync with observed period.

HTH

--

Gautam Majumdar