Dear Jacob,
I have no immediate textual references for you, but I would suggest
(you may have thought of this already) looking for such in ritual
manuals of navagraha worship, for the construction of temporary
maṇḍalas and the like, rather than in astrological texts as such. I
can't recall ever seeing the planets represented in this way in a
horoscope, for instance (where they are usually represented by
abbreviated forms of their names, such as सू or चं.) Perhaps there
may be something on the topic in S.K. Ramachandra Rao's two-volume Navagraha-Kosha,
but I'm not sure.
Some of the symbols are more readily intelligible than others,
especially the sun disc and crescent moon. Ketu does mean flag or
banner and originally referred to comets (usually in the plural),
which again is understandable in visual terms. (I don't know when
the word came to designate the south lunar node, but it seems to be
rather a late development.) Venus could conceivably have derived its
shape from the pattern it forms during its eight-year cycle with the
sun (a web search will tell you more about this, with useful
images), but I'm less sure about that. The rest are less clear to
me, unless Rāhu's basket is a stylized version of a severed head
(Rāhu being the head of the demon Svarbhānu, cut in two by the
Sudarśana disc of Viṣṇu in the myth about the churning of the
ocean).
Best wishes,
Martin
Den 2026-03-18 kl. 23:27, skrev
jacob--- via INDOLOGY:
Dear
friends and colleagues,
I am trying to understand the origin of the symbolic forms (ākāra)
associated with the navagrahas, but have not had any luck so far.
The standard forms, as far as I have been able to determine them,
are as follows:
Sun = circle (vṛtta)
Moon = crescent (ardhacandra)
Mars = triangle (trikoṇa)
Mercury = arrowhead (bāṇa)
Jupiter = rectangle (dīrghacaturaśra)
Venus = pentagon (pañcakoṇa)
Saturn = bow (dhanus)
Rāhu = winnowing basket (śūrpa)
Ketu = flag (dhvaja)
I would be grateful for any pointers to primary sources or
articles discussing these forms.
Best regards,
Jacob
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