My teacher has said that the ancient seers studying the
night sky and the various stars therein, decided to group them – because there
were so many stars. So they grouped them in 27 groups i.e. they divided the sky
of 360 degrees by 27 to get portions of 13 deg 20 min each. Why 27? Because the
Moon takes 27.32 days to do one full revolution of the earth i.e. the sidereal
revolution. So they rounded it off to 27, with 0.32 being an intercalary nakshatra
called Abhijit.
Now a question arose in my mind, why choose Moon’s revolution
days i.e. 27 – why Moon specifically. This kind of question can come in
abstract minds like mine because we have learnt astrology from books. The
ancients divined astrology from observing the sky and the nature around them.
The stars emerge in the night, when the Sun has gone down.
In the night sky, the one most prominent astronomical entity is the Moon (which
even as a crescent looks larger than any star). And as one watches the sky night
after night, the Moon appears to be having in background different star
clusters each night – its like the Moon is in a different house every night. The
stars in the background to the prominent Moon seem like the shy wife in the
shadow of her brilliant husband. Hence the Moon is considered husband to the
stars.
And the stars themselves are called Nakshatras. Nak means night and
Kshatra means area or territory. Nakshatras are the territories of night, the
mansions of Moon. Hence to group the stars the night sky is divided by 27 as
they are linked to the Moon.
