Nakshatras - 27

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.