一切經音義 18.280

18.280

昴星 (The fanqie is m- + b- [mǎo]. Guo's commentary on the Erya states: 'The name of a western constellation [Pleiades].' The Guangya states: '昴 is called Maotou.' Note that the constellation Mǎo is a star constellation of the White Tiger of the West. It corresponds exactly to the directional branch you, hence in the Liuren divination system there is the hexagram of the Tiger's Gaze, whose prognostications of yin-yang facing up and down differ, and whose transmission-courses are also distinct. Nowadays it is colloquially and corruptly called Zanmao. In Sanskrit it is called Kārttika. On the fifteenth day of the ninth month the moon resides in this constellation, therefore the one month from the sixteenth day of the eighth month onward to the fifteenth day of the ninth month is named the month of Kārttika. 'Jiati' [Kārttika] is an old corrupted Sanskrit abbreviation. Today, the vinaya texts of the Dharmaguptaka and Mahīśāsaka take the sixteenth day of the seventh month onward in this country as Kārttika, which is one month off and too early; this was mistakenly transmitted by the vinaya translators, and practitioners have wrongly followed it, causing the rains retreat to be held too hastily).