The Bharatiya Vedic people came up with 27/28 names for the stars in the ecliptic plane of motion of the moon, in the period circa 3000 BC. Each day, moon pointed to the specific star (or group of stars), which was given proper name. Hence, any day would be uniquely identified by one of the 27/28 star names. 27.3 days corresponds to the time moon takes to come back to same star. The Jyotishya (Astrology of India), gradually made these more rigorous by allocating 13.33 degrees per star. Subsequently, the solar zodiac concept was integrated by dividing each nakshathra in to 3.33 degrees or a ‘paada’ (meaning quarter) and nine pada’s would make a raashi or zodiac, and four paada’s make a nakshathra. The basic issue in identity of these nakshathra’s has always been, whether the 27/28 stars were specific single star or group of stars, and secondly what are their astronomical identities. Many have tried to explicitly propose astronomical identities. In this paper, R.H.Allen’s proposals (Ref-1) have been compared with Balakrishna’s proposal (Ref-2).

R.H.Allen’s book uses considerable number of references from European authors and Arabic Authors of the 19^th century. He does not reference (and hence may not have studied )the original Sanskrit vedic literature like veda’s, Brahamna’s, Aaranyaka’s, grihya-dhrma sutra’s where in lies the basic material for the subject under discussion.

R.H.Allen’s and Balakrishna’s astronomical identities agree with each other for twelve of the 27 identities. Fifteen other identities do not agree. While Balakrishna has proposed stars, which are consistently within the moon traverse band or a few degrees outside of the band, many of R.H.Allen’s identities are 30-40 degrees away from the ecliptic.

In most cases both these identities fall within the presently used Jyotishya Longitudes, but there are significant variations also.

The Table summarizes the astronomical identities proposed for the 27 Nakshathra’s by R.H.Allen (Ref-1) and Balakrishna(Ref-2)