In Sanskrit it is called Ardra. In English it is Betalgeux. The astronomical name is Alpha Orion.
In Tamil, only two stars are prefixed with the word ‘Thiru’, which means ‘most respected’. One is Thiruvadirai and the other is Thiruvonam.
Thiruvadirai is Betalgeux. This star denotes Shiva. The other star denotes Maha Vishnu.
The presiding deity of the Betalgeux star is Rudra, that is, Shiva.
This star could easily be seen in the sky due to its size and relatively close distance from Earth.
According to Sir James Jeans, the famous author of ‘Mysterious Universe’, the star Betalgeux is so voluminous that it can contain two crores and fifty lakhs of spheres the size of our Sun. And the Sun is thirteen lakhs of times larger than our earth. Such is the sheer size of Betalgeux.
It is so fiery in nature that one observer correctly describes the star after viewing it through the 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory in the United States as follows: “I saw it blaze; how many millions of suns were joined in one! It seemed to me almost hear the roar of that incredible furnace boiling through the night, burning forever and ever, from the dawn of time until that untold day when time will have no meaning.’
This is the third brightest star in the sky.
The Hindu Puranas give the name Manmada to the God of Love. Manmada is being identified as Sagittarius in heaven.
We can see the disappearance of Sagittarius, ie Manmada, on the western horizon while Rudra – Betalgeux – rises in the east. This has been effectively and picturesquely described in the Purana through a simple story.
The Puranas say that Manmada is immediately burned and instantly reduced to ashes when the fierce Rudra – Betelgeux – rose up and cast his fierce gaze on the offending cupid.
This episode is gloriously sung from time immemorial to this day in every nook and corner of India. The dancers with their imaginative skills capture this beautiful scene and reproduce it on every stage to this day.
In the Puranas we can find that always the demonic forces are 180 degrees opposite to the Divine forces.
The sky is divided into 360 degrees and always the divine forces defeat the demonic forces that are always exactly opposite to them.
Therefore, Ardra is one of those stars glorified by the Puranas, Lord Shiva burned evil passion instantly.
This is called Kama Dahanam, which means burning of evil passion.
Mahabharata describes the burning of the Khandava forests.
Valmiki in Ramayana describes how Hanuman burned down the city of Sri Lanka.
Napoleon described the historic burning of Moscow in 1812 as “the most ferocious, the most terrible and the most sublime spectacle that the world has ever seen”.
These are all descriptions of earthly fire from a much smaller area.
When we think of the perennial fire that burns for billions of years in the sky, we are stunned.
We are reminded of this great Betalgeux in our daily lives through a small story from the Purana.
Look at the sky and then read the Puranas. We can better understand the Puranic stories whose real meaning is hidden in the vast, endless, limitless and immeasurable space.