The glory of Betalgeux – Ardra – which is two million rupees and fifty lakhs spheres the size of the sun!

In Sanskrit it is called Ardra. In English it is Betalgeux. The astronomical name is Alpha Orion.

In Tamil, only two stars have the prefix “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 star Betalgeux is Rudra, that is, Shiva.

This star could easily be seen in the sky due to its size and a relatively close distance from the earth.

According to Sir James Jeans, the famous author of ‘Mysterious Universe’, the star Betalgeux is so voluminous that it can hold two million rupees and fifty lakhs of spheres the size of our Sun. And the Sun is thirteen thousand rupees times larger than our land. Such is the enormous size of Betalgeux.

It is so fiery in nature that an observer has correctly described the star after viewing it through a 100-inch telescope from the Mount Wilson Observatory in the United States this way: “I saw it glowing; how many millions of suns came together! in one! the roar of that incredible furnace boiling through the night, burning forever and ever, from the beginning of time until that incalculable day when time will no longer make sense ”.

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 the sky.

We can see the disappearance of Sagittarius, that is, 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 fiery Rudra – Betelgeux – got up and spread his fierce gaze on the offending cupid.

This episode is gloriously sung from time immemorial to the present day in every corner of India. 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 the demonic forces are always 180 degrees opposite to those of the divine forces.

The sky is divided into 360 degrees and the divine forces always defeat the demonic forces that are always exactly opposite to them.

Therefore, Ardra is one of those stars glorified by the Puranas, Lord Shiva instantly burned the evil passion.

This is called Kama Dahanam, which means burning 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 Moscow fire in 1812 as “the most terrible, terrible and sublime sight the world has ever seen.”

These are all descriptions of ground fire from a much smaller area.

When we think of the fiery perennial burning for billions and billions of years in the sky, we are dumbfounded.

We are reminded of this great Betalgeux in our daily life through a little Purana story.

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.