YOGA, in Ilindu astronomy, tho leading or principal star of a lunar mansion, the position of which is given in the Hindu astrononncal tables. There are 28 yoga stars (including Abhijit) in tho lunar zodiac ; but, with tho exception of 16 or 17 of these (on the identity of which there can be little doubt), it is very uncertain to which of the stars in the European catalogues the remainder correspond. Harshana (which no doubt is the same as Spica Virginia) seems to be the yoga which drew most tho attention of the ancient Hindu astronomers, probably on account of its convenient magnitude and declination, which at the beginning of the 9th century was 9° 3S' 13" S. To this star they referred the beginning of the 7th month of their solar sidereal year, from which they concluded its beginning ; and there is every mason to suppose that it was on the result of observations of Harshana that they established their Cmnti-Pata-Gati or precessional variation ; a surmise which, if correct, offers a singular concurrence of circumstances, for it was by obser vations of the same star that Ilipparchus first discovered (in the 2d century before Christ) the motion of the fixed stars from west to east_ Yogu, tertu so pronounced by the Telugu astronomers, but yoga as spelt by the Caruatic Sastri, is tut astrological element, containing the same number of accidents as there are yoga in -the 27 regular mansions of the lunar zediac, bearing the same names, and arranged in the same order, but having no sort of astronomical reference to them. A yoga is the time during
which the sum of the motions of the sun and moon amounts to one nacshatra, or 13° 20'. Its mean duration is 59g. 29v. 21p. 75 Indian time (23h. 47m. 44.24s. European time), 17 of which are nearly equal to 16 days ; which occasions an equation somewhat shnilar to that of the Cshaya tithi.—Captain Warren, Kala Sankalita.