Dhanu

Dhanu, the bow, is the ninth sign. In the notes to the Brihat Jataka it appears as a man whose lower body is a horse, and Varahamihira sets it against the thighs of the Kalapurusha, the zodiac drawn as a person. Its span holds the nakshatra Mula, the nakshatra Purva Ashadha, and the first quarter of Uttara Ashadha.

Jupiter is the lord, and the sign is also Jupiter's mulatrikona, a place of special strength, in the book's list. Dhanu is a night sign that rises feet first. Iyer calls it a dual sign, male and eastern, with the color of paddy husk, and counts its first half among the two-footed signs and its second half among the four-footed. The first navamsa, or ninth of the sign, is Aries, the same as for Mesha and Simha, and the Greek-derived name is Toukshika.

Chapter XVII of the Brihat Jataka lists, for a Moon in Sagittarius, a long face and neck, a father's property inherited, generosity, skill in speech and in fine arts, and an inventive mind that gives way only to kind treatment. Iyer's 1905 translation also has the person writing books. On the calculator the sign runs from 240 to 270 degrees of sidereal longitude, a stretch that opens late in the Western Sagittarius.