Mithuna

Mithuna, the pair, is the third sign. In Iyer's translation of the Brihat Jataka the figure is a man and a woman seated together, the man holding a stick and the woman a lyre. The typed Sanskrit text of the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra on Wikisource, whose edition is unidentified, names arms for this place in the Kalapurusha, the zodiac pictured as a body, while the Brihat Jataka translation names the breast.

Mercury rules Mithuna, as the quoted line says. Varahamihira treats it as a dual sign and Iyer's notes call it male, western and green like a parrot. Gemini is the one night sign in the book that rises head first. The first of its navamsas, each a 3 degree 20 minute ninth part, belongs to Libra, and the Greek-derived name given in the sign list is Jituma.

Its span holds the last two quarters of Mrigashira, all of Ardra and the first three quarters of Punarvasu. The 1905 text of chapter XVII gives red eyes and curling hair along with a sharp intellect, sweet speech, a taste for music and mastery of the Shastras. The calculator counts Mithuna as 60 to 90 degrees of sidereal longitude, a band that shares only a small overlap with the Western sign of the same name.