Arundhati (अरुंधती) is the wife of Vasishtha, one of the seven great sages, and the tradition's supreme exemplar of conjugal devotion. Her accounts of origin vary from text to text — Puranic sources make her variously a daughter of the sage Kardama or of Daksha — but her character never does: among all the sages' wives she is the one whose fidelity is absolute. In the Mahabharata's tale of Skanda's birth, when the goddess Svaha impersonated the wives of the sages one by one, Arundhati alone could not be counterfeited; her virtue was beyond imitation, and she alone of the seven wives kept her place beside her husband when the others rose to the sky as the Pleiades.
The star
Arundhati's most enduring presence is overhead. The seven sages are identified with the seven stars of the Great Bear, and beside the star of Vasishtha — Mizar, in the handle — sits a faint companion, Alcor, which Indian tradition names Arundhati: the wife who never leaves her husband's side. In the wedding rites of many communities the couple is shown this pair of stars, the arundhati-darshana, and the bride is blessed to be as constant as the star. Because the faint star tests the eyesight, teachers also made her a method: the arundhati-nyaya, pointing first to what is easily seen in order to reach what is subtle.
Legacy
Arundhati receives no independent cult, yet she is invoked at nearly every traditional Hindu wedding — a figure whose entire theology fits into a single visible star and the idea it carries.
Further reading
- Doniger, Wendy. The Hindus: An Alternative History. Penguin, 2009
- Flood, Gavin. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge University Press, 1996
- Klostermaier, Klaus K. A Survey of Hinduism. State University of New York Press, 2007
- Lipner, Julius. Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. Routledge, 2010
- Stietencron, Heinrich von. Hindu Myth, Hindu History. Permanent Black, 2005
See also
This entry was last revised on 31 July 2026.