Arundhatī (Arundhati)

Sources present variant genealogies. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa tradition records Arundhati as daughter of Kardama and Devahūti and wife of Vasiṣṭha; the Śiva Purāṇa presents an account tying her to a previous birth as Sandhyā; other Purāṇic listings make her a daughter of Kaśyapa and a sister of Nārada and Parvata. Epic texts (e.g., Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata) situate her as wife of Vasiṣṭha and mother/grandmother in ṛṣi lineages, with narrative episodes such as the conflict between Viśvāmitra and Vasiṣṭha and accounts of her progeny varying by source (hundred sons in some retellings; other texts name Shakti and other sons).

As a mythic person Arundhati is principally described through moral/ascetic attributes—chastity, unblemished service to her husband, reverence and ascetic demeanour—and is praised as an instructress and exemplar in Purāṇic and epic literature. Astronomically she is identified with the faint star Alcor (the companion of Mizar, identified as Vasiṣṭha) in Ursa Major; the star’s faintness is emphasized in ritual usage (requiring stepwise showing from brighter reference stars) and in omen lore.

Sources do not attribute supernatural, world‑altering powers to Arundhati. Her efficacies are moral and ritual: she is praised for chastity and conjugal devotion, is said in the Mahābhārata to have ‘given discourses to even the seven sages,’ and functions as a ritual exemplar whose identification with the faint star Alcor is used in marriage rites (Arundhatī Darśana) and in a named epistemic maxim (Arundhatī Darśana Nyāya). She appears in narratives performing penance, interceding with gods (e.g., pleading with Śiva in some accounts), and as a matriarch in ṛṣi genealogies; these are social-ethical and narrative roles rather than described supernatural abilities.