For #WorldBearDay 🐻:
Constellation of Ursa Major. Historical #sciart in a 17th century CE Persian illuminated manuscript [Wellcome MS Persian 373]. Full page here: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/gpqmdtc6/items

@arthistoryanimalia I wonder which kind of bear this is supposed to be. Sloth bear? The shape and claws seem suggestive.

Interesting that there's also Devanagari notation on the page, though it looks like it may have been added later. I can read it, sort of, but I can't make sense of what it means.

I figured they might be Sanskrit names of the stars in Ursa major, but I can't really find correspondences to the names listed in https://www.vedicastronomy.net/stars_appendix.htm (just the first search result I got for "sanskrit star names ursa major").

Vedic Astronomy