The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c10.16

c10.16

We have already seen how legends gathered round the "antelope's head." It was the head of Prajapati wishing to violate his daughter, by which some understood the dawn, some the sky and some the star Aldebaran (Ait. Br. iii 33). Others built the story of Namuchi upon the same which placed Vritra, at the doors of hell; while a third class of legend-makers considered that the death of Prajapati was voluntary for the sacrificial purposes of the Devas. The following summary of the classical traditions about the death of Orion, taken from Dr. Smith's smaller Classical Dictionary, will show how strikingly similar they are to the old Vedic legends.