The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c10.52

c10.52

Thus in their Upanayan ceremony the Brāhmans have fully preserved the original characteristic of the dress of Prajāpati or Orion. The Brāhman *baṭu* (boy) does not, however, carry a sword as Orion is supposed to do, and the skin used by the boy is deer's and not lion's. I cannot account for the first of these differences except on the ground that it might be a later addition to the equipment of Orion, the hunter. But the second might be traced to a mistake similar to that committed in the case of the seven *ṛkṣas*. The word *Mriga* in the Rigveda, means according to the Sāyaṇa both a lion and a deer, and I have already referred to the doubts entertained by modern scholars as to the animal really denoted by it. *Mrigājina* is therefore likely to be mistaken for lions skin. There is thus an almost complete coincidence of form between Orion as figured by the Greeks and the boy whose *upanayana* is recently performed, and who is thus made to dress after the manner of Prajāpati. I do not mean to say that a piece of cloth was not worn round the waist before the constellation of Orion was so conceived; on the contrary, it is more natural to suppose that the ancient