The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c12.31

c12.31

Let us next see what traditions about the intermediate stages have been preserved. First of all I refer to the tradition of Rudra killing Prajâpati, the god of time, for receding towards his daughter Rohiṇī. The Aitareya Brâhmaṇa (iii. 33) describes this conduct of Prajâpati as akṛita or unprecedented and such as deserved to be severely noticed by the gods. Can we not herein discover the fact that the sun was gradually receding towards Rohiṇī, by the precession of the equinoxes? The ancient priests, who observed the fact as they watched the Nakshatras at the commencement of the year, could not account for the change, and they rightly and honestly believed that it was a great calamity that the sun or Prajâpati should thus follow an unprecedented course. I have previously referred to a verse from Garga,* which says that if the Uttarâyaṇa commenced otherwise than from the asterism of Dhaniṣṭhâ it foretold a great danger; and we may suppose that the Vedic Aryas similarly believed that if the sun ceased to commence the year from Orion, it was an unpecedented calamity. Prajâpati, however, was punished for his unusual conduct, and there the matter ended for the time being I may also refer here to the ancient mode of deriving the word Rohiṇi. The Arabs called it Al-Dabaran or "the follower" evidently because it came next after the Kṛttikâs.† But the Hindus called it Rohiṇi, "the ascended" inasmuch as they noticed that the sun gradually ran towards it in oldest days. It has been suggested that we should explain the legend of Prajâpati by reference to the daily rising of Rohiṇi, Mṛigashiras, and Rudra in succession. But this explanation hardly accounts for the fact why Prajâpati was considered as literally running after Rohiṇi in an unprecedented way. Surely we cannot suppose that the Vedic priests were ignorant of the fixed position of these constellations, and if so, we cannot account for the fact why they considered Prajâpati as running after and thinking of living together with Rohiṇi unless they had noticed the actual recession of the sun towards Rohiṇi owing to the equinoxes. The tradition of Prajâpati and Rudra is thus comparatively speaking a later tradition though it seems to have been completely formed before the separation of the Greeks and the Parsis from the Indian Aryas.