The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c9.10

c9.10

It gives us the arrow pierced into the head and the three stars in the belt are at the top of the antelope's head—a position which Amara assigns to Invakâs. I may further observe that the ancient observers could not and would not have selected the three small stars in the Orion's head to form their asterism when there were so many stars of the first and second magnitude in the same portion of the heavens. Then again whatever the later astronomers may say about the junction stars in Mṛigashiras, the three stars of that asterism popularly pointed out, even at present, are those in the belt and not in the head of Orion. I do not mean to imply that the asterism may not have been conceived and figured otherwise. As a matter of fact we know that it was figured as a hunter or a deer, and there are good grounds to hold that these are ancient ideas.* All that I, therefore, mean is that of the various figures we may make out of the stars in the constellation of Orion, *one* should be of an antelope's head with the arrow sticking to it to represent the cut off head of Mriga, and not as the present configuration supposes both the body and the head of Mriga together and unseparated.