The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c9.14

c9.14

We have seen how Mrigashiras may have been primitively conceived. After this it is not difficult to identify the other stars. The Rohinî is no other than Aldebaran. Rudra is the presiding deity of Ârdrâ, and we may therefore suppose Rudra to be represented by the star in the right shoulder of Orion (a). But the Aitareya Brâhmana (iii. 33) identifies Rudra with Sirius or what is now called the Mriga-vyâdha. The Milky way does not appear to have received a specific name in these old days, and the three sections of the Aryan race—the Parsis, the Greeks, and the Indians—have no common word to denote the same. Yet it is impossible to suppose that this broad stream of stars could have been unnoticed, and I shall show further on that it was not. Greeek astronomy places two dogs in this part of the heavens—Canis Major and Canis Minor—one on each side of the Milky Way, and it has been doubted whether the claims of these dogs to primitive antiquity are well founded. In what follows, I hope to show that they are. In the meanwhile, I may here refer to the testimony of Plutarch to prove that some, at least, of the actually existing figures of constellations in the heavens are Greek transformations of others which had been placed there before by the Egyptians; for this writer, who in his treatise *De Iside et Osiride* makes the priests of Egypt say that the souls of gods shine in the heavens and are stars, adds that "the constellation of Isis is called, by the Greeks, Canis; that of Horns, Orion, and that of Typhon, Ursa."* This statement is very important, inasmuch as it shows that the names of at least three constellations, Orion, Canis and Ursa, are not of Egyptian or Chaldean origin. Of these Ursa Major (Greek *Arktos*) has been already identified with *sapta ṛikṣhas* or simply the *ṛikṣhas* of the Vedas and the *Haptôiringa* of the Parsis, thus partly confirming the above-mentioned statement of Plutarch; and it can be shewn, that his observation is equally good in respect of the other two constellations, or that Canis, Orion and Ursa are all of Aryan origin. At present I use Plutarch's statement only so far as to justify us in presuming the three constellations to be of Aryan origin, or, to put it negatively, not borrowed by the Greeks from the Egyptians.†