The Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas c9.18

c9.18

Having thus shown that we are at liberty to assume that the Greek legends about Orion and Canis are not of foreign origin, let us see what coincidences we can discover between the legends of the three sections of the Aryan race about this part of the heavens. I am not going to trace every legend to its primitive source and explain it on the dawn or the storm theory. Nor do I believe that it is possible to do so; for there are many other objects in nature besides the dawn and the storm, that are likely to impress the mind of a primitive man;* and a legend, though it might have originated with the sun or the dawn, is sure to grow and develop under the influence of these objects. For instance, we can understand the story of Vṛitra by supposing that he represented the power that locked up the waters in the clouds, but when we are told that this Vṛitra sometimes assumed the form of a Mṛiga, here is a distinct addition which cannot be satisfactorily accounted for on the original theory. Those that have watched and examined how legends grow can easily understand what I mean. The idea that everything must be reduced to "dawn and nothing but the dawn" is the result of supposing that in the days of the Rigveda men were not acquainted with anything else. The supposition is partly true, but as I shall presently show there are many passages in the Rigveda which presuppose the knowledge of stars and constellations. Thus testimony shews that the constellation is not of Chaldean or Egyptian origin. The conception must therefore be pre Hellenic, or, in others words, Indo Germanic, and I think I have given ample evidence in this chapter and the next to prove that the idea of Orion was fully developed before the Greeks, the Parsis and the Hindus separated.