Page 117 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

104 SAMAGRA TILAK- 2 • THE ORION

whatever way we may explain the disappearance of Array~ in
the $Cnse of M rigashiras in the oldest Vedic works, -the fact that
in the days of Amara and long before him of Pipini Agraha~t
was ·used to denote the constellation of Orion remains unshaken,
and we may safely infer therefrom that the meaning given by
them was a traditional one.
We have already seen how lesends gathered round the • ante-
lone's bead. ' It was the bead of Praj&pati wishing to violate
his daupter, by which sonme understood the dawn,. some the
lky and some the star Aldebaran (A it. Br. iii. 33 ). Others built
the story of Namuchi upon the same which placed Vritra at
the doors of bell; while a third class of legend makers considered
that the death of Praj£pati was voluntary for the sacrificial pur-
~ of the Devas. The following summary of the classical tra-
ditions about the death of Orion, taken from Dr. Smith's smaller
Oauical Dictionary, will show how strikingly similar they are to
the old Vedic lqends.
"The cause of Orion's death is related variously. According
" to some Orion was carried oft' by Eos ·( Aurora ), who bad fallen
11
in love with him; but as this was displeasing to the gods, Artemis
u killed him with an arrow in Ortygia. • According to others,
" he was beloved by Artemis ·and Apollot idignant at his
•• sister's affection for him, asserted that she was \lnable to bit
" with her arrow a distsant point which he showed her in the
" sea. She ihereupon took aim, the arrow hit its mark, but the
" mark was the head of Orion, who was swimming in the sea.
" A third account, which Horace follows, states that he offered
" violence to Artemis, and was killed by the goddess with one
" of her arrows. " ·
Thus love, arrow and decapitation which are the three princi·
pal elements in the Vedic lesends, are all present in these traditions.
There is another story which says that Orion was stung to death
by a. scorpion; but this is evidently intended to represent the fact
that the constellation of Orion sets when that of Scorpion ri"'
in the east, and is therefore of later origin when the zodiacal signs
were adopted by the Greeks.

• Homer Od. v. 121. 4. See Gladstone's ' Time· a ad Place of
Homer', p. 2i-4.
t Ov. Fast'"· 537.