Page 129 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

114 SAMAGRA TILAK - 2 • THE ORION

thed in a deer-skin ; Prajapati has a girdle round his waist ( the
belt of Orion), so has the boy his mekhala with three knots over
the navel ; and lastly, Prajapati has a staff, and so the boy must
have it too. • Thus in their Upanayana ceremonry the Brahmaps
have fully preserved the original characteristic of the dress Of
Prajapati or Orion. The Brahmapa batu (boy~ does not, howevert
carry a sword as Orion is supposed to do, and the skin used by
the boy is deer's and not lion's. I cannot account for the first of
these differences except on the ground that it might be a latter
addition to the equipment of Orion, the hunter. But the second
might be traced to a mistake similar to that committed. in_ the
case of the seven rik<thas. The word Mriga in the ~{gveda, means
according to Sayapa both a,lion and a deer, and I ha· e already
referred to the doubts entertained by modern scholars as to the
animal really denoted by it. M rigajina is therefore likely to be
mistaken for lion's skin. There is thus an almost complete coinci·
dence of form between Orion as figured by the Greeks and the
boy whose upananayana is recently performed and who is thus
made to dress after the manner of Prajapati. I do not mean to
say that a piece of cloth was nQt worn round the waist before the
constellation of Orion was· so conceived ; on the countrary, it is
more natural to suppose that the ancient people invested Orion
with their own dress. But the coincidence of details above given
does in my opinion, fnlly establish the fact that the sacred chara-
• Dr. Schrader in his Preh. ·Ant. Ary. Peop., Part iv, Chap. viii,
concludes that the primitive dress consisted of a piece of woolen or
linen cloth thrown round the shoulder like a mantle, and a girdle. The
history ofyaftwpovita, the way of wearing It as described in Taitt. Arn.
ii . 1 and Orion's dress, as conceived by the Greeks, point to the same
conclusion. I have already alluded to the difficulty of explaining how
upmt~Ja, which literally means ' a cloth, came to denote a thread. If
yaj n()prwfta be takeo to have originally meant yajr1a and upavita, and
yaj11a be further supposed to have once denoted a girdle this difficulty
is removed. Av. j 'asfo, Gk. zistos, Lith. justas, meaning" girded " point to
an original root fos , Av. yanzh, from which Gk. zon~~, Av. niv y:U,zlzana
may be derived (See Ficks' Indo Germ. Wort). If we su ppose that the
root appeared as yaj in Sanskrit and derive ydjna from it. like Gk. tlmU
we may take ya}na to mean a girdle and translate ~~~~ ~ ~:
(Jabal. UJ'a. s ) by "how can a Brlhmal)a be without a girdle ond a
c ~ oth ? " It this fUggestion be correct, then ynfn..>)nv!ta must be taken to