Page 92 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

THE ANTELOPE'S HEAD 79

or, to put it negatively, not borrowed by the Greeks from the
Egyptians.*
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 mant; 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 under-
stand the story of Vritra by supposing that he represented the
power that locked up the waters in the clouds, but when we are
told that this Vritra sometimes assumed the form of a Mriga, here
is a distinct addition which caimot 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 ~igveda men were
ilot acquainted with anything else. The supposition is partly true,
but as I shall presently show there are many passages in the ~igveda
which presuppose the knowledge of stars: and constellations. Thus
at the time we are speaking of several ideas had already been
formed and recognised and even familiarly known. For example,
the idea of Devayana and Pitriyana appears to have been well
settled at this time, so much so that though the year was ·afterwards
made to commence with the winter solstice, the equinoctial 'division
of the heavens, with all the notions which had already become

• I have deemed it necessary to make these remarks because Mr.
Gladston·e-i.u his Time and Place of Homer , p . 214, observes that Orion
is either 'non-ll"elle_nk or pte-Hellenic.:.' Plutarch's testimony shews
that the constellation JS nut of Chaldean or Egyptian origin. The con-
ception must therefore be pre-Hellenic, or, in other words, Indo Ger-
manic, and I think I h;we 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 Hincus separated.
t See Herbert Spencer's Sociology, Vol. I, Chap. xxlv.