Ancient calendars and constellations

In Plate XIX., fig. 1, it is the constellation known in the Grecian sphere as Hercules that claims our attention. At the date and latitude above named, this constellation, if then it had already been imagined, culminated gloriously on the northern meridian at midnight of the spring equinox. The head of the hero, or demi-god, touched the very zenith, and with his club brandished aloft he must have seemed well fitted to triumph over, not only the dragon coiled beneath his feet, but over every opposing power.

As was said at p. 223 about Bootes, 6000 B.C., so it may here be repeated of Hercules, 4667 B.C., “never since that date has he held so commanding a position in the sky.”

At the present date of writing, and in our English latitudes, Hercules “will ever rise reversed,”[114] and through the summer and autumn months his kneeling figure is always to be seen hanging head downwards in the southern quarter of the sky.

Grecian writers, some centuries B.C., were already puzzled to account for this “reversed” position of “the Kneeler.” Aratos, from whom I have quoted above, thus further wonders as to this constellation. At line 63 we read:—

and again at line 614—

4600 B.C. no such difficult speculations could have presented themselves to the minds of those who, in the joyous springtime of the year, beheld in imagination, night after night, the grand and conquering figure of this god or hero, typifying for them, as we may easily suppose, the ever-increasing triumph at that season of the power of light over darkness.

Plate XIX., fig. 2. It was perhaps at this same date that the cluster of stars “led round in circle”[116] close to the bow of Sagittarius, and exactly marking the equinoctial colure, was figured as a crown, and that so depicted, as I have contended at page 76, this constellation suggested the symbolic circle, crown, or wreath which sometimes takes the place of the bow in Assur’s hand, and which almost always is present in the hand of Ahura Mazda in Median representations of that figure.

At Plate XX., fig. 1, I have drawn the constellation Hydra as it would have appeared at the date 4667 B.C. At pages 117, 118, the reasons which led me to suppose that this constellation was then first imagined have been given.

At Plate XX., fig. 2, it may be seen how 4667 B.C. the figure of Orion very accurately marked the equinoctial colure, and this fact may incline us to suppose that the giant hunter—so often, according to Grecian legend, in conflict with the powers of high Heaven—was depicted about this date by ancient astronomers to represent the strength of the adverse powers which, at the autumnal season in the mythologies of northern nations, appear in combat with, and temporarily triumphant over, the powers of light.

In favour of the high date here claimed for the imagining of Orion’s figure under very much the same form as that still depicted on our globes, there are some indications to be observed in the Sanscrit names of the Nakshatra, which contains the stars, λ φ₁ φ₂ Orionis—i.e., the stars marking the head of Orion.

This Nakshatra is known in Hindu astronomy under two quite different names—viz., Mṛigashirsha and Agrahayani. The Sanscrit word, Mṛigashirsha, means literally “Wild beast’s head,” and B. G. Tilak, in his work, The Orion; or, Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas, basing his opinion upon many ingenious and recondite arguments, supposes that ancient Indian astronomers gave the name of Mṛigashiras to the stars of Orion, which they imagined portrayed in the sky an “Antelope’s head” transfixed by an arrow—the arrow being marked by the three bright stars so well known to us as Orion’s Belt.

Mṛiga, there can be no doubt, carries often with it in Sanscrit literature the meaning of “antelope”: but Tilak expressly says at p. 97, “Though I have translated the word Mṛigashiras by ‘Antelope’s head,’ I do not mean to imply that Mṛiga necessarily meant ‘an antelope’ in the Vedic literature.” Again, at p. 151, he says: “The word Mṛiga in the Rigveda, means according to Sâyaṇa both a lion and a deer.”

Again, as to the other name of the Nakshatra—Agrahayani—it has the meaning of “first-going” (of the sun) understood. In a long dissertation on this name, Tilak contends that it marked an important point in the annual course of the sun, and then further seeks to derive the Greek name Orion from the Sanscrit word, Agrahayani. Of the value of the etymological arguments advanced, I am quite unable to judge, but on astronomic grounds it would not seem an improbable derivation.

But the acceptance of Tilak’s contention as to the derivation of the name Orion would make it reasonable to suppose that not only the name but also the configuration of the constellation might, in the astronomy of the Greek and Indian nations, resemble each other; and thus we should be more ready to believe that Mṛigashirsha referred to the lion’s head on Orion’s arm, and not to an “antelope’s head”—a head which, as depicted by Tilak at p. 100, would alone have filled nearly all the space in the heavens occupied in the Grecian sphere by the huge figure of the giant hunter known to us as Orion.

The indications furnished by these two Sanscrit Nakshatra names, if they are followed, must lead us to attribute the imagining and naming of the constellation Orion to a time before that when the ancestors of the Greeks and Indians went their separate ways to the west and to the east, and so will strengthen the claim here made for the depicting of the constellation on the sky as early as 4600 B.C.

It will be noted that in the suggestions here offered concerning Hercules, Corona Australis, Hydra, and Orion, a change in the symbolic methods followed by earlier astronomers, 6000 B.C., must be supposed.

It was to the constellations invisibly accompanying the sun that the originators of the Zodiac appear to have directed their attention. But the symbolic figures we have now been studying—there can, it seems to me, be little doubt—were designed to mark visibly, and, therefore, in opposition to the sun, the various seasons of the year.

A great astronomic activity, a sort of astronomic renaissance, in fact, seems to manifest itself as we study the celestial globe at 4600 B.C., and to this date I would attribute the origin of the astronomic myths of many nations.