09

Chapter IX

  1. Ludwig Ideler: Untersuchung ṻber den Ursprung und die Bedeutung der Stern namen (1809), pp. 4, 17.

  2. F. Normann, Mythen der Sterne (1925), p. 108. See now The Srimad-Bhagavatam of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa 5.3 (trans. J. N. Sanyal, vol. 2, pp. 248f.): “Just as oxen, fastened to a post fixed in the center of a threshing floor, leaving their own station, go round at shorter, middle or longer distances, similarly fixed on the inside and outside of the circle of time, stars and planets exist, supporting themselves on Dhruva; and propelled by the wind, they range in every direction till the end of a kalpa.”

  3. V. Rydberg, Teutonic Mythology (1907), pp. 581ff. Webster’s New International Dictionary, 2d ed., lists “mundle”: A stick for stirring. Obsolete except for dialectical use. (We are indebted for this reference to Mrs. Jean Whitnack.)

  4. To term it “friction” is a nice way to shut out dangerous terms: actually, the Sanskrit radical math, manthmeans drilling in the strict sense, i.e., it involves alternate motion (see H. Grassmann, Wōrterbuch zum Rig-Veda [1955], pp. 976f.) as we have it in the famous Amritamanthana, the Churning of the Milky Ocean, and this very quality of India’s churn and fire drill has had far-reaching influence on cosmological conceptions.

  5. The rim of the wheel in which the spokes fit.

  6. 10.8.20 Cf. RV 10.24.4 and 10.184.3 with Geldner’s remark that in this stanza of the Atharva Veda the fire sticks are treated as a great secret and attributed to skambha.

  7. The Vishnu Purana 1.12 (d. 2.8, p. 187 of the Wilson translation) betrays the Indian predilection for huge and unrealistic numbers and periods: Dhruva is meant to last one kalpa — 4,320,000 years.

  8. “Zum Problem der Identifikation der nōrdlichen Sternbilder der alten Aegypter,” ISIS 16 (1931), p. 103.

  9. I.e., during the last hundred years, at least. In former times, when the Humanities had not yet been “infected” by the biological scheme of evolution, the scholars showed better confidence in the capacities of the creators of high civilization.

  10. See Ptolemy, Syntaxis 7.3 (Manitius trans., vol. 2, pp. 16f.). The magnitude calculated by Hipparchus and accepted by Ptolemy was 1 degree in 100 years.

  11. See A. Bouché-Leclerq, L’Astrologie Grecque (1899), p. 122: “On sait que le pôle par excellence était pour les Chaldéens le pôle de l’écliptique, lequel est dans la constellation du Dragon.” Cf. also A. Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1653), vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 205: “Ponebant Aegyptii non Aequatorem, sed Zodiacum basis loco; ita ut centrum hemispherii utriusque non polum Mundi, sed polum Zodiaci referret.”

  12. Here, we leave out of consideration the much discussed question of exactly when signs. of equal length were first introduced; allegedly it was very late (see below, p. 431, n. 1). The actual constellations differ widely in length — the huge Scorpion, e.g., covers many more degrees than 30, whereas the Ram is of modest dimensions. One would think that this lack of uniformity would have so hampered the ancient astronomers in making their calculations that they would have worked out a more convenient frame of coordinates in sheer self-defense.

  13. See H. Collitz, “Kōnig Yima und Saturn,” Festschrift Pavry (1933) pp. 86-108. See also A. Scherer, Gestirnnamen hei den indogermanischen Vōlkern (1953), p.87.

  14. Although the Telchines are entitled to be investigated thoroughly, we can only mention them here: this strange family of “submarine magic spirits” and “demons of the depth of the sea” — they are followers of Poseidon in Rhodes — have invented the mill; i.e., their leader did so — Mylas, “the miller.” Knowing beforehand, it was said, of the predestined flood which was to destroy Rhodes, these former inhabitants left for Lycia, Cyprus and Crete, the more so, as they also knew that Helios was going to take over the island after the flood. On the other hand, these envious creatures — they have the “evil eye,” too — are accused of having ruined the whole vegetation of Rhodes by sprinkling it with Styx-water. As will come out later (see “Of Time and the Rivers,” p. 200), the waters of Styx are not so easily to be had; that the Telchines, the “mill gods” (theoi mylantioi) had access to Styx proves beyond doubt that these earliest defoliators had turned, indeed, into citizens of the deep sea. See Griechische Mythologie, Preller-Robert (1964), vol. I, pp. 650ff.; M. Mayer, Giganten und Titanen in der antiken Sage und Kunst (1887), pp. 45, 98, 101; H. Usener, Götternamen (1948), pp. 198f.

  15. K. Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae (1928), vol. I, p. 64.

  16. 4.308ff., Preisendanz, vol. I, p. 173.

  17. “Sr. Zacharias,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948), p. 95. It has not escaped his attention, by the way, that it should be vultures.