Friday, February 5, 2010

Is there a deer constellation?

I know there's not one in the greek constellations, but is there one in any other culture?Is there a deer constellation?
I believe there is a deer head constellation according to the people in India





http://stargazing.suite101.com/article.c鈥?/a>Is there a deer constellation?
In ancient Hindu mythology, the constellation Orion was the god Prajapati, who had an incestuous relationship with the dawn.





Prajapati and the Rg Veda


The oldest Hindu myths are those found in the Rg Veda, which is the oldest known document in any Indo-European language and was passed down orally for several centuries before it was written.





In this ancient tradition the constellation, Orion, is the god Prajapati, one of the creator gods. In an interesting parallel with one of the Greek myths about Orion, Prajapati has a relationship with the dawn or in some versions the sky. There is a twist however. She is his daughter. The relationship is incestuous.





Dawn took the form of a doe, so Prajapati took the form of a stag to seduce her. The other gods did not approve of this incestuous relationship. They assembled a malevolent deity, Rudra, and told him to shoot the incestuous stag with an arrow. The deer or the deer's head is the modern constellation, Capricorn. Sirius, the brightest star in the sky and now thought of as one of Orion's hunting dogs, was the deer piercer who shot the arrow.





The brightest star in Taurus, Aldeberan, was called Rohini and represents the female deer. Prajapati is represented by Orion, but the row of three stars that is considered his belt in western tradition is the arrow that pierced him. The three arrow (belt) stars are Agni, Soma, and Visnu representing the shaft, head, and point of the arrow. Visnu was the solar or supreme god. Soma was both the god's ambrosia and the moon. Agni was the fire god. Extend Orion's belt to find Sirius and Aldeberan representing the deer piercer and Rohini. They are roughly equidistant from Orion's belt but on opposite sides of the belt.





In this version of the myth only Prajapati pursued Dawn, but in a later alternate version, Prajapati and his four sons, Fire, Wind, Sun, and Moon all pursue her. In this latter version Dawn was actively seductive by taking the form of a nymph.





Skanda and the Mahabharata


In the Mahabharata, a later epic and the major Hindu epic, Orion was the warrior, Skanda. Skanda was the six headed son of Shiva, the god of ascetics and cosmic destruction. Skanda's aliases included Kumara, Karttikeya, and Guha. He was both the god of war and the general of the gods. Riding a red crested cock and blowing fearful sounds on a conch-shell, he thrust his spear into the White Mountain. The top split off into the sky becoming the Milky Way. The hero also killed various demons and restored peace.
I believe they are called the dimensions of Pan.

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