or, The Constellations
by Frances Rolleston

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The same star has always been reckoned in the head of Hercules as Ras al Gethi, the head of him who bruises, and Ras al Awa, head of the Desired, and also in Ophiuchus as Ras al Hagus, head of him who holds, and Ras al Awa, head of the Desired. Thus is shown that the two figures relate to the same person, the conqueror of the serpent, the Desire of nations (Hagg 2:7).

In the First Decan, the Persian sphere had a man with a crooked beak on his head, like the eagle-god, the Nisroch of Assyrian sculptures. Nesir, the eagle, might be confounded with Shir, music, and have given rise to the figure of the lyre.

The Goat always has the body of a fish in all the Eastern spheres, and in those of Egypt. The Greek sphere has an eagle in the Second Decan, with the end of the arrow; in the Third, the dolphin. In the Persian sphere, in the Third there seems to be both a fish and a stream of water.

* These four names, now placed in Pegasus, appear properly to belong to the human figure in Aquarius.

In the First Decan, the Persian sphere had a fish, sometimes having a woman's head, a horse in the Second, and a bird in the Third.

* By the familiar change of d for th.

* The twenty-eight spaces of the heavens through which the Moon passes, one in each day, are called in Arabian astronomy the Mansions of the Moon. These names are given by Ulugh Beigh, also by Alfergani, an Arabic writer cotemporary with Albumazer, and will be found in Hyde's Commentary, Freytag's Arabic Lexicon, &c. The Lunar Zodiac was used in China in the twenty-third century BC. (See La Loubere, &c.) The Eastern nations have, from all antiquity, made great use of the Mansions of the Moon. A table of them, with their Sanscrit names, showing the stars among which they were placed, is given by Le Gentil, Voy. dans les Indes, 1779. Under different names they are similarly arranged, as are the Chinese, each sign of the Solar Zodiac containing two and a third of these divisions. The Indians have added emblems to them; but these vary in different parts of India. Among the Sanscrit names given by Le Gentil, Ahiliam in Gemini accords with Pi-mahi, the Coptic name of the sign, the brethren. The popular enumeration is twenty-seven, joining Pisces, Rebady, the multitude, with the band; but the scientific is twenty-eight. Among the Chinese names is Mao, in the Pleiades: the resemblance to the Greek Maia points to a common origin of the science of astronomy.

 

Can this arrangement be considered as accidental? Is it not a proof of design? Does it not show a unity of purpose, and what that purpose was,-even to form, in connexion with the unchanging stars, a memorial that God's unchanging ordinance had been declared to the inventors of the astronomical symbols, that to them God had spoken?

Plato informs us that many Greek stories were taken from the signification which the sound of foreign words conveyed to their ears. Thus may be accounted for the absurd Greek fable as to milk. The primitive root Gala, a circle or returning way, had the sound of their familiar name of milk, Gala, a word probably derived from another oriental root, Chalav, milk. Another word, Laban, white, also used in Arabic for milk, would assist the mistake, the white circle or way was construed the milky. North American Indians, and even Greenlanders, have given a more poetical meaning to this celestial arch of glimmering light. It was to them the path of the spirits of their ancestors ascending to their heavenly abodes. In early Christian times our forefathers called it Jacob's ladder, on which the patriarch had beheld angels ascending and descending, as they will hereafter on a greater than Jacob. Why, then, should we cleave to the puerile heathen legend, equally incongruous with the nature and the aspect of that sublime wilderness of worlds? the names, not the appearance, having suggested the tale; for there is not the whiteness of milk in the dim effulgence of those faint and far-off luminaries. In such assemblages, such nebulae, as this Galactic Circle to which our sun belongs, the Creator has congregated the heavenly bodies throughout the almost illimitable universe of stars. The arbitrary groupings which we call constellations exist not in nature, but in the imagination of man.

 

* The first name is Sir W. Jones's, the second Le Gentil's.

** The claws of Scorpio apparently occupy the place of Libra.

Taum, twin, is recognizable in Mitouam; the Arabic dual of it, in Mit'huna.

The root Car, to encircle, is preserved in Cancer. Sir W. Jones says, Sinha is always and every where a lion, as here in the Chinese.

It is to be observed that Virgo is not Ankana, a woman, but Kana, a girl. Here, as every where else, in the balance of the zodiac, one scale is going up, according to its Arabic name, Al Genubi, the deficient. The price outweighs the purchased or redeemed. In Capricorn, the goat with the body of a fish, the fish-half predominates in the Sanscrit of Jones and Le Gentil, the goat in the Chinese, as in the Hebrew and Arabic; but a more recent Sanscrit lexicon gives Macara as the figure of Capricorn in the zodiac, the forepart a goat, the latter a fish's tail. Cara, bowing down, Judges 7:6, would be the root. In all these, the vase alone is noticed in Aquarius. Shang, two, in the Chinese, corresponds with Sheni, two, in Hebrew. Sir W. Jones says the Indian zodiac was not derived from any other nation, but time immemorial from their own ancestors. If, as many great scholars assert, the Brahmins are descendants of Abraham by his wife Keturah, their astronomy was from him, his fame as a great astronomer being recorded by ancient historians. (See Josephus.) The Hebrew (or Chaldee) roots in Sanscrit are also in the same manner to be accounted for.

Le Gentil thinks the Indian and Chinese astronomy came from Chaldea. Abraham was a Chaldean, and is said by Josephus and others to have taught the science to the Egyptians.

The Siamese worship "the eternal heavens," under the name Sommona Kodom, words which being purely Hebrew testify to such an origin of their astronomy, which they trace from the remotest antiquity.

In the Chronicon Paschale, it is said that Androubarius, a descendant of Arphaxad, taught astronomy to the Indians. The offspring of Abraham were descendants of Arphaxad. In Androubarius there is a root, meaning devoted to God, also son; it might be the son of one devoted to God, of Abraham. When Alexander took Babylon, Chaldean observations were found for 1903 years back.

In an Indian zodiac given in the Phil. Trans. 1772, Virgo is at the solstice, which was as early as 4000 BC. In a Buddhist zodiac, there is in Gemini a woman holding a golden cord, indicating the idea of the sign, union. The Chinese very early began their year from 15^o Aquarius, where they had observed a winter solstice. This must have been antediluvian. There is a Chinese record of an eclipse of the sun 2150 BC.

In some Chinese zodiacs, the twelve signs are figured by twelve branches.

Upham speaks of the Tibetian, Chinese, Tartarian, and Mongul zodiacs as resembling each other, and partly also the Mexican, for which he refers to Humboldt.

Humboldt says, "The Chinese, who observed nature carefully, and recorded with accuracy what they saw, have circumstantially noted the path of comets more than 500 years BC"; also, that their historical existence and regular chronology go back to 2400 BC.

In Mart. Hist. Sin. the Chinese zodiac is given as above, with the claws of Scorpio taking the place of Libra.

Early missionaries report having found in China the mother with the infant in her arms as an object of worship, having a temple, and called the "Queen of heaven."

The Cali Yug, the complete circle or epoch, was the great Indian astronomical period of 3317 years. Yug, circuit, gwx, Job 22:14. Cali, complete, hlk, Genesis 2:1. It began 3102 BC. Bailly's examination led him to consider it correct, and from actual observations. He says that "the sciences of the ancients were only the fragments of those earlier known to an antediluvian people." To this people he attributes a knowledge of the true system of the world, the return of comets, the exact measure of the earth, the starry nature of the galaxy, and the plurality of worlds, "this people originating the Chinese, Babylonians, Persians, Indians." This opinion corroborates the traditions of the ancient Persians, Arabs, and Hebrews, which attribute the origin of astronomy and other sciences to the family of Seth.

Tables brought by Le Gentil from India coincide with the Cali Yug. The calculations of Bailly have been verified by Playfair, and show that these tables wonderfully coincide with modern science (Rees' Cyclopaedia).

The Buddhist zodiac commences with Aries figured as a goat, followed by the bull, twins, crab, lion, woman with fruit, balance, scorpion, a bow for Sagittarius, a deer for Capricorn, an urn for Aquarius, and two fishes for Pisces. It is accompanied by figures for the Mansions of the Moon, also by others which may refer to the decans; as, three birds with Scorpio and Sagittarius, and a cobra with the Lion (see Upham's Buddhism).

Sir Wm. Drummond says, that in the Buddhist astronomy there is mention of a planet beyond Saturn, which is called Rayu or Rahini.

Upham also gives a Birman zodiac, the ram, the bull, a woman with a musical instrument for Gemini, the crab, the lion, a woman with fruit for Virgo, a man with scales, an animal with eight legs, like a scorpion, the archer, Makara the sea-monster, the vase, and two fishes crossed.

Albumazer, in Gemini, gives a man playing on a flute in the second decan of the Persian sphere.

The Siamese and Indians are said to have cycles and very ingenious periods, and yet to be ignorant of the figure of the earth, the cause of eclipses, and even of the phases of the moon. Their cycles, &c., are therefore derived from ancestors more scientific than themselves.

In deriving the Sanscrit names from Hebrew roots, it is supposed that they were transmitted from Noah, and perhaps Abraham, as proper names of the objects, as such preserved in Sanscrit literature without reference to their radical meaning, as the names Orion and Arcturus, and others, have come down to the nations of the West. Sir W. Jones and others consider the Indian astronomy to be far older than their literature or their history.

"A conjunction of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury was assumed as an epoch by the (Chinese) Emperor Chwen Hio, and found by Bailly to have happened BC 449." "The Emperor Chong Kang put to death his two chief astronomers for not giving the right time of a solar eclipse which took place BC 2169" (Smythe, Celest. Cycle).

The miraculous birth of the infant whose figure is found in some ancient zodiacs is indicated in the signification of Kana, or Canya, "a girl of nine years old" (Wilson, Sansc. Lex.).

"In the early Chinese histories the first man, called Pwan-roo, is said to have been produced soon after the period of emptiness and confusion. He knew intuitively the relative proportions of heaven and earth, with the principles of creation and transmutation. The first names in the historical line of rulers are Yao and Shun. Yao seems to have been Noah, as a great flood is said to have happened in his time; and his era agreeing with that of the deluge, Shun may have been Shem" (Medhurst on China).

The group called the Pleiades is, perhaps, the best known of all the constellations. It is a spot of dim light, in which ordinary eyes can distinguish six stars: by some, more are discerned; and by the telescope still more and more, as its powers are increased. Greek tradition tells, that there were originally seven stars distinctly seen, but that at the time of the Trojan war one disappeared, going off like a comet towards the north pole. This grop is figured as seven in the Mansions of the Moon of Indian astronomy (Ideler, Le Gentil, Ulugh Beigh, &c.), though in the story concerning them, the daughters of Carteek are said to be but six, thus indicating the Indian astronomy to be more ancient than their mythology. In the Greek fable, the seven stars were called the daughters of Atlas and Pleione. Atlas may mean high, Pleione is a multitude; four of the names given to the daughters also mean multitude, abundance, as does their Oriental name Al Thuraiya; two others mean that which fails; the seventh and most remarkable, Al Cyone, is the base, the foundation, the centre. It will be seen that in these names there is no allusion to the number seven. Those who gave them to this group of stars saw them to be a multitude. The names signifying multitude seem to have been given to the whole constellation in the Oriental dialects: that of Pleiades, by which it was known to the western nations, conveyed the same meaning. The star which disappeared seems to have been changing or growing dim, when the names Merope and Asterope were given.

Wasat, an Arabic name either of the Pleiades or of their brightest star, transmitted by Ulugh Beigh from early Arabian astronomy, is the centre. It thus testifies, like that of Alcyone, to the knowledge of the first astronomers of the long lost but lately recovered fact, that in this group is the centre of that astral system of which our sun forms part. The Latin name Vergiliae, centre of the revolving, contains the same reference, if explained by its primitive roots. The ancient Greek name Alcyone, now so celebrated in the annals of science, is evidently of Oriental origin, having the Arabic and old Hebrew article Al, prefixed to its root Cyon, centre. Its meaning, centre, foundation, anticipates one of the greatest achievements of modern astronomy, the discovery that to this point, this centre, gravitates the whole magnificent arrangement of stars called the Galaxy, to which our sun belongs. The latent, long overlooked meaning of these names exists in the dialects of the countries in which it is allowed astronomy had its birth. A most important sanction is thus afforded to the explanation which attributes to the names of astronomy a signification far beyond the idle tales of Indian, Egyptian, Greek, and Latin mythology; a signification discoverable by the primitive roots they contain, and connecting them with the prophecies recorded in the Holy Scriptures.

It has been remarked by Oriental scholars that the Arab astronomy abounds with allusions to cattle, but without observing that the camel, the peculiar possession of the desert tribes, does not exist among the emblems. Only once, if at all, does even the name occur among the more obscure names of minor stars, as it is said to do in Cancer. Were proof needed that astronomy did not originate in Arabia, this circumstance would afford it. The cattle with which the nomenclature of the stars abounds are the lamb and the kid of sacrifice, the flock of the shepherd, the sacrificial ram and bull of the zodiac, where the western nations still behold them: but besides these are the magnificent emblems of the greater and lesser sheepfolds, with their sheep, long obscured by fable and misconstruction of the names by which they were originally distinguished-names perverted by the Greeks and Romans, but still to be traced in the records of Oriental astronomy. Most people know the remarkable constellation never setting to European climes, called by some the Great Bear, by others the Plough or Charles's wain. In reference to the starry host, the book of Job mentions Ash, saying, "Canst thou guide Ash and her offspring?" where the English has "Arcturus and his sons," according to the confessedly imperfect Greek translation of this most ancient and difficult book. It is not, however, far wide of the real meaning in this place, as Arcturus, though not in the same constellation, appears to lead or govern the three stars where we still find the name Benetnaish, the daughters of Ash, the assembled. The Arabs still call this constellation Al Naish, or Annaish, the ordered or assembled together, as sheep in a fold. The ancient Jewish commentators on Job say that Ash is the seven stars of the Great Bear. In the three stars miscalled the tail, where we find the name Benetnaish, there is also Mizar, a guarded or enclosed place. Another name is Alioth, the ewe or she-goat, near which is the star celebrated in modern astronomy, Al Cor, the lamb, in Arabic also Seya, the lamb, where the small star is now ascertained to revolve, to circle round the large one. Cor originally means to go round, as the lamb remarkably does in the joy of its young existence. This name in this place must suggest the inquiry whether the modern discovery were not known to those antediluvian astronomers, the perfection of whose organs of sight, formed to last a thousand years, might show much that telescopes have shown to their short-lived descendants. Among the other names in this constellation, El Acola also is a fold; Phacad is a watched or guarded place; Dubhe, in Hebrew a she-bear, is still written on our globes. In Arabic Dubah is cattle, and in Hebrew Daber is a fold, either of which might be easily mistaken for Dubhe by the Greeks, and understood as a bear. There is no figure of a bear in the Egyptian planisphere, nor was there in the Persian and Indian spheres, which each had three maidens, no doubt the three daughters of Ash.

The Scandinavian tribes appear to have retained the name; but that they did not invent it may be inferred from the remark of the North American Indian, that those who first called it so had never seen a bear; for what bear ever had a long tail? It is observable that this Indian tribe called the constellation the bear. "Among the Algonquins of the Atlantic and the Mississippi, the Narragansets, and the Illinois, the north star was called the bear" (Bancroft's Hist. of US). It is called the chariot of Thor in Danish and Icelandic. By the ancient Britons it was given to their hero Arthur, as Talyn Arthur, the harp of Arthur, was their name for Lyra. With the living animal the Scandinavians were well acquainted, as were the Chaldeans, Hebrews, and Syrians, to whom the remark equally applies.

The appellation Septentriones, the seven which turn, gives rise to a frequent epithet of the north. The Rabbins and Arabs having called these stars Ogilah, going round, as on wheels, a wain in Hebrew and Arabic, may account for that name sometimes applied to them.

In the name of the nymph Calisto, by Greek fable said to be changed into the constellation, we find the Semitic root which we meet again in the west as Caula, a sheepfold. With the idea of a sheepfold* in the mind, it needs but to look at these seven remarkable stars to perceive how well is imaged there the fold, and the sheep proceeding from the corner of it, as if following the bright star Arcturus, always said to be the guardian of these stars, whatever they might be called. Arcturus means He cometh, the guardian or keeper. From the root "to come" was also formed Arcas, by the Greeks said to be the name of Ursa Minor. Arcas, by the Greeks said to be changed into the Lesser Bear, was also called the son of the Supreme Deity: the name of the chief star, Al Gedi, the kid, or Lamb of sacrifice, would carry with it that mysterious tradition. In the Persian sphere there are three maidens walking in Ursa Minor, waiting on Him who was to come, as the name Kochab expresses. As in Ursa Major, the Semitic names show that here also was set forth the fold and the flock: the fold, in Scripture metaphor the Church; the flock, the Lord's people. If from Arcas we derive the names of the arctic and Antarctic hemisphere, to those epithets we may annex appropriate meanings: the hemisphere in which He came, who was to come, of whom the polar star was the emblem, being called the arctic, that in which He came; the opposite, the Antarctic, that in which He did not come.

* The Christian Arabs, interpreting Ash as the assembly of mourners at a funeral, called the four stars the bier of Lazarus, and the three of the tail Martha, Mary, and a handmaiden: but the ancient names, cattle, flock, and gold, show that a funeral could never have been the original meaning.

Orion, the splendid,* coming as light, the most brilliant and striking constellation in the starry heavens, has been claimed by the pride of man, from Nimrod, the first of those mighty hunters whose prey was their fellow-man, to Napoleon, whose almost equally extensive empire, won by the sword, was dashed from his grasp, his empire smitten, though not unto death, by the predicted wound from the sword of late-resisting Europe (Rev 13:3). Where is their glory, where are they now, those kings of nations who said n their hearts, "I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds?" (Isa 14:13,14). The awful depths of unfathomed eternity seem to re-echo, "Where?" Meanwhile the starry emblem of the Mighty One, "who was, and is to come," looks down in dazzling and undiminished luster on their mouldering dust. Long before Nimrod had founded the first worldly monarchy of bloodshed and oppression, whose ruins now being disinterred tell of its ancient tyranny and utter destruction, this heavenly memorial of prophecy had been consecrated to the glory of a King** who shall rule in righteousness, whose kingdom shall have no end. The names annexed to the constellation, the mighty one, the prince, the ruler, no doubt suggested the original assumption of it, as imaging the first temporal monarch, and the earlier assumption suggested that of later years. But, if earlier, the claim of Nimrod is no better than that of Napoleon. The sycophants of the old Assyrian had no more power to annex a new name to the constellation than the admirers of the recent aspirant for the same honour: no ancient appellation has any more trace of Nimrod than of Napoleon. During the first French empire this starry figure was by some few in France called the constellation Napoleon. When the fallen conqueror was on his way to exile, he is said to have asked a village priest, what "those stars" were called. The priest replied, he had never studied astronomy. Such is "fame!" The flatterers of the modern Nimrod were more daring than those of the ancient, who appear to have waited till death had removed their hero from the infirmities and vicissitudes of human life. With what feelings must he have seen the stars once called after his name rise above the prison rocks of St. Helena! If the age of hero-deification was past in his day, in that of Nimrod it seems to have begun to mingle with the earlier and less ignoble worship of the host of heaven. Before Nimrod was a sovereign, "the host of heaven" had been perverted from their original destination of "declaring the glory of God," to the first deviation from the patriarchal religion, that of honouring the symbol with the honour due alone to the thing symbolized.

* The name is so interpreted by Prof. Lee. Hesiod speaks of the "strong" or mighty "Orion."

** The native Irish still call this figure Caomai, the armed king.

In the modern sphere, the foot of Orion is on the hare, a most unintelligible position; but originally, as may be seen in Egyptian remains,* his foot was on the serpent. Arnebeth, the hare coming to rend, or tear, the vegetable crops, seems to have been substituted for the similar sounding "enemy of Him that cometh." A serpent was figured in this place in Oriental spheres. The foot upon the serpent's head was the distinguishing mark of the seed of the woman, whether as the lamb, the lion, the kneeling Hercules, the conflicting Ophiuchus, or Orion "coming forth as light."** The victory over the serpent, and the wounded foot, equally indicate Him in ancient mythology. The Greeks degrading Orion into a mere hunter, yet gave him divine parentage, and preserved the tradition of the wound in the heel from a venomous creature, which aids in identifying the Mighty One here figured with the promise of the Redeemer who should come "traveling in the greatness of His strength."

* As the Dendera planisphere. There is a crested bird on the serpent's head in this place, said to be the hoopoe, an emblem of uncleanness among the Egyptians. From this it has been thought the figure of the hare might arise.

** By the Egyptians Orion was called the constellation of Orus, both names meaning who comes.

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