Kamesh Ramakrishna Aiyer
March 2003
For some time, I had been speculating on the origin of constellations, the fanciful construction of real and fantastic gods, humans, and animals that populate the night sky. How did they come about? Whose idea was it at first? Which was the first constellation to be named? And so on.
Clearly, there is no evidence, no Rosetta stone that exists that uniquely identifies the inventor of constellations. However, there is no shortage of modern-day historians or other scholars who are willing to claim the credit for this invention on behalf of the Ancient Greeks with a slight nod to the Babylonians and Chaldean astronomers. The arguments usually consist of denigrating anybody else’s possible claim and pointing to the apparently universal acceptance of the apparently Greek zodiac with its Greek names.
Being a materialist, I tend to proceed differently. The first and most important question to be answered whenever an invention succeeds is, “Who benefits?” For the Greek zodiac the beneficiaries are astrologers, i.e., the inventors themselves. This turns the concept of invention into a mockery – as a materialist, this is not acceptable.
Once a concept has been invented, it is often the case that an idealist component of that invention is used to organize the space delineated by the invention. That idealized space often has value beyond the limits of the original invention and can take off. In the case of constellations, once one or two constellations were invented, it was possible for somebody to see that these could be used to mark out the path of the Moon, and the planets, and ultimately, the Sun. Marking out the path of the Moon among the stars in conjunction with the season allows for better management of agriculture and rituals involved with agriculture. This is further improved when the path of the Sun among the stars can be marked out – harder to do initially because the Sun seems to drive the stars away.
The invention of the Zodiac and the other constellations describe the path of the Sun and the Moon and do not perform any other function. The first step in delineating a path consists of identifying a few landmarks – so we should expect that some one or two landmark constellations of stars came first. That is, the “Greek” constellations that fill the modern sky must have come about as a consequence of a prior successful understanding and invention of landmark constellations.
We know that individual stars have been recognized by many
civilizations. The Pole Star by virtue
of its apparent steadiness in the northern hemisphere, especially north of the
tropics (which includes all of
Unfortunately, identifying individual stars does not automatically lead to the identification of constellations. That’s because constellations of stars do not really exist out there – they are names that humans make up for these apparently associated stars. Some groups of stars form strongly suggestive groups – for example, the three stars of Orion’s belt are in a straight line and with Orion’s head and foot form a cross. Sirius is close by.
Another obvious collection of stars is the Milky Way – in a clear sky, this band of stars truly glistens like a path in the sky.
Orion’s belt is an example of a concrete constellation – our eyes compel us to accept the positioning of the belt and the cross. It does not follow that they are a belt or a cross to anybody. That’s what I am calling them. A bushman who makes fire with two sticks might see a fire-stick or a bundle of fire-sticks held together by a cord.
A concrete constellation is collection of stars that are in a pattern compelling to the human eye and brain (i.e., a variety of simple patterns). In addition, if this pattern matches some aspect of the watcher’s life, it has concrete existence for the watcher. It can be named by analogy. When these two conditions are met, we have a named, identifiable concrete constellation usable as a landmark.
My thesis is that the first named constellations must have been such concrete constellations. This brings us up against a real problem – none of the Greek constellations are concrete! Aries for example is not a simple pattern and it takes most people an active imagination to discover a ram in it. This is true of all the zodiacal constellations. We can therefore conclude that the current set of Greek zodiacal constellations are second or later generation names.
To support the thesis, we must be able to identify candidates for concrete constellations in the past. Some simple patterns:
a) Fixedness – if the position of a star does not change from night to night
b) Relative brightness
c) Simple arithmetic patterns such as two bright stars pointing to some other milestone or six bright stars all close together.
d) Simple geometrical patterns such as triangles, squares, crosses, zigzags, circles, clumps, … There aren’t too many of these as they are only a small number of brain-and-eye-compelling geometric patterns.
In addition, if the pattern matches some aspect of the watcher’s life, a memorable name can be created by analogy (as opposed to names of interest to technicians like “Cross-1” or “Triangle-5” and “square-3”!). If we believe that labeling constellations became necessary for planning the agricultural year, the watchers must have been farmers. So, at least some, if not all of the landmark constellations would have agricultural referents.
The Great Bear is also called the Plough. If you look at this collection of stars, the seven brightest ones, and the ones generally visible are shaped like a plough or like a pan with a handle. But this is not the significant aspect of the constellation.
Two of its stars point directly to the Pole Star. Since the Pole Star has a bunch of equally bright stars around it, the “pointers” of the Plough are critical to identifying the Pole Star. Why is it critical to identify the Pole Star?
The Pole Star identifies true north. Practically it is a navigation guide. This is important during group migration and is particularly important for nomads. However, when settled agriculture begins, it become even more important for traders. It is clear from both Paleolithic and Neolithic human remains that trading between groups even across great distances has always been an important feature of human societies.
So the Pole Star is important for both nomadic and agricultural societies. It is possible that it had a different name in a nomadic culture and another name in early settlements that did not use the plough, and that the name “The Plough” is a legacy of some agricultural society AFTER the plough was invented.
The Plough is called the Seven Rsis or Saptarishi in Sanskrit. This would argue that just like the Greeks, the ancient Indian name is not the concrete name either.
The syllable “ri” (sometimes called the vowel “r”) or some variation of it is the name for the plough in ancient Sanskrit. It is one of those unremarked curiosities that the sages of Indian mythology who produced the sacred books are called “rsis”, which could be interpreted as somebody having something to do with the plough.
It is a known fact that many settled agricultural communities had rituals associated with ploughing the land. The first furrow was often cut by somebody who had been ritually purified. Sometimes, sacrifices were offered at that spot, the ploughers, whether men or women would purify themselves before getting involved with the ritual. This was considered necessary for a successful crop.
I hypothesize that a culture that named the constellation the “Plough” might have chosen to call the individual stars after the ritual ploughmen. In that case, the constellation could also have been called the Seven Ploughmen.
Can the word “rsi” also be translated as “ploughman”? Was it a traditional meaning?
Suppose you accept that the traditional Indian name for the
Plough was “Sapta Rsi”. Also assume that
when trade between regions of
The sound “rsi” would have been pronounced as “ursus” or “ursi” by the Greeks (and others? What is the origin of this word?), that is “bear”. Assuming that “Sapta” was translated as “Seven”, this would have meant the “Seven Bears”.
Some clever Babylonian or Greek saw that this made no sense, but that it was possible to imagine a bear made up of the seven stars called the Bears. In particular, the Pole Star is itself part of a collection of seven stars that are also shaped like the Plough, and it was possible to construct a smaller bear around that collection. The concrete idea here is that it was possible to imagine creatures in the heavens marked out by the stars! This was the genesis of the idea of a constellation constructed by imagination as opposed to by concrete metaphor.