Hamelet's Mill by Giorgio de Santillana

Author:Giorgio de Santillana [Santillana, Giorgio de]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780879232153
Publisher: Nonpareil Books
Published: 2014-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter XX. The Depths of the Sea

Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea?

Or hast thou walked in the search of the depth?

Job xxxviii.16

IT WILL HELP NOW to take a quick comparative look at the different “dialects” of mythical language as applied to “Phaethon” in Greece and India. The Pythagoreans make Phaethon fall into Eridanus, burning part of its water, and glowing still at the time when the Argonauts passed by. Ovid stated that since that fall the Nile hides its sources. Rigveda 9.73.3 says that the Great Varuna has hidden the ocean. The Mahabharata tells in its own style why the “heavenly Ganga” had to be brought down.1 At the end of the Golden Age (Krita Yuga) a class of Asura who had fought against the “gods” hid themselves in the ocean where the gods could not reach them, and planned to overthrow the government. So the gods implored Agastya (Canopus, alpha Carinae = Eridu) for help. The great Rishi did as he was bidden, drank up the water of the ocean, and thus laid bare the enemies, who were then slain by the gods. But now, there was no ocean anymore! Implored by the gods to fill the sea again, the Holy One replied: “That water in sooth hath been digested by me. Some other expedient, therefore, must be thought of by you, if ye desire to make endeavour to fill the ocean.” It was this sad state of things which made it necessary to bring the Galaxy “down.” This is reminiscent of the detail in the Jewish tradition about Eben Shetiyyah, that the waters sank down so deeply that David had to recite the “fifteen songs of ascension” to make them rise again.

Now Agastya, the great Rishi, had a “sordid” origin similar to that of Erichthonios (Auriga), who was born of Gaia, “the Earth,” from the seed of Hephaistos who had dropped it while he was looking at Athena.2 In the case of the Rishi:

He originated from the seed of Mitra and Varuna, which they dropped into a water-jar on seeing the heavenly Urvashi. From this double parentage he is called Maitrāvaruni, and from his being born from a jar he got the name Khumbasambhava.”3 [Khumba is the name of Aquarius in India and Indonesia, allegedly late Greek influence.]

On the very same time and occasion there also was “born” as son of Mitra and Varuna—only the seed fell on the ground not in the jar—the Rishi Vasishtha. This is unmistakably zeta Ursae Majoris, and the lining up of Canopus with zeta, more often with Alcor, the tiny star near zeta (Torn Thumb, in Babylonia the “fox”-star) has remained a rather constant feature, in Arabic Suhayl and as-Suha. This is the “birth” of the valid representatives of both the poles, the sons of Mitra and Varuna and also of their successors. To follow up the long and laborious way leading from Rigvedic Mitrāvaruna (dual) to the latest days of the Roman Empire where we still find a

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