Arya language, Indus or IVC seals and script

[shaberon]

The last post had parts that are already familiar. Sometimes a pinion becomes evident such as by posting the dominant tetragram. Some parts are redundant, because we already found this collated by Person with Bow on the first page.

They also do what appears to be the Mohenjo daro Table of Contents and the Chanhu daro engorgement of those contents.

The post shows the tetragram as interested in three kinds of Fish, and then Person with Bow "enumerates" the two marked ones. Moreover, in other areas they are involved with Fish families overall. The "table of contents" is certainly interested in three kinds of fish. On M-41, they have three marked fish.

Correspondingly, they also use the dominant trigram one time in an interesting manner. It uses Inverted Tau 257, which we think might be accession of a Gharial. And so this glyph has only one other existence, built as a prefix, on a Harappan Unicorn, and then, as the prefix making a statement with Whiskered Fish, Dotted Fish, and the trigram on a Mohenjo daro Unicorn. It's Text 1065 and I cannot figure out what seal it comes from. The text shows up in the concordance in the previous post.


This is intriguing, because 257 may be a rotated Gharial but it is what Tiger faces on its Two Bearers of Striped Mountain text.


That also has a round Wheel.

As is obvious from the infographics, the Wheel is quite common as a prefix.

However it probably qualifies as a pre-script entity.

It is the glyph of Contest Heroine, which, by most standards, places IVC script at par with "full" mythologies.

It is worth considering whether it represents a level of public literacy, as up to four wheels can be found on Dholavira Signboard. It may also signify something to be between Wheels such as Bird-face Goddess also does; Unicorn M-634 has her between Wheels, there is a third Wheel, and X under Sky.

The use of the "pair of Wheels" is one of the main arguments against the script being discrete "words", and, as a spectator, to me it looks like it means two different "Wheels".


The examples of paired "Wheels" are:

B-1 Unicorn, L-217 (tablet with Person over animal procession), H-176, M-111 (unicorn with "quadruped rudiment" text), M-1384



The application of them is heavily restricted; pursuing the small number of uses, we find it consists of partial copies of Dholavira Signboard including M-1384:




The "copies" share two additional glyphs, "Mallet" and Branch with Chevron. It even proceeds to inscribed objects.



Chanhu-daro, Pl. LXXIV & Mohenjo-daro: copper and bronze tools and utensils (an inscription line mirrored on a zebu seal)


applies to the first one of these with two Wheels:





The repetitive statement uses some quite basic glyphs.

The Chevron -- found as a pair in the Copper Tablets "diploma" -- in its own texts also deals with two pairs:


Chevron 134 uses the power of Striped "Mallet" to move Branch with Chevron into the lead position in order to double the Wheel, on Mohenjo Daro Bull and tools.

It has the largest/most powerful text of ")(" which is with Bird-face Goddess and two Grids.


So, we see this common text with something as simple as plain Lozenge, which certainly points in the direction of some amount of "public literacy", and if so then we would have to delineate "two kinds of Wheel".

There seems to be Unicorn M-633 with a lowered arch and perhaps "Rainy Wheel"; cf. M-1005.

Wheel is present with the Bull and Elephant, and annexed by Tiger; so, it will not be as simple as merely assigning two animals. Even worse, it could mean two kinds of things having six aspects, like a Hydra and a Tiger Chimera, Scorpion or Gharial, or six kinds of Fish, or Branch enumeration by Six, or maybe it means seven. It has certain parameters but at first we want to divulge its locations.


And so if it is in one of the most plebian expressions, it also appears among the most sacred.

H-176 with the only temple:







L-217 is a "balanced" extension of this trigram, backed by a Unicorn followed by a Gaur that has a human glyph in its horns. Certainly unusual for a place said to be "low on mythology".

The tablet above has almost no script but a rich context, which doesn't crisply define two wheels, but seems to leave room for the possibility. Same one already reviewed in terms of the human element.

The Lothal tablet is nested in a vast unicorn cluster. Here it is with the large Gharial statement:





The H-176 trigram is copied on multiple Unicorns; here, it has been adjusted. Two additional glyphs are sufficient to reduce humanity to script form.



As a doubling of what should be one of the most common parts of speech, its circuit throughout the corpus is extremely limited.

Unicorn B-1:







It is an unusually charged-up, wordy Unicorn from a place that specializes in low-order seals, and one of the finest-made Tiger Chimerae.


M-111 is a standard Unicorn that connects a pair of Wheels by a single Quote to text which includes Fish with Slash and Rudiment 182, which, itself, leads to stuffing Mallet and Branch inside the dominant tetragram, which is the Gharial text above.





M-933:







This is curious, since Mallet and Branch takes off as a trigram with U-shaped symbol, just like two Wheels, and here they meet. Mallet and Branch comes from the Deer of the Copper Tablets and has the Gharial for its major exposition.










Here are examples where two appear separately.

Neptune and two Wheels:





This is still perhaps "between" rather than "on":




However H-212 likely has them "on"; maybe H-1855.

In this area, it is curious that H-213 is mirrored by H-214, Neptune -- Comb -- Spear -- Comb, noting that Comb is one of the few glyphs that can demonstrate horizontal mirroring.


Another one is Flat Crab, which is found as a normal pair on Unicorn M-108, between two wheels, ending on two combs. Conversely, it is easy to find the change on:


M-126, M-162, M-198, mirrored flattened crabs; M-62 around branch-tipped U


These are also found vertically-mirrored on the clocklike Chimera.

M-63 appears to show them ripped apart from being vertically ligatured in other places.


That approximate shape has multiple pairs, and shows some form of mobility. But even the "normal" crab shape has a false start, since, on the Tree Tablet, you find a separate oval and "C" shape, which are then joined in other texts. IVC has one Realistic Crab with Bird-face Goddess, since most crabs have eight walking legs. There is such a thing as an Indian Hexapus, which is a rare coastal species presumably beyond the reach of IVC. Most crab-like glyphs have only six legs; there is one with eight and no pincers; one is tempted to say the eight-legged crab represents eight pairs of crab-like shapes.


As for the weird Wheel and its "doubling". There is such a thing or trigram as Wheel between Two. This ports to the text:


Five -- Bird-face Goddess -- Wheel between Two


and, in turn, the only thing it frames in a similar manner is Bird-face Goddess in one of its longest texts that it starts, M-634. In other words, this is doubly-indicated, as a most powerful text for Bird-face Goddess, and for the Wheel itself. The seal is broken, but you can tell it is of the Striped Face, Smooth Horn kind. Here is at least the correct imagery for it:





Wheel handles a wide variety, or, most things. Not very repetitive. It tries different connectors and positions and so forth. Yet anything close to an actual doubling of it falls straight into these pigeonholes as described. That's not the behavior of the letter "e" or the word "and", or a general word like "wheel", but it is, at least, a parameter at mundane levels, selective animals, and, with Bird-face Goddess and with long-haired yogini.

For one thing, it begins on one of the only tablets where we can find a Rabbit.

Itself is beside the most complete construction of whatever the "reed hut or shelter" truly is. I'm less convinced it is a Minoan tower altar, and more persuaded it lives between unrealistic scenery and human-sized glyphs.

Wheel 391 does not have an exclusive pair of itself. It exists solo and as this pair with U-shaped symbol.

It is possible this should be read "Wheel between Two":






The rest of this is notes on Unicorn seals and their texts.

Mohenjo daro Unicorns can say whatever they want, and, it is painstaking, because everything is arranged by find and physical type, and it's an unreasonable burst of texts you will never get anywhere with. Seeing how to sift them a little bit, we find the somewhat primordial:


M-72, no object, bird-face goddess and scorpion



It talks a lot, and, the dominant trigram has certain roles, expressed by it on:


M-757 trigram, Belted Fish, Fish with Chevron, Enclosed Enclosure; cf. M-831, M-887 for basic arisings of the latter.


That's similar to what Person with Bow is supposed to do on one of these, and I have not found it.

M-631 similar adjustment of trigram, fish, and Bird.




It has additional instances of these techniques:


M-892, sloped three mountains and Neptune; M-809; M-48

M-665 vertical three mountains


Something similar to Bowtie:


M-132 "accordion", M-136, M-102, M-78 with donkey


Similar to Tiger Chimera:


M-669, person on base


and variations of Bearer:


M-741 no jugs, collapsed filter; cf. M-60, enlarged jugs and One

M-874, chevron head

[shaberon]

Numbers




This is where the curse of expectancy will completely fail.

What I mean is this utterly does not appear as any accounting system, or basic trade like "six sheep for two bows", or any discernable arithmetic.

It may represent fractions, exponents, or series.

Usually, though, what looks like numerals seems to be more of "version markers".


The misunderstanding I got from prior reviews is that any number could be expressed by Grids. It is the "numerals" consisting of Quotes and Posts that work in a specific way -- there is one known Ten, no Eleven has been discovered, Twelve is readily apparent, and the only thing greater is Two Twelves.

There might be a "sixteen" grid, otherwise, there is no sixteen, or stacked eights.

But, ok, Twelve is kind of important. It is the main size of Checkerboard; even though this shape has more variety, twelve is still important to it.


Moreover, we found Two Twelves with a pair of Gaur at a Big Tree. As far as we can tell, this disguises itself as scorpion pincers or gharial jaws in the illusion.

It may be that two things that look the same have twelve explainable differences.

If they harped on using Twelve one time, one could focus on twelve lunations and suggest it is a year, but it is doubled.

There is a place where it talks about doing this, which is notable as a strand of copies, K-69 to 75.


If anything, this is a philosophical riddle about doubling or pairs, etc., by showing two people, two twelves, two quotes, two rakes, and then Loaded and Unloaded Bows:







If the Gaur, and that statement, are "powerful", then, there turn out to be several occasions when a single Twelve is used.


Bird-face Goddess is "subjugated" in a few ways; when "Wheel" does it, it is with Enclosed "Quote", Caged "Mallet", and "Twelve".

With Bird in Parentheses, she also has Twelve on a Lothal Unicorn.



M-29:






H-25:





M-1081:




M-847:






H-57:





Lothal text:






Object K-122A:





singleton 399 on M-43:




According to Sign Design, the only glyphs with dawn-like rays are Fish, Notched Lozenge, and Spoon.

There are not any other kinds of Spoons and there are not upright ones, it exists only in an "inverted" form in "U" with root-like tendrils coming out.

Plain "U" also does this. The other possible locations for Spoon are plain "U", Person holding "U", and Flange-topped "U". Those are plain Spoons that have no external existence.


So, there are both U and Mortar-and-Pestle forms with lowered rays. The thing above is hugely in its own class.




Compared to the Kalibangan text where you see a gap between two Twelves, some others have "bad handwriting".


L-115:





H-14:






This montage has a couple of Twelve examples:





Right now we can basically scratch the surface of whether these texts describe "two Twelves", or what makes this number important, if not months per year.

Quite visibly in the corpus, although eight and nine can be found rather easily, the next largest and most repetitive group is Seven.


As a student of the Veda, I get a charge because it uses the deity Tvastr, although in a rather circuitous and unapparent manner. And, in this case, Avestan carries essentially the same meaning:


thwarshtahe [thwarshta]
6 (nG) cut, appointed (time) (t103, k237)

thweresatô
(3du ind. pres. act.) "they who fashion"


The main symbol of Tvastr is an Axe.

It carries the connotation that manifestation is "sliced" or "cut", "divided" out of infinity.

Well, in IVC script, there is such a thing as Seven Roofs and it comes on an axe.

Here is a look at numbers with such an axe; the "examples" to the left are incomplete, however, the red rule towards the middle does seem to hold water, there is no such thing as "U Five" which is what makes it stand out that the independent number Five is itself very weird:







If the idea on the left is pursued, I believe the results are that both Branches have "Seven", but only Bent Branch has "Two" and "Five", whereas Straight Branch has "Six" and "Eight".

Some other objects are inscribed with Inverted U or Roof:






Because most of the writing is just as easily amuletic as it is anything else, an axe text might be invoking the power to cut. Then there are correspondingly a tiny few arch-like shapes in all of the corpus, and I am not sure they are ever free or empty.

But the middle part of that chart seems to have three valid things, Five is weird, there is a type of permanent Three, and there are seven arches.

Curiously, Five can be found on a UIII tablet (H-219), as well as a U Six tablet (H-801).

I get an impression it seems easier for three to double to six, than it is for four to progress to five.



Following the logic from those texts, Unicorns have Soma Filters, and there is no U Five; however, the Copper Tablets lack any Soma imagery, and they show Mortar-and-Pestle and Five:






with Three:






They have conjured a powerful-looking Trapezoid glyph which then becomes most strongly associated with Seven:






which, in turn, gives one of the most powerful palindromes:







These Sevens parallel a Conjoined Enclosures text.

The tablets have nothing higher than Seven.

This kind of Trapezoid is dominant such as on H-3:





If we pass this glyph by all its potential peers, just look at pairs in a new tab and see if it starts with "one" and counts normally.

Not at all, it's not even used, unless you want to consider glyphs that may ligature a "modified post". One is not commonly paired with anything. What are some glyphs that are commonly paired with numbers?


Two: Fish, Conjoined Enclosures, Caged Fish, Backgammon Board, Mallet, X-in-Lozenge

Three: Mortar and Pestle, Bow, Fish, Tiger, Straight Branch

Four: Bent Branch, Straight Branch

Five: Tau with Enclosures

Six: Fish

Seven: Trapezoid, "Battery", Striped Mountain


An example of this last being Gharial H-474 is backed by:


Striped Mountain, "Seven", "U-shaped" symbol, "Comb"



There are a certain number of cases where Seven is linear rather than stacked, however, in the Tiger's Roar seal it is actually Inverted.

At the most basic level, 3 + 4 = 7, 3 x 4 = 12.

The schools of Fish are similar to 2 x 3 = 6.

That is not to say the seals are solely the multiplication tables, but, there is a good chance they have some abstract way of rendering different mathematical operations.


It is correct that Mortar-and-Pestle and Three have independent origins, and simply develop an affinity. This has led to speculation that Three is the syllable "-tra". Of course, "Mortar-and-Pestle" has always been taken very literally, or "Cup and Spoon", but no one has considered how close it is to Tiger Chimera glyph M-1397:






That is its main speech or characteristic claim on something.

One can also find three kinds of fish with Mortar-and-Pestle, and some other associations. What we observe in the Copper Tablets is that this somewhat portable number Three is ferried via Mortar-and Pestle to get locked onto the Horned Tiger. The vehicle it rides is Elephant:




It's not the dominant trigram, it's what's super-scripted to Horned Tiger and Three. Comparably, we find another seal where Horned Tiger rides the Elephant.

The Rabbit also uses it in a grander and more elusive way.


Both face value meanings have significance, since, it can easily mean Soma Press, or, a Soma Offering from a ladle to a fireplace.

If we look at it strictly in terms of text, Mortar-and-Pestle 336 actually has a "numerology" even though it may also be using Three:


One and Chimera glyph

One and Three kinds of Fish

Two, Neptune, and Three Mountains

Two and Modified Chimera glyph 322

Four Fish Pinch


What that means, is, there is the appearance that the Bird glyph inverts to a normal Y -- one could almost argue the trigram bears the Roman text T A Y. In turn, this glyph appears to lift the Chimera glyph with a marker of Two:






The Mortar-and-Pestle focuses this low range, it does not do much with higher numbers except it has some Twelves.

It appears to have Five as a prefix, not a direct relation, but it does group with Trapezoid and Seven a couple of times.


It occurred to me that a glyph facing a Bird on the ground would make sense to "invert" in order to represent flight, such as the more common "Y" shape. This "flighted bird" certainly seems to ligature to the Chimera glyph. That was just one example we will post more on later.

Considering the direction of motion, it is suggestive of "birth of Bearer".

Mortar-and-Pestle is most strongly paired with Chimera glyph.

It relates lower numbers to Seven and Twelve. Not by natural counting. By some kind of formula.




Do these numbers match some kind of Vedic backstory?

Being that Soma is nominally of three kinds, this is expressed by Dirghatamas:


idam udakam pibatety abravītanedaṃ vā ghā pibatā muñjanejanam | saudhanvanā yadi tan neva haryatha tṛtīye ghā savane mādayādhvai ||


“They, (the gods), have said, sons of Sudhanvan, drink of this water, (the Soma); or drink that which has been filtered through the muñja grass; or, if you be pleased with neither of these, be exhilarated (by that which is drunk) at the third (daily) sacrifice.”


It doesn't say "filtered", it says "jana", "born" of munja grass. It means the same thing, contextually, but it's not what it says. The problem in almost all translations is they do these stealth interpretations for you. It should be put in margin notes.

Again the point here is this is among the most ancient attestations, and it supports Munja in a way that is still current for Badakhshan.



Now, unfortunately, Veda interpretations have been all over the place from the Brahmanas until now. The line we just quoted is addressed to "sons of Sudhanva". Curiously, the Dravidianist quoted earlier was the one who suggested the syllable "-tra", the prefix "ma-", and also the stem "dhanv-" for "bow" as Sanskrit terms likely reflected in IVC script. Or syllables. He wants to say Mortar-and-pestle and Three is Ma-tra, "to measure". His catharsis was that Dravidian barely uses any compounding the way Sanskrit does. But the IVC script is made of mixable and portable compounds. He was of course wrestling with the historical problem of how Sanskrit could have gotten into IVC, i. e. when the Europeans showed up, which is why he presumed it was Dravidian. But it's not a problem. No one moved. It's a language drift that took about 5,000 years to travel from Armenia to modern Pakistan. This is particularly plausible because of the slightly older burgeoning of civilization in Iran. Ultimately, if one were to say originally all Indians spoke Dravidian, you still have a large sub-continent where the north barely had any liaison with the south, and so the "native northern Dravidian lore" that may have been translated into Sanskrit, would have little reason to have very much in common with that which is distributed in India.


The reason for looking into this story of Soma is that it probably is a "pre-Vedic" legend, in the sense it was probably spoken before, at least, Baradhvaja or any systemic compilation of hymns in a "Mandala". And, it completely revolves around the axe-cutting metaphor.

The Veda is actually based is a very difficult fourfold riddle about a sacrificial spoon. The identity of Sudhanva is not a mystery; he equates to the father of the Rbhus as by Kutsa Angirasa I.110.2:


...the Ṛbhus, with a sharp weapon, meted out the single sacrificial ladle.


Where they did this is spoken in the next line of verse two:

savitúr dāšúṣo gṛhám


It's in the house of the sun, Savitur.

The commentary attempts to take this as a "normal", mortal, earthly person, whose name in the next verse suddenly becomes the sun. That's a non-sequitur. There is no reason they are not working in the house of the sun to begin with.

They proceed to return the calf to its mother, and make their parents young.


Consequently, it is possible the Rbhus are pre-Vedic, since Veda comes from Yama, who discovered the Path. He didn't invent the deities, he realized the benefits of doing a particular rite with them.

The underlying paradox is that the deity, Tvastr, cut a single ladle for offerings, i. e. this is the basic fact that the Rbhus first exploited; but then they outdo him, and send Tvastr into a fit of jealousy, because they proceed to fashion four such ladles:


Savitar therefore gave you immortality, because ye came proclaiming him whom naught can hide;
And this the drinking-chalice of the Asura, which till that time was one, ye made to be fourfold.


It means chalice of the One Power, that of Varuna; the one power of nature provides one such ladle; the Rbhus, born mortal, somehow manage to quadruple it and become immortal.

The conjugation used is mamus:

The Rbhus, with a rod measured, as' twere a field, the single sacrificial chalice, wide of mouth,


Therefor, a standardized measuring system was well in place. IVC leaves no room for doubt on this. But the Rbhus are the ones who give the deities most of their attributes, such as according to Priyamedha Angirasa:


They who created mentally for Indra the horses...

the Aswins' chariot and cow, and:


The Ṛbhus have divided unto four the new ladle, the work of the divine Tvaṣṭā



He uses an epithet for Savitr like that of Ghosa's son:

hiraṇyapāṇim


Golden Hand. Some reviews will tell us there was a battle, a hand was severed, and the Aswin-surgeons immediately replaced it with a mechanical one made of gold.

That sounds preposterous. That's because it is a name of the sun according to the real Vedic Rishis.


So, i. e., the Aswins need a chariot to win Usas, so the Rbhus are making possible the activity of later Rishis, and for the devas.


When the Rbhus' work is complete, according to Dirghatamas:


Tvastar, when he viewed the four wrought chalices, concealed himself among the Consorts of the Gods.


That is, among the meters and mantras; Tvastr goes inside the words, whereas the Rbhus enter the classes of priests, Ardhavaryu, Hotr, etc.. The multiplicity of ladles is similar to the Trikadrukas:


“Waters are the most excellent said one (of them). Agni is that most excellent, said another; the third declared to many the Earth (to be the most excellent), and thus speaking true things the Ṛbhus divided the ladle.”


That is, three things other than the sun. They are all true at one time.

And finally they are invoked along with an Avestan cognate, divinized in Sanskrit, by Gaya Plata:

Ṛbhukṣan, Vāja, Rathaspati, Bhaga



That is, in Avestan, "bhag-" represents fortune, while here, it names the Sun.


As for "Waters", here they are with an error:

Dirghatamas the son of Mamata hath come to length of days in the tenth age of human kind.
He is the Brahman of the waters as they strive to reach their end and aim: their charioteer is he.


it's not tenth age of mankind. It's the tenth Vedic Yuga, which means he turned fifty. In the original text, he is simply called brahma:


apā́m árthaṃ yatī́nām brahmā́


It's not a proper name anywhere in the Rg Veda. It means the prayer, the priest, or the praying.

Humanity gets an F on the very simple meanings of Brahma and Yuga, that is, they lost the original ones, so, how would we expect them to track all the intricate details that went along with it?


The crux of the matter is that a lot of the scattered background for Book One is given in Book Ten, in what may be the most important Vedic principle:

Since, waters, you are the sources of happiness...


That is, nothing earthly or mortal truly brings happiness, it is in the relationship of a rite of divinity. And what they are spreading is not any of the typical later Sanskrit expressions, but something forgotten:

mayobhuvas


is the original Vedic happiness.

Most tellingly is who transmitted this mantra:


Ṛṣi (sage/seer): triśirāstvāṣṭraḥ sindhudvīpo vāmbarīṣaḥ



Trisiras, son of Tvastr, is Sindhudvipa, son of Ambarisa.


For the most part, "sindhu" may refer to waters/rivers/ocean, but, even from the oldest hymns, it also has the specific meaning of the Indus River.


It is again confused slightly by the famous Rivers Hymn X.75:


Ṛṣi (sage/seer): sindhukṣitpraiyamedhaḥ


by Sindhuksit, son of Priyamedha.

That's the guy we just quoted out of Book Eight. And if you were to honor the Old Books, they are replete with Praiyamedhas.

The Sindhu is given the leading role in almost every verse of the Rivers Hymn, which is why it is flippant for the commentary to read the tributaries and re-state Susoma as being the Sindhu. It's unidentified.


The importance of this hymn is again a principle:


Sindhu, in order to reach the swift-moving Gomatī...


That is a river with no location, because it is a condition, i. e. holiness leading to happiness.

That is closer to the core meaning of these Vedic hymns.

Yes, it follows a pattern of "adding" Indian rivers, and while a few are obscure, the Gomati is outright symbolic in the Veda itself. "You won't find it". In actuality, this is a theological stack, that is, it has mantras for Illumination, Liberation from Sin, and True Happiness.

It is compressed by the Sukla Yajur Veda, and compressed again in the Zend Avesta. But it is crucial if one were to read the Vedic cosmology as-it-is. The stuff is not entirely unfamiliar, but, it is very different from multiple re-shufflings as seen in any later literature.

All of that is continuous to the present day as the Marriage Ceremony.

Would One Ladle and Three Ladles match the IVC script at all?

Those other texts are similar but they do not match the Rg Veda on this three-world philosophy. The Avesta is much better at making good points quickly and directly. The complete Veda is elaborate and diffuse, although, it has integrity, and is self-supporting, and certainly does not benefit from single lines taken out-of-context and "translated" arbitrarily.


I don't know if it personally applied the term "Soma", since "Waters" also appears to serve the same purpose. Soma I is drinkable, but not preferred. Soma II is filtered and shows a color change/lightening, and Soma III has simply been kept for use in the evening. For example, two of the hymns we just studied do not even use the word "soma".



Kutsa:

samudra


Dirghatamas:

udakam



"It" doesn't necessarily have to have a name. Multiple expressions of "liquid" are adequate, when known to be referring to these offerings.


The closest thing we see in the imagery is an I-shaped Vase. We don't know if it honors the living or the dead, or a deity in the form of its devotees. A deity typically comes in a thing that looks like a wreath when hung in a normal arch shape, and then a wreath that would have to be on a wire mannequin to make this odd frame-like U shape.


Compared to the glyphs that show vertical mirroring, this Wreath does as well, but we do not literally find an "inverted Banyan tree" as per later literature. Nor can I readily think of anything else that does it.

The Rg Veda does not have a count of Twelve Adityas, and the only suspicion this might be related to the Year is if you took Three Seasons and counted Four Moons in each, which is what I think the Pathani Damb Calendar is doing, while it has a form of Seven on top.

Obviously, it visually represents the behavior of Mortar-and-Pestle, which is representative of the script overall. Seven and Twelve appear to be its power numbers.

[shaberon]

Comb



This sign is tough.

It ought to be simple, because there really is such a thing as an Ivory Comb, but these look different and are mostly inscribed with Dotted Circles.

Instead, there are straight and angled varieties, with anywhere from three to eight teeth, although there is said to be a Kalibangan Comb with thirteen.


The curious thing is that it is a "behavior changer", or the result of one.



Glyphs behave by certain tendencies or guidelines, until they meet with some kind of exception and change. Such as Branch is usually a terminal sign with a numeric indicator, but Mallet will cause it to go to the middle and usually adjoin a humanoid glyph.

The concordance shows Comb 176 as terminal in 314/341 texts.


It has a personal tetragram:


One Neptune Comb Spear


having related texts such as:


Neptune Comb Spear Comb





And attaches to all manner of subjects such as:


Mortar-and-Pestle Chimera Comb



With a few exceptions, it pushes U-shaped symbol to the inside. Wanting to be at the end sounds like the verb of Irano-Indic sentences. We don't know that the IVC script is sentences. If I pick up an album of music, song titles are usually not sentences, and a single word can mean an entire lyric set, which might not include that word.

If a Comb is a verb, it is unnecessary for names or descriptions.

It might just indicate transitive without specifying the action. Not sure if this would really work on a bi-gram, unless those are the verbs. As it develops common ending pairs, their order is sometimes reversible.

I thought there was a good rule summary about this, but now, I cannot find one, so will attempt to re-construct.


The following chart is useful in several ways for what seems to me any chance to comprehend the texts. What this means, is, there is a certain Comb trigram as recorded six times and put in the middle. India doesn't have "Ur-texts", it just has has "U-texts", and when we see compared to these common markers, Comb is certainly very careful with Two:




The trigram uses a glyph Parpola called "Crocodile" while saying it had "grown four feet" by natural counting numbers. To any gardener it simply looks like a taprooted sprout. Last week it had three shoots, this one has four. That's what it looks like, which makes it look like it comes from the Copper Tablets in its starter phase.

There are many trigrams that work like this chart, but, so far, I have not observed an independent five-glyph sequence that is also used as part of a larger text. We can also find Spear -- Fish and 3, 4, 6, although I am not sure about "Two".

When we are looking at this thing, I have no reason to suspect that's the same Comb as seen other places.





The Comb is particularly relevant in a few instances we just have notes for.

Parpola calls H-178 a ram-headed, bangled human "in a fig tree". H-1951 has a Bent Branch headdress and a different text. Zoological Avatars notes the basic similarities and that these are "arches", not "trees", and most like the inverted "Pipal container" of deities in other scenes.

The ram-headed deity has the trigram:

Hoof-like symbol -- U-shaped symbol -- Comb

whereas the three-plumed deity has:

"Four-legged Sprout" -- Winged Man -- U-shaped symbol



When saying "ram", the significance is that it is clearly Markhor horns on a female form, and, it perhaps is really a Bird face.



M-482 is a Gharial backing the trigram:


Enclosed Branch -- U-shaped symbol -- Comb


which adjoins Tree and Swastika.

So, the common ending pair has just been associated with animal hieroglyphs each making a trigram by a particular addition. These all probably work like the one in the Venn diagram.




Some other examples:

H-698 has Fish with Slash Spear Comb over Bull.

M-956 is Fish, common trigram, Comb.



Then we get to the Ivory Rods, which are connected to "outside" texts in remarkable ways, such as we found the Gharial to be paralleled by One with a Comb trigram. About half of them are Comb terminal texts, and they don't use it another way.

So they have this type of familiar grouping, which is interrupted by:



Person between Posts

Text 12 inverts the trend of the collection by excluding "Comb" or by changing it/replacing it with "Bearer".




This instance from the Ivory Rods is, of course, same as the visual UIIII Endless Knot Tablet.

The chart of groupings gets to the largest text of Person between Posts 2, showing that it is made of three n-grams:





This is interesting, because Person between Posts does not have the common trigram anywhere else. They have brief, repetitive texts, up to five glyphs, and then land in this mongrel.


"One" is arguably various entities, but the "Comb" is pretty much locked into position. The Spear of a Donkey and the Comb of an Elephant, are both "One", so, perhaps they are the Ones or Posts surrounding the person. Of course, this is a bit of a jump, since the Elephant features Person wearing Comb with One.

Comb makes basic pairs and trigrams with nearly everything, except for Branches and numeric indicators. This "One" text of the Ivory Rods "begins" its numerology. which appears to go to Two and Rainy Eight. It has most numbers up to Twelve in a pat, quiet way, but if I tried to find the basic building blocks, it would go:


Three Bird-face Goddess Winged Man U-shaped symbol Comb

UIIII visual tablet


Five has the expected Tau with Enclosures, and it has a few Striped Mountain with Sevens, but it is mostly handling up to Four by what looks like its "work".

It seems to me that One and Neptune and sometimes both, have the propensity to make Comb go to the middle.

Its middling texts are almost readable. It's true that if desired, a Comb can be distinguished by mirroring. However, these texts are about two Combs that look the same but, I believe, are being "declared" as of two kinds:


One Neptune Comb Spear

Lambda Person holding One Comb U-shaped symbol


It's coherent in the way these glyphs recur in the small sub-genre of texts. It's nothing like a single ending Comb. It describes part of its "power":


One Bow with handle Comb U-shaped symbol


Part of it is simply reversals of the common ending pairs. In one instance the "Lambda" from the bold above is replaced by "City".


And the reticent Person holding One persists, going to Three Mountains. But we have already read the overall statistics on the corpus, and, quantity-wise, the tale of Neptune and Three Mountains is second fiddle only to the dominant tetragram, and, together, these "subjects" consist of the vast majority of the known script. Then medial Comb simply nudges us in that direction. It is stronger with Neptune.


Bow with handle and pair of Combs does X and Scorpion.

Then Bird-face Goddess and Person wearing Comb and Comb do Scorpion Z. Finally Scorpion Z does something to Lambda Person holding One Comb U-shaped symbol.

We have looked at Lambda as the Hand of Man-in-tree and One as Elephant's Trunk (that a person holds in the illusion) or the whole Arm (which can turn tree branches into elephant trunks).

The minority, thirty-ish texts of non-terminal Comb, seem to focus the entire corpus, particularly by Person holding One, who has little other explanation.



Pair of Combs has another statement involving two Wheels and two kinds of Crab.


I would say this negative space highly confirms the outlook that the illusion and visual imagery is the main meaning, as well as the duality of a non-pair, on to the concept of palindromes and a trinity, or even a four-fold thesis.


It's not just that it's a "common ending sign" like others, but, when it appears to be "replacing" them, that is because the texts are a different genre or subject.

The Ivory Rods only have Person between Posts, not Person holding One.

Medial Combs also have Pair of Grids, and the necessary components for the person who operates them in the Ivory Rods, Person holding Crab.

Instead, they focus Person holding One, who we also think is responsible for the pre-Soma stage:






Comb is not there; we would presume it was conditional to the glyphs on the left/end. It is a trigram which seems destined for this moment.

If you take the mundane view, the Mallet shape is a crucible, furnace, kiln, etc., or, it may be the soma press without filter. Closer to a literal "mortar and pestle", relegating that glyph to Cup and Spoon, more likely. M-34 appears to have a form of "Spoon", other than the rayed one we posted.

It could be anything made of boiled water. If mountain water was valued for purity, water in easy-to-reach places is often undrinkable due to microbes or parasites, so it was generally replaced in the west with wine and beer. That was what people drank. But if you boil it for a few minutes, you are fine. It may have just been herbal tea. You wouldn't need to strain this. The context of Vedic Soma would seem to require mashed canes, or possibly some other plants that are milky or syrupy. At the thinnest possible level, it may just be saying "safe drinking water", with or from which additional beverages could be decocted. But if a main feature of IVC was that towns contained wells and springs abundantly, this would be superfluous.

Again the transcription is outright wrong because those Grids should be Twelves, and, if anything, there are only two Quotes in the leading glyph.





The Elephant is an intellectual construct because "wearing" a Comb has not yet realistically represented anything in anyone's imagination. However the extraordinarily plain Donkey uses One and Spear. And then, in terms of design, Comb picks up this Donkey, or what it said. Then you have:


Tiger M-290 by a trough with Leg, Donkey, Comb



Comb and Spear have been said to be a typical pair in deity scenes. Firstly the Ivory Rods appear to be making this meld:


#7 Rake Fish Spear Comb

The text no. 7 is not as such attested in the seals, but without the last sign
(no. 107 ‘comb’) the rest of the text forms the complete inscription of the seal M-35.

Several seals have inscriptions where signs or sign sequences probably denoting
deities are followed by the ‘spear’ sign and thereafter a final ‘comb’ sign (e.g. M-956, M-1781, H-1027)...

In these tablet parallels we observe the variation between the
presence and absence of the comb-like sign no. 107 at the end. This sign no. 107 uniquely ends the text no.
7 (M-2109 and M-2111), while without this sign no. 107 the remaining part of the text no. 7 occurs on several
incised tablets from Harappa: H-938, H-939, H-1284 and H-2145 have VIIII on the reverse...


That's the largest bulk of IVC texts, trigrams backed by UIIII or similar. The largest single collection was a set of these found in the trash. Obviously, this style is much more like a "tag" or "marker" that only lets us know there is a UIIII of such-and-such a trigram. Chances are, it opens like an umbrella, as at the top of the post. This synopsis would yield a similar Venn diagram.

It's not a surprising trigram, which makes it notable that this artifact is the only thing to say "Comb" to it.





The Rods using Comb are clearly keyed to match some of the most important visual tablets:


The text no. 4 (M-1651 and M-2106) has an exact
counterpart on one side of the rare large type of
tablet from Mohenjo-daro (M-483, M-484, M-2030:
in these tablets the other side has another rather
long text); it also occurs on one of the three sides
of the prismatic moulded tablet M-492, where the
two other sides depict buffalo-spearing, and two
bison bulls opposing each other besides a two-sign
inscription (the two fighting bisons and the same
two-sign inscription constitute the face of the stamp
seal M-1367, which represents a very unusual type).





M-483 is another Prism that interestingly adds a face with Seven Inverting Taus. This batch appears heavily worn from use, but, it seems the Rods are saying "Comb" to Gaur Clash and Buffalo Combat beside Cobra. The reason for doing this seems to be to make an additional statement on a Fish Family:



This text no. 4 begins with one of the ‘fish’ signs, no. 72, which also begins the text no. 5 (M-2107 and M-2108).

Excepting this initial sign, the remaining part of the text no. 5 has an exact counterpart in the moulded
tablet H-1151 from Harappa, the reverse side of which depicts a sacred tree, as well as in the moulded tablet
H-875, which on its other side parallels the final four signs of the rod text no. 1.

Without the final comblike sign no. 107, the
text of these two moulded tablets occurs on many incised tablets, the reverse sides of
which have VIII (e.g. H-326, H-924 and H-925).








Conversely, the Rods have abbreviated an A statement in Text 15:

Followed by the
comb-like sign no. 107, it forms the text of the faience tablet H-1808 (the reverse side is apparently plain),
and of many moulded tablets having the image of a sacred tree of the reverse (H-189, H-190, H-724, H-725,
H-726, H-727, H-1104, H-1105, H-1106).


Right now I will just say the ligatures on A seem very stage-like and perhaps geographical. There seems to be a dynamic, Text 7 "pulls" something in, and, this perhaps new trigram 15, is "pushed" out to other things.

They go on to a Branch Enumeration section which is completely distinct from the Comb beginning.

They have these two statements on Whiskered Fish, and one Fish with Slash.

They refer to visual tablets and Tree Tablets like we have just made a triangle.

The interlocked-ness can be found because "Notched Lozenge" follows a certain order:

VEE IN DIAMOND precedes but does not follow POT; POT both precedes and follows WHISKERED FISH and COMB; FISH precedes but does not follow SPEAR, while SPEAR precedes but does not follow 2 POSTS

Among frequent ending signs, curiously, Comb may be replicated twice:

...inscriptions may contain more than one terminal sign, in the following sequence: (1) FORK-TOPPED POT, (2) COMB, (3) SPEAR, (4) POT, (5) MAN, (6) CHEVRON-HATTED BEARER, (7) POT-HATTED BEARER, (8) BEARER, (9) COMB (and this final COMB may be duplicated) (2008: 29). (Note that every sign in this sequence is optional and no inscription contains all of these.)

Against everything else we found, Comb follows but does not precede Branch-tipped U. That's because this peculiar thing has one beginning and one terminal application. It begins a basic pair with U-shaped symbol, from which, it is hardly ever separated; these are heavily used along with Comb by the main Gharial tetragram similar to the Rods, and, a Gharial evolution that takes places in Lothal. Otherwise, it ends with Bearer one time, and, it only ends the Kalibangan Elephant with sloping text coming from Hoof-like symbol K-40:




This glyph in its routine pairing is significant to Flat Crab, which is found as a normal pair on Unicorn M-108, between two Wheels, ending on two Combs. But there is a "pair" called glyph 217 which is a set of Mirrored Flat Crabs who are known in only about ten statements:


M-126, M-162, M-198, mirrored flattened crabs; M-62 they surround Branch-tipped U, followed by M-63 which shows them with a broken vertical ligature.

They arguably have a "U I" text with only the U-shaped symbol, but 5/10 have the pair with Branch-tipped U, which works with Three and Conjoined Enclosures, and culminates between U-shaped symbols with two Quotes.

So, that's characteristic. By looking at what should be the most obvious numerals, it doesn't go one, two, three, it's just One and Three with perhaps a conceptual representation between them.




Comb frequently ends things after Spear, U-shaped symbol, or certain humanoids, or itself, but is found in position (2) in a fairly precise collation of texts.


It seems to replace Branch Enumeration, like a different subject altogether, which is what the Ivory Rods look like in two halves. The Mallet, however, appears to change it or use its number in a particular way.


Multiple examples show the "Mallet" changing the behavior of the Branch, so that rather than being followed by something like "Comb" as a final sign, it will be followed by "U-shaped" symbol and possibly additional text or connective grammar.

In section (h), one finds the texts "One" -- Caged "Mallet", as well as "Two" -- Caged Lozenge -- "Comb". We noticed that Comb was fairly quiet about Two. A plain Lozenge has an affinity for One. So far, this seems to be the only normal counting order in the corpus. It makes sense. The related texts obey whatever these are marking.

H-67 is "One" and Caged "Mallet", whereas in the "Comb"-final examples, Caged "Mallet" has by far the longest text, U III X ) III Bird-face Goddess.


It seems to me a Spear is anyone's One, and a Caged Mallet is a successful passage from the Person with One texts.

Then there is the Lozenge and other material that imply One to Two is a progression. Stage two of Soma? If we follow this train of thought, we might decide UIIII is a Soma Offering to a Tree at night. The logic of Four might apply in some other way. Is this seal talking about the morning or something else?


M-928 One Mortar-and-Pestle Shaded Fish with Chevron






That's not quite a "Fish" in the usual sense, but something similar, which as glyph 398, turns around and begets a trigram with Mirrored Flat Crabs. It also has a Three and no Two. Usually quotes are considered "punctuation or grammar", and it is two Quotes that join it to Person holding One Comb U-shaped symbol.





In the tumultuous quest to "discover" Soma in IVC, Dolas 2022 on Astronomical Unicorn Chimera:

Prajāpati , appears twice in Ṛgvēda as an epithet of
Savitṛ (the Sun; IV, 53. 2) and of Soma (IX, 5. 9); as
a distinct deity he occurs four times in tenth Manḍala
(X. 85. 43, 121. 10, 169.4 and 184.1), and there is
one hymn in his name (X. 121).


This is ingratiating because IX 5 refers to an Apri Hymn by Asita Kasyapa:


“I invoke Tvaṣṭā, the first-born, the protector, the leader; the golden-coloured pure-flowing Indu is Indra, the showerer, the lord of all creatures.”

This is a grave mistake because this is the Apri Hymn of the Soma Book and of Kasyapa lineage. If you are non-Indian and have an interest in Veda you are supposed to take this mantra. It's a standard formula that pre-dates him by generations. Kasyapa mantra rather represents the height of the Vedic kingdoms. And if you keep going, "Indu is Indra" is like a motto.

I don't agree with the conclusion, but with the observation:

Very interesting supporting evidence for the interpretation of the unicorn as a Vedic myth
concerning Mṛgaśiraṣa comes from Harappan seal, M-1171.
It depicts a composite bovine combining protomes of a bull,
unicorn and gazelle (Fig. 6 ; CISI 2: 136; Parpola 2011 )
suggesting that each of the three animals joined together
perhaps represents the primeval male at a particular time
of the daily and/or yearly cycle.


Well, it appears to use both the sun and an arch-shaped text. The three Somas are the same as the three times of day. There is nothing necessarily Vedic about this. The use of the name Soma may be.


In terms of the simplest numerology, the "Cage" marks have only a single thing to say:


Caged Person holding One two Quotes Two Fish Person wearing Comb U-shaped symbol

Caged Two 88 is a single solo glyph on an edge like a Gharial chasing a Frog around a Tiger on M-1923.

Caged Wheel and Two 392 is a singleton of such an unmarked pair.


It sounds suggestive that Person wearing Comb is Level Two of Person holding One. The Two itself appears to confront the entire Indus mythos. That doesn't comfortably reduce to the meaning "filtered Soma", although that would qualify as an example of it.




A couple of basic pairings with humanoid glyphs begin to show the universality of it.

M-704:




H-584:





Repetitions are more precise. M-311:





M-373:





That has Down Hearts and something that resembles an Enclosed Sun, which has been mis-reported in some other cases. It also resembles a faceted gem, but, this is unlikely to be applicable, because IVC just has beadwork. Things like rubies did not have much spectacular value until this type of cutting/faceting was discovered. The astute IVC reader might say it's just an eight-spoked wheel. It may be. There are minor amounts of eight- and ten-rayed things like this. The normal Wheel appears to be much like Comb, a pair of them is not two of the same thing.

That could even be a universal principle, meaning there would be no true pairs in IVC script.

[shaberon]

Comb and Crab


Going from the last post, we found that Comb likes to be at the end, taking the position from other glyphs that were already there. For instance, in section (h), Comb is able to follow Caged glyphs, while other terminals don't. Visually, these marks seem to have to do with Spear and Fish as we have seen.


Comb is only not a terminal about ten per cent of the time, and half of those are within a common ending pair. Therefor only about 5% or a truly limited number of cases use it as "core information" of the real middle part of a text.


In a couple cases, it calls attention to exactly that. It has Person holding One going to the vertical Three Mountains with a Rhinoceros:







I am not sure the transcription is all that great.

We will challenge this again in a moment. First the idea I am getting is this is something about taking a "flat" model such as the Cardinal Directions or the Horizon and adding verticality. The Comb seems to indicate this, which is born out in greater detail elsewhere.

The Medial Comb handles the Scorpion in a way that contributes to the dominant tetragram:



There is a pair of Combs text where X does Pinch to Scorpion, and, a six-glyph text where they surround it.

The longest text is a Scorpion Z phrase that uses two Quotes to attach itself to a Person holding One phrase.


There are a few eight-glyph sequences of core information. One has an ending pair of Combs, one is apparently plain script where the final character is damaged, and then the one that is mis-represented.

This would be the largest text to promote the concept. There are probably quite a few logic switches if we look at how "Middle Comb" might apply to M-488:





This exists in an almost entirely negative space from the whole corpus, just counted on the textual basis alone.

The Comb is even more middle by the whole thing following a Unicorn with Soma Filter.


In the logical sense, that says "Two" to the Copper Tablets' "One" design.

It is "Two" because the individual Person wearing Comb is in a Two text facing a Tiger, backed by Five Mirrored Swastikas. Here, they seem to be going to their Comb. A Swastika persists in the middle area we would probably expect Rhinoceros, who is also a Middle Comb. The Tiger persists, although it looks like it phases through Man-in-tree to become Tiger Chimera. The tree he is sitting in is the typically female Branch Crown. Elephant and Tiger are directly related in the Copper Tablets, visual tablets and seals, and the Illusion, in an ambiguous but recurring manner, via Person wearing Comb and Bird-face Goddess. Except in the Illusion, it might be Person holding One.

The middle face has got to be the Most Middle Comb.

The last face may just as easily be a Soma Offering as anything else. The ornamentation is the typically male Pipal Branch Crown.


That Comb is really a dividing line between humanoid glyphs which, i. e. as representing people, arguably have a reason to be drawn life-size like the Unicorn, but everything else is an abstraction that has no apparent reason to be human-sized. Its Comb looks serious, like a portal or something.

If it represents two sizes of reality, it also rotates.


Similarly, there are Mirrored Flat Crabs which in one case they are an error because vertical text in an arch-shaped composition over a multi-headed Chimera.

There are also vertically-linked Flat Crabs, which give an impression of being "pulled" up into the proper script line, and severing their umbilical cord.

This is also nomenclature by convention, since, under heavy scrutiny, IVC script has One Realistic Crab. Most of these others are triangular and elliptical shapes with what looks like pincers. We also see it without the bent or recurved part. It also begins as a set of parts. And so it doesn't work very well with what you might think of as a set of furnace tongs. It doesn't resemble any tool or implement. Perhaps it is a burst Bowtie or Hourglass.


Again what happens is when we look at the visual structure of these glyphs, it will construct the statistical majority of the corpus in a certain way.

What is commonly found with Three Mountains?


Neptune, Double-handled Mallet, Striped Mountain, Crab


having its own common pair:

"Rake" and Crab


Nindowari Damb has the interesting trigram of Unicorn with Scorpion, Crab, Harrow (Rake).



In another tetragram, Mortar-and-Pestle is with Fish and Harrow. Where did it get this?

If we turn back to the trigrams, it is with the Crab, in Crab Fish Rake.

So what happened?

In the tetragrams, the Crab has been picked off its "equipment" such as Rake and Fish, and placed with Three Mountains and something I call Neptune. This is a "summoning". Those symbols have not been used anywhere in this trigram process. They are what is new or what has been built, picked, or selected through this stack of statistics. Everything else is an adjustment of something already seen, except this:


Neptune Three Mountains Crab U-shaped symbol


The odd-looking symbol is the cathartic for bringing Crab and Three Mountains into the tetragrams.

We are talking strictly in the statistical sense here, and it is possible to find further detail, such as the symbol becoming the head of Bearer on M-379:





So we would think that is a slightly less-common adjustment to the tetragram just described. Perhaps more powerful, since this figure seems to combine two standard glyphs into a new one. The point is it seems less like a basic definition, and more like something requiring thought or action to accomplish.



Similarly, Crab spontaneously arises on the Half Horned Tiger:




In other words, the rest of the text has an origin within the Copper Tablets, but, this glyph is added from out of nowhere.

It has a low-level existence on Fake Unicorn B-4. It must have mostly external development, even though it is going to the "deity's fig tree" to represent palindromes in this elliptical shape.



Well, Crab seems to work in some way most other glyphs don't, with a bladed figure that has been called "Pinwheel".


H-715 is a very unusual Man-in-tree because it is not part of an animal procession; he seems to be with tree-in-base. It is a dual tablet, which gives him a personal text:


Notched Enclosure Pinch Flat Crab Pinwheel


Part of it is missing and it may begin with Wheel, but, it is a grammatical prefix and then what might amount to a personal bi-gram. Text 5299 states that the "Pinwheel" text begins with "Wheel", which is possible; the item is chipped.

If the "information" is Crab Pinwheel, the basic pair has its own Ivory Rod:




a trigram:




Crab affects Neptune:








Pinwheel enters:






It may be a lever, agent of motion.


That is to say, does the following seem possible for "entering the script"?


Here we see the ligatured Crabs:




Ostensibly lowered on the Rhinoceros:




These look lifted and pulled apart:







That Pinwheel is a "high" sign is suggested by Cholistan Ibex:





Its association with a "broken piece" is as on L-51 under unknown:






H-386:






Along the lines of rotating shapes:




Having the single piece of grammar in mind there.



Mirrored Crabs with Notched Bowtie on a Kot Diji bangle:




This triangular kind seems to have mobility, perhaps both horizontal and vertical.

Like the Comb, I get a sense of "verb" from it. These can be expressed more like nouns, e. g., "operation", "operating", rather than "to operate".



The Rhinoceros possibly explains "entering a box" by adding a version with "ears" near his ears on M-1134:




because this happens on M-1106:




Is that how you get a "Caged Mallet" or Level Two of Soma? Or a Swastika?

I have another note telling me Bearer is excluded or sanitized from Two.

The concordance of Two 87 is very intense but there are hardly any humanoid glyphs on it. It has Caged Person holding One along with Person wearing Comb.

It has Chevron-headed Bearer 14, and the one whose head is U-shaped symbol 15. Over 341 texts, it manifests a variety of humanoids, particularly holding almost every kind of thing held. But it turns out to be in the largest text of plain Bearer 12, which begins with Bowtie 214. Plain Bearer has a textual evolution, but, it does lack something, Three Mountains. It has One, Three, and some other numbers, but Two is way out at its top end.

That is conducive to the notion there is a "sequence" to "going uphill". Moreover, the Bearer does not go there, but, the glyph is pretty distinctively modified in such ways that make it look like it is taking steps or changes.

The Vedic parallel is simple, Trivikrama.

I think it is mostly what it is about, and, again, it is not necessary that the metaphysical philosophy is Vedic. It is entirely possible the nebulous portions of IVC script are outright discussing Three Worlds. I am sure the Veda can claim a particular system of rites according to the year, while the language and generally approximate mythos antedate it inconceivably.

It may literally mean them as pointed around the Horizon, to the Himalaya, the Hindu Kush, and Aravalli, and use this again symbolicly in the spiritual meaning.

That will be next, on the arising Bearer.

[shaberon]

Bearer




This flows from the prior post very easily, because, for example, there is a set of tablets showing the relevant glyphs in palindrome:





The Bearer cannot be meaningfully "reversed", however the Comb can, and this becomes a subject of Allography, which generally considers the statements to be identical. I don't know, I would say it's the same sequence of glyphs, but I am not sure it's meaningless to go backwards.

Its main two archetypes or allographic concerns are both used in the Ivory Rods.


These Ivory Rods are a didactic and perhaps are even "unicorn horns" by way of being "pointers" physically.

They may in fact derive from what I am trying to look at next. They use two forms of Bearer, in ways that are each stand-outish.

If the Rods are classed as two categories, the Branch Enumeration is notable because it has Quadruple Branches. Similarly, in the Comb texts, it is odd that Bearer appears where Comb is expected, and then the form with U-shaped symbol for a head, inverts a rule.

They appear to tell a Fish story which is not all possible kinds of fish, but gives us a certain framework.



They have plain Fish in Text 7 by attaching Comb to the trigram:





They have Caged Fish after Crab Rake:


The text no. 8 is
paralleled by the text of the unicorn seal M-729, except that the seal text does not have the sign no. 88 (‘crab
with claws’), with which the text no. 8 begins


They have plain Bearer apparently replacing Comb of the Endless Knot tablet.

They have Caged Mallet beginning Modified Bearer Comb:

The sign sequence VII occurs on the reverse sides of
the tablets H-943 and H-944, the obverse sides of which provide exact parallels to the text no. 11 (M-2092)
containing a rare sequence of signs.



That is correct; it is a straight copy of a UII trigram.

It is weirdly exceptional enough, that it hasn't been mentioned among weird exceptions; it is really just using a "common ending pair", but still, it is unusual for a Caged glyph as a beginning.

A similar statement in the corpus is Bird-face Goddess Caged Mallet Comb, which is a bit more predictable. There is also Whiskered Fish Bearer Comb. You just get these particular patterns. The texts do not demonstrate the possible permutations.

There are two Rods headed by Whiskered Fish. Ultimately, Crab and Belted Fish begin their Two text, which stems from One as perhaps representative of Gharial. Both Rods that start with Crab appear to be Level Two of their adjacent texts, that is, 7 --> 8, and 10 --> 9, by how they are listed. Compared to Text 11, there is one more text that begins with Caged Mallet -- M-1923, having Caged Two, Frog, and Gharial on its edges. This clue is right after the "Gharial becomes One" suggestion of Text 10, and we find Two meandering in the periphery, probably making Text 9 the pinnacle of this series.

That sounds designated.

This is Text 2045 from M-1923:





That's very noticeable.

They have a more basic parallel.



Bringing One and Spear from Kanmer Donkey.

It makes sense that Fish Spear of Text 7 is input for the Caged Fish of Text 8. B-3 with Spear and Fish-to-be-caged:




Comb could be the "verb" of that. Here is an application on Tablet Rsr-1:




There is a difference between saying "the beginning has begun" and "the first part is complete". One and Caged Mallet H-67:




It's un-elaborated. There are these very basic statements using specific adjustments to fairly common glyphs. I would tend to think the low-level seals are fairly congruent to the texts on the Rods.

Now, I noticed another negative space which I believe to be cascading with material.

From studying Sign Design, it is argued that Bearer is not a compound sign, that it is not like Person holding U. That's because you find U as its own glyph, and so you have a result of it landing in the hand of plain Person. But there is not a "yoke" that exists separately. This isn't any kind of object or glyph that a person has picked up.


There is a Tau with Enclosures which is already an assembly process rendered in detail by multi-faceted Prisms.

There is also the Chimera glyph.


I think the Bearer might be both of these. Although it tends to have a fairly clear humanoid basis, there are some cases where it does not.

For example, Armless Bearer. You could say it's a compound of Inverted Y with U-shaped symbol. But then the erstwhile "yoke" is not really that, there are no realistic arms holding any particular kind of thing, and it will definitely show itself as being involved with work done to A:

















with five-rayed Mortar-and-Pestle H-228:




with four-rayed U M-1091:




with five-rayed Fish C-21:





Alright. But there is something that looks like an IVC stick figure that has something vaguely similar to a yoke. Here is one with Crab and Triple U:





A similar phrase will plummet us right back to the multi-faceted Prisms and problematic transcriptions:




Part of the problem is it is "Snowflake X", as perhaps implied by Tiger's Kiss:





I think that is a lot of stuff. Plain Bearer is definitely "bearing" something, I am not sure are pails of water. When the man was in the tree, there was an "Empty-loaded" Bearer.


Here they are possibly collecting the "parts":






Other times, having a Chevron for a head, they almost look like a set of scales:












In this guise, they are able to commit wrap-around on H-103:





It makes you start to wonder what's a Y or not, while it is true that Y makes something close to Bearer by evidently lifting the Chimera glyph:







including a case where it seems a little bent:





And finally it does appear to acquire the full lesson from the multi-faceted Prisms via Human Markhor:






It may be that Tau with Enclosures lets them sag, and this becomes the actual component of Bearer, as on H-455:




And then, such as with Caged Person holding One on M-130, it may be this is not a chevron-headed person with square arms, but, a normal stick figure with a "table", "toothless comb", or "yoke component":






So, a lot of previous scholarship has been spent on trying to define the "variants" of Bearer, but, the sense I get is that it is subjective, is "you", the reader, or learner of the message, whereas other humanoids found as "characters" are the speakers, writers, or source of information.

The chapters of information don't quite go in a normal linear order, because Two is very weird and strewn across the corpus in a minor, selective way, whereas Five is weird but displayed with technical excellence on objects with the Most Faces, as well as multiple texts revolving around some kind of yoke-like assembly.

[shaberon]

Broken Spear and Gamma



Something is going on here, almost like a game.

The IVC shape of "gamma" virtually replaces Spear while also invoking its "components".

That is to say, most of its texts are pretty similar to ones using Spear and other common glyphs we have studied. There are certain exceptions.


One of them is like the two Chevrons of Mohenjo daro because it is almost always paired, Chevron over Quote, or a slightly disassembled Spear 153, which at its lowest level is with Hook-or-Crook 127, which has numerous copies as a solo glyph (seven), and, a rare instance of Branch and Two.

Gamma is certainly not Tau, but, also appears between two Enclosures such as M-777:






One and Chevron is a common pair, and, when "stacked", this glyph has a high proportion of doubling.

As a pair, it is found making a trigram followed by "U-shaped" symbol in multiple copies. This may be "subjugated" by Notched Lozenge and two "Quotes". It may also prefix "Rake" -- Fish -- Spear, and be "subjugated" the same way. M-650:





A single one works differently -- it may be an initial or final sign. That, of course, is a perfect example of why the same-looking thing is of two kinds.

It begins a Unicorn text that runs from Three Triangles to Caged Dotted Fish.

It ends a Bull text of Chevron-headed "Bearer", Pipal Leaf, two Persons with "Rake".

And it begins a long Bull text using "Skewered Chevron" and "Five". One might say this glyph is the First and Last Bull. Or, Pipal Leaf is archaic, Five is a significant development in the script.

The pair also consists of the subject of a rare Sky with Three Rays 199. It is interesting but right now we want to mark the use of a single one, because that is how it works with this next sign in its only basic pairing on a Mohenjo daro Unicorn.


Most glyphs are uncommon solo, and usually have one or more pairings that are repetitive; this one is backwards.

IVC has something like a Gamma which has been filed under Adze.

It has an affinity for U-shaped symbol and Branch-tipped U as on H-101:






Surprisingly, it cranks out another Crocodile testament, something that has bypassed academia but is statistically detectable...like the others.

It is used on a Gharial with Fish Tablet where he is a Middle Comb.

H-705:






H-172:






That is near the beginning of this concordance:




You can already tell that Middle Comb is a bit unusual.

Here are some Two statements and Person between Neptune from M-1057:




Realistic ear of wheat on L-45:






Three and Wheel:



K-23:




Paired with Broken Spear backed by Tiger text with Three Circles:




Text 2601:




Note the "realistic ear of wheat" and Striped Horn on K-28 where Gamma is terminal:





Gaur CD-25 in Unicorn livery with Two Branch Gamma on his back:





That has all the terminal Gammas in a row. Another one is an undefined text from Chandigarh; there are three that we can determine. Once as a basic pair with something that does not like to be singled out, and twice with unusual Gaurs.

Terminal Gamma is weird like Middle Comb.

Maybe it is taking apart a Spear. Maybe that is how you get a Chevron. That's the Fish family about to be shown. It has already used Branch with Chevron and U with Chevron.



Caged Mallet Gharial text, sloping Elephant text, and the third Spear in this whole thing drives the "Adze" between Enclosures:








notched variety:





This Gamma has certain, limited uses of Comb like it does Spear. Its "genre" is roughly similar to theirs, but it seems to be taking their role.

What does it seem to have that is a little different than these usually common glyphs?

Numbers One and Two.


If it has a limited use of Spear, that can be found with the only pair of Carpet Rakes on C-8:







It is suggestive of the Tau with Enclosures that goes around with Five, in one particular text with Spear.

It is correct there are horizontal and vertical "Posts" associated with these. Conjoined Enclosures appear with Dots, and also with angled Slashes that convey an appearance of rotation.

Almost as if they manifest, separate, and rise up to form the "Bearer", as if he were an extended Tau with Enclosures.


So, while something seems to be being built by round shapes, it may be that the "Spear" starts intact and gets taken apart. This would be consistent with the Donkey not having a career as an icon. There are a few examples of Broken Spear, however, if these parts were strewn on the ground, then we have a pair of One and Chevron that is obviously important from the Dholavira Signboard and Two Wheels. This does seem to have its avenue of possibilities.

It goes along with what the people were physically doing. Kanmer where the Donkey image is found, is old, but relatively small. So it never has a large collection of seals, even over time. In this area, is a relatively "new" neighbor, Khirsara being founded ca. 2,300 and going on to a large size and technically superior craftsmanship. If we think the Donkey image is removed, possibly reduced to parts and inverted, but at least re-appearing in glyph form, that happens here.

A fully intact Khirsara tablet will show a completed "Donkey glyph" in a line which may be the remaining pieces of a Broken Spear, and, its associate, Three Circles:






The companion glyph also has a form of bisection that seems tangential to that of "Enclosures":




but this plain Three Circles is a dual tablet M-324:





M-1927 is the same except with a Zebu in place of the Unicorn; M-436 are the same as above but sharing a Branch and circular glyph.

I'm not convinced it "is" anything but quite possibly an origin of round shapes in the IVC script. There are not many uses of it; 415 pairs with U-shaped symbol, and makes only a few basic statements with a simple numerology. It favors One and Chevron. It also has Fish with Chevron, and makes a couple of Three statements involving Tiger text and Bird-face Goddess.

Person holding Lozenge 30 uses Rhinoceros-horn-on-a-stick to connect to Three Circles.

The circles are also found between Posts and Skewered as above with Bearer.

From what we posted on Buffalo and Gaur, you can immediately see Fish with Chevron heads the common Comb Trigram on the Big Tree with Gaur clash, while the Wheel and plain Person get to Three Circles on a weird Buffalo with Trough, having the One and Chevron that runs throughout a wider panel of literature.

In terms of the glyphs, that may be illustrative of Spear and Three Circles being taken apart and re-purposed. It may be telling us what a certain kind of Wheel is.



We see a Striped Horn in a Gamma text listed above. It has numerology. Striped Horn 205 has the ability to append itself directly to Tiger text so there is Three.




Curiously, Stacked Five compels Bird-face Goddess into a Wheel statement, and this comes together on the multi-faceted M-331 with Skewered Chevron:


"Four" -- Striped Horn -- "Stacked Five"




which I think is representative of packing a Rhinoceros in a box.



Something like that seems to be a "genre", starting after Spear, and ending at Five. In some cases it is hard to say Gamma is making a creative statement, but it has structure and individual character.

[shaberon]

My perspective and the way I do things has changed because a good friend of mine passed away recently.

The reason is how truly splendid his personality really was.

And, my friend was a goat, in fact my first one, that I nurtured and hand-molded from an early stage, and he was the perfect response or reflection of the input.


And so I am trying to repel the enormous tide of grief by remembering exactly what I knew, which was, that, aside from a problem, his suffering was quite minimal compared to many animals, and he had a spark of zest and verve that was superior to most human beings. I ask myself if there was a person who got that "close" to me for that long, and, I don't think so. The more common feeling here would probably be what some people know for dogs, and, I suppose it might compare to a dog I had for about ten years, who was very spontaneously enthusiastic and affectionate. I had the option to treat the goat like livestock, i. e. mostly ignore him, but instead I invested my time and he liked it.

I feel like I should canonize or beatify our goat, because his integrity was impeccable, like a saint of friendliness.

Moreover, in studying the root origin of Vedic Sanskrit, that defines it. The Arya language in their reckoning is based in Friendliness and Intelligence. Although the goat did not use words, he was perennially present in these capacities. He "spoke" it or rather lived it.

As a personal spiritual reality, I'm going to try to keep *that* in mind rather than being gnawed by the passing. It matches the general idea of Agni as Speech whose vehicle is Ram or Goat. Further still, the IVC script appears to support this.

It chooses to be low in realism in that there is almost no iconography of anything normal. But it does use and repeat one thing that is, Goat at a Tree. They're not trampling it, they use it to support themselves to nibble leaves such as their height or length will allow. I tend to think that there is an Animal Heaven that may be relatively difficult for most animals to achieve, but in this case I believe our goat would be able to reach this state, even if its appearance might be just doing that around our woods and occasionally talking to us. I think he could be like that peacefully, whereas, even for most of the other animals we have had, it sounds ambitious.

The IVC Goat material may be true literally and objectively, metaphysically as Speech, and even the after-death plane. That is, someone like me might have had a goat like that, there might have been several someones, this can easily be a perfectly valid understanding.

The difficulty with making this notion go away is that the Markhor is found on most or all of the "deific" scenes involving a kneeling adorant or person in a "shrine".

It's consistently not anything else, and appears mandatory.





There is a Markhor on Arch Goddess H-177, presumably the same woman on H-179 with three plumes or three branch crown, under an arch.

H-178, however, shows a transformation into lady with goat horns, who uses the Hoof-like symbol 341. This trigram next adds Fish with Chevron.


The Arch perhaps inverts to become an Empty Niche under Six Yoginis M-442:





into which a Goat-horned Goddess is summoned:




The horns appear to set on Tiger Centaur.

When the shrine occupant has Buffalo Horns, it seems to be human markhor who is there.

Zoological Avatars says that in examples like H-1951, the Arch scene does not always have a goat and the participants are not identical, whereas the goat is constant at the U-shaped shrine where the people are the same. One's own ghost?

It is also noted he appears by himself with no script whatsoever to do nothing but display the turning gaze:






Such a high grade of goat as companion is with Temple and Two Wheels H-176, where he has entered a close configuration with Hare:





That is odd because in the Copper Tablets where a Hare is featured, there is no complete Markhor. There are only hybrids with Unicorn and Bull.

The external Rabbit can barely be found to interface with the corpus.

Here it is with a Goat who is in a mirrored situation with a Tiger. Or a parallel situation on the opposite side. One of the few times he does something a little weird, entering a box or some kind of platform similar to the peoples' "benches". Aside from furniture, it is next to normal, since Rabbits really do run around out here in goat country. Or you can cage them. I did not like doing that because it turned into a meat farm. But, yes, if that is your purpose, both of those animals are dining delicacies that are not all that hard to propagate and produce. That side of the picture, to me, at least, looks like an ordinary livestock auction. Considering the person in charge, that is unlikely to be what is going on here, which might be a description of one Wheel that is not really a wheel, but a glyph having that name.






If we turn to the world of words, Vedic Sanskrit does not have a proper term for "goat". They give him the Divine name Unborn:

Aja (अज), Ajā (अजा).—This is the ordinary name for goat in the Ṛgveda and the later literature. The goat is also called Basta, Chāga, Chagala. Goats and sheep (ajāvaya) are very frequently mentioned together. The female goat is spoken of as producing two or three kids, and goat’s milk is well known. The goat as representative of Pūṣan plays an important part in the ritual of burial. The occupation of a goatherd (ajapāla) was a recognized one, being distinguished from that of a cowherd and of a shepherd.


It may be a confusion, since there is the verb Aj "to drive, impel", which has a few stray uses such as ajatam in the Veda (similar to "nirajan"). The difference can only be found if we find the stress shift from "drive":

ājataṃ


to "goat":

ajā

ajaḥ


It seems fairly clear the goat stems from "unborn" or "a - ja" "no birth", since, in English, you would have to be born and then go backwards to become un-born. But we use the same prefix when we want to, i. e. "a-symmetrical" is not de-symmetrified. It just has no symmetry. The meaning of the name is "eternal", self-existent, not a product of parents. As far as I can tell, it is *this* which is tagged to "goat" as well as the deity Aja Ekapad.


What the verse says is goats are the vehicle of Pusan.

X.26 says the same.

IX.67 is the same.

There is even a Rishi named Prsni Ajah.

They come up as an unidentified "tribe" by Vasistha:


ajāsaś ca śigravo yakṣavaś ca


Primitive man (the nineteenth-century translators) believed this meant three kingdoms, or countries, or nationalities, someone we would find on a map if we could find one old enough.

At face value, it says the goats, horseradishes, and demons made offerings to Indra.

I, at least, refrain from putting a historical context to that, certainly not before I figure out the main one.


We definitely don't expect them to understand a Funeral:


Thy portion is the goat: with heat consume him

The unborn portion; burn that, Agni, with your heat


ajo bhāgas tapasā taṃ tapasva taṃ


This is after returning the eye to the sun and breath to the wind, this happens, and the person enters the spirit world or Heaven.

In meaning, this "ajo bhagas" is pretty close to the goat of Pusan. From churning those references, I see repeated references to this pairing, and nowhere it is particularly obvious that Agni is linked to this animal by name.

The problem here is post-IVC, in the sense that Pusan was this major Vedic deity, and then in later literature he is relegated to a minor (and weird) role. He has no Avestan cognate. So he is almost purely Vedic in the sense of being the main guide on the path of the dead and having a goat as companion.

That leaves it where he might be in pre-Vedic Sanskrit. That would give us a difference between Iranic and Indian goats. It's the same Sun whether seen at the Hamun or specifically named Pusan by following a particular belief. India already associated the "goat" with the Sun because the Ibex is still a goat, just a slightly different kind on older pottery from the west. So I would think this matches "input" with "local variation".


It almost seemed like there might be something similar to an IVC animal procession in a study on Atharva Veda Soma Rite:

The Vaitana classifies the duties of the Pashuekadasini homa, in which the animals of various colours and kinds, numbering eleven, are offered to Agni, Soma, Vishnu, Saraswati, Pushan, Brihaspati, Vishvedeva, Indra, Indragni, Savita and Varuna. The Brahma consecrates these offerings with the relative mantras.

No, it doesn't...Vaitana Sutra just says "eleven animals". There are no details, rules, mantras; the study seems to have inflated what is written there. It may be true but the additional material would be from Yajur Veda or some kind of commentary.


So far, nothing contradicts, removes, or replaces the association of the Goat with Pusan. Nothing quite tells us why a creature would be given a divine name with a meaning of "immortality". It makes sense in context, since this is more specifically the bridge to Heaven. The compounding of Sanskrit is such a knot that a "horse" is not a "horse", in fact this is how Pusan rides a goat or is having a goat as steed:


ajāśvaḥ


It's not two animals, "goathorse", because the latter just means goes fast, and so "Asva" was unlikely to physically mean a "horse" prior to 2,000 or so; we would expect it to be standard in the Veda, and probably a rare or exotic import if referred to by IVC at all.

But I'd say there is something slightly not anthropomorphic there. A person does not normally ride a goat like you can a horse. In the hymns, Indra is distinguished by using horses. Alternately, goats pull Pusan's chariot. In this area, you can distinguish the term avi for sheep:



Lord both of the pure desirable (she-goat), and of the pure (he-goat); weaver of the cloth (of the wool) of the sheep; he has cleansed the vestments.


and from the point of view of ordinary goat friendship, this is where we got it from:


The ruler, the lord of viands, the sovereign, the friend of the contentment (of all)


I can see how goats would like something like this.

And, I don't want to make a false impression it is solely about death. It's not. Pusan is quite similar to the living. He shares certain traits with "the Adityas", such as aja or "sender" of rain; but comparatively, if Varuna guides the paths of justice and social order, Pusan is like that on a personal level.


So, at the outreach of objective science of the times, it is generally surmised that the Sumerian astrology was in use around 2,000, and possibly/probably some of it earlier. We find Gam as "Shepherd's Crook" and an important constellation that is really a man holding a goat. This is of course similar to the Akkadian "translator" seal where a Meluhhan carrying a goat might be "their translator", especially since a second person is present. At any rate, yes, in ancient Mesopotamia, the star was hugely important.


It is not impossible that Capella was the Goat Star well before it was suitable for the equinox. It's Magnitude 0:

Capella is an important star for navigation because it's among the brightest stars in the sky, and because it's so far north that you can see it nearly all year round.

Before it was suitable for the equinox, something happened. In fact, it has been used to vouch a claim for the earliest recorded supernova just outside IVC at Burzahom, Kashmir:


SN HB9 Near α Auriga


It was about 100 times as powerful as Venus or as bright as the Moon. Realistically, prediction can only assign it a "window" that ends by 2,000 but might have been as far back as 5,000. So we don't really know when they saw it, but anyone who did would have related it to Capella (which is in a Void) as we can easily tell from the remnants:







The explosion and its remnant SH H221 have also been considered as the source for the German Nebra disk from an event at ca. 2,000 - 4,600:






It's almost certainly near the Pleiades, which would be approximately correct, but is not thought to be the Moon.

How long would people remember this? It seems to me about two hundred years is a general limit; after some five hundred years, no one is likely to care that much about your "temporary moon", even if at the time it was considered the birth of a deity or something. If the plate is a memory, that suggests the event was on the young side of the estimate. The artifact is not really that old.


For the stellar region, this is one Astrological myth:


Brahma Rasi or Pushan (Auriga)

The best of the charioteers. He drives his chariot (which holds the sun and is pulled
by goats) across the heavens around Polaris. Capella or Brahma Hridaya is the main
star in Auriga, the constellation of the goat-headed fire god.



As we have seen, the image is correct to the Rg Veda. It doesn't assign him to this particular star. By the same token, it does not deny or provide different information, because it simply does not say much about stars -- the secret knowledge of the Rishis.

Again, this is The Star for all intents and purposes, it is the Celestial Zenith opposite Vega and Sagittarius A*, is "up" in the galactic perspective, or Heaven, if the other is a long dense fall.

It is permanently an object of attention if the brightest northern star. Most of the pole stars are rather faint. At times it is the pole star. But if anyone was making observations in the script-composing era, it would look like what we call Draco slithering across the pole.

If you think in terms of material economy, the Horse might have killed IVC. It particularly has the epithet "new wealth". The cities were based from donkeys and barges. Then suddenly the use of the wheel seems to be taken for granted. And they are a position to, as far as we can tell, export horse mastery to Syria by 1,400. Even before if they took it to the Mittani.

Vedic Sanskrit is a large change by giving this to Indra.

The Goat, on the other hand, has a leading role in many of the most important IVC relics. It seems to anticipate "Pusan" by starting with the Iranian Ibex in a way that says "Sun" and could have Avestan cognates like Mitra or Aryaman for friend and companion. Pusan and Aja are Indian. They have permeated the major basis of mortal life, "Judgement Day", and the whole universe.

I can understand a symbol like that would be more difficult if you are not a goatherd, you could never appreciate it the same way, yet we will keep this symbol through at least Nirmanakaya Bhrkuti of the 600s. What I would say is it depends on "input", i. e., without good guidance, the same goat would just be a cantankerous eating machine; when pumped full of a superior reality, he becomes a person. Less likely to do it on his own, but, absolutely fantastic when appreciated as an individual.

His IVC numerology seems to highlight Four and Seven, while the Human Markhor has a predilection for Five.

Although the Zebu has a slightly more visible association with Five, the number seems to be a process that emerges from multiple texts.

We see that Three Circles is shared between Zebu, Unicorn, and Tiger Chimera. So far in my estimation, although "grammatical prefixes" have been considered "subject headers", I tend to think that several glyphs mostly explain their own stories. Something like Three Circles or Gamma does not freely float around the knowledge base like an adaptable word such as "circle"; they appear in a dedicated series that has its own "dialect" of text.


A very concise one is the "diamond" shape. It may be one of the most basic shapes in the whole world, but, here, it is confined and restricted, at a quite basic level. Even so, like "Rake" or "Post", it becomes an item grasped/held by a person. That places it on a slightly higher level or gives it further connotation than some "unused" glyphs. The "usage" makes its own duality, because it goes to both extremes in its only two existences:


Person holding Lozenge 30 begins a text that connects them to Three Circles.

They end a text having a singleton like a pre-Trapezoid 196. It is under a "Sloped Hat" and has the tuft-like thing that goes to a Trapezoid; seen perhaps larger, the "tuft" is a nearly plain W 365, as the script uses...only on a Rabbit trigram and some pottery marks. Naturally, it makes sense as something sent along into ligatures, because there are a lot of these as seeming "decorations" on many glyphs.


Bird-face Goddess heavily uses the basic glyph, Lozenge 261, which has these additional associations:



One and Chevron, Two, Striped Horn, C-76 Fornication, multiply-copied Two Wheels from Zebu to objects, and probably M-306 with Inverted Person on Base, rather than Notched Lozenge without Quotes:






The Lozenge "refers" us to several glyphs who in turn are heavily used and modified, but all of its concordance is quite vanilla. It has the simplest beginning:


Lozenge One


and brings us here to the point where a known humanoid glyph appears to be inverted.



The Goat as Markhor B-9 is overlooked from "Conversations Facing Glyphs" but is the fundamental expression of Branch and Four which essentially is the Ivory Rods, represented as Text 23 among them; moreover, the glyph Four 104 uses this pairing repetitively up to unveiling a pair of Trapezoids.

Markhor B-10 is similar with Seven which then becomes the Trapezoidal number. A Markhor Unicorn combines these in the Copper Tablets. B-10 has mirrored the statement from the Iranian Ibex.

Although Ibex also has Six, the Markhor has a more powerful hand in Branch Enumeration.


I think the Copper Tablets show something about what "Branch Enumeration" does. First of all, one of its humble premises is Branch Trapezoid:





The Branch glyph is repetitive, but the Enumeration has only a certain structure.

Send:





and Return:





That should be rather obvious that a large chunk of text is missing, which is supplied by the other Tablets in what appears to be a standard subject, which may or may not be "Soma One", but, in the logical sense, several of those texts belong between these two.

Concerning the Trapezoid, it is enhanced by the Tablets' particular form of Markhor:




This is the statement palindromed by Crab-in-fig-tree.

It would make sense for Markhor as the vehicle for Seven to pair with this thing. That also seems to be an important part of this aberration:





Because it is statistically common, the only reason it is interesting for Markhor to establish Branch Enumeration is because other creatures are not doing it.


He looks a little different, so, It is probably the Blackbuck on the older seals and pottery. In actuality I think we could say B-8 and B-11 have vertical horns which would make this an Antelope facing Rake:





If the Antelope is an older motif, then, the introduction of Markhor sounds particularly "Indian not Iranian". His whole point may be pre-Vedic Sanskrit and particularly what is going on with this Branch, which is pre- and post-IVC pan-Indic.

Mr. Fergus, you were the best and your presence is truly missed. Even if we find other little critters to spread benefits to, you will always be the first. And, you will always be the inspiration for the real inner meaning, because you are the only one I know who knows it.

I think he will always be my Vajrasattva and my intrepid interloper into how this timeless truth may have been revealed even unto those who exalted him in IVC. Peace upon you and I shall cherish your life always.

[shaberon]

Capella, the Pleiades and Winter Solstice


We found an unusually powerful relation of the Goat to Astrology, the roof of the universe maybe, and its appearance in the Veda, which is less of an animal-totemic system than IVC Seals. When we look at these, he is not that "great" in terms of number or distribution, but he *is* closer to humans than most of those other creatures.

There is probably something to this, but maybe not quite what has been speculated so far.



It is easy to show Pusan as a goat-friended deity who was possibly pre-Vedic, but probably not Iranian.


It is unsatisfactory for a star or constellation related to him.

First of all, "Brahma Hrdaya" is not particularly "Vedic", and neither is a lot of the recorded language. In Baudhayana Dharmasutra, there is reference to a Brahmahrdaya mantra, but look how they seem to have forgotten Pusan:


Mitra protects him and Āditya leads him up to heaven.



For neighbors, I was able to find a few star names in Canopy of the Heavens:


Brahma Hridaya--Capella
Agni--Uras ( in Auriga )
Sarathi—Auriga ( in Auriga)



The star "Agni" is in the "breast" according to this, but it is still not quite right. Anecdotes.

What comes down to us in modern times is probably Babylonian astrology, because the Greeks seem to have given it a paste job:

...none of the stories Auriga is usually associated with have a goat in them.

That is to say, they took "charioteer" and identified it with Hephaestus, or the son of Hephaestus, or the son of Hermes. As far as we can tell, "auriga" is not a proper name. But then The Star is turned around and made into the cornucopia of their civilization:

The star Capella, Alpha Aurigae, is associated with Amalthea, the goat who was foster-mother to Zeus. The name Capella is Roman and means “she-goat.” The star is located on the Charioteer’s left shoulder.

In other words, we think the Greeks have taken Babylonian astrology from approximately the time of the Trojan War, and relegated the periods before that to Heroes and Olympians, as if the world had been created that way.


We see an adjustment made in the west:

Alpha Aurigae forms an asterism with Almaaz (Epsilon Aurigae), Haedus I (Zeta Aurigae), and Haedus II (Eta Aurigae). Zeta and Eta Aurigae are known as the Haedi, or the Kids. The asterism with the three goats was a separate constellation until Ptolemy merged it with the Charioteer in his Almagest in the 2nd century. The Kids can be found just to the south of Capella.

As was probably also done to Hindi Auriga:

This has resulted in the constellation "Auriga" being called Brahma Mandala.

Here, as in most cases, the idea is that Ptolemaic astrology came in and led to Surya Siddhanta and its related Indian texts. You could think of it as the Age of Math from Greece to India to China. That is why we would think it is unlikely that IVC competes on that level.


In the early 1900s, Popular Hindu Astrology was published as a crucible of "everything". It has the perspective of restoring Indian national heritage after its demolition and erasure by centuries of invaders, and new "experts" reading it back to them in their own way. So this is significant and appropriate, but, we must parse out its meaning because this is to stack articles that are separated by millennia. We are told Brahma Hrdaya star sign appears in Ramayana.


To the western savants, the origin and character of Auriga
do yet remain shrouded in mystery. They no doubt connect
it with 'the Goat' and 'the Kids', but can give no reason for
doing so* R. Brown has taken much pains to find out its
antecedents, but he does not feel on terra firma.


Auriga is now known as *the charioteer , although no
chariot is visible, and in Ptolemy's Star-list, as well as in our
modern representations, he is described in the attitude of a she-
pherd carrying a goat on his -shoulder and a pair of little kids
in his hand.



The Greeks might not be sure where "charioteer" comes from, but it is correct the Veda describes Pusan as Rathitama:


...the constellation (Auriga) situated above
the Vernal- Equinox (3.13. 4250) the Door of Heaven (Rv. X.
70. 5.)


which is a poor start because those are the shed doors from the Apri Hymn of Sumitra Vadhryasca.

The epithet ("best charioteer") is also given to Indra and Pavamana. With Pusan, it is used by Bharadvaja.


Ironically, those go together. Bharadvaja is the beginning of what could be called white Veda, in the sense he converted royalty and helped establish a dynasty that continued to patronize the Rishis, such as the Apri Hymn is installed by Sumitra the impotent because Bharadvaja does not have one.

Ironically again, the Apri tradition was founded by Dirghatamas who is like the black Veda, those parts that are not represented by mainstream establishment and look like fragments and pieces, such as Book One. This arguably contains many antecedents going back to the village level. That makes it inseparable from IVC in time and space, although it is a new culture in a certain way, because the Rishis oppose writing. And we ask why the seals seem to dissipate after about 1,900.

This astrology book makes a number of the right references, but I am not sure any of them are about astrology.

Now, if we try to review the stars from the fact that Pusan does have a chariot at this time, and, the Greeks appear to have simply leached it from an external source, what do we get.

By translators, forcefed from line one:

Come illustrious grandson of Prajāpati


It does not say that anywhere in here. It's just "grandson". If anything, the first implication would be Apam Napat:


ehi vāṃ vimuco napād āghṛṇe


Prajapati is not in this at all, and "Pusan" is added throughout lines where it does not appear. He is the subject of a strand of multiple hymns, but the literature has been crammed with auto-completes and interpretations, obscuring the original and your chance to consider it in context. Well, this is a major deity at the very beginning of India. In terms of a recorded empire-like structure that can be traced for a few generations through the Rg Veda and seems to be unknown to the Brahmanas. I think they lost the true "Purana" that would have made the obscure Vedic hymns into objects of plain face value. I see there has been the recent posting of Saunaka's massive Brihad Devata, from which "the Puranas" are drawn. He argues against Yaska. The thing probably contains multiple errors, but, by sheer number, it does give the majority of what Vedic hymns are about.



Continuing to look for a goat, equinox, or lofty position, Pusan is Isana with respect to the chariot:


rathītamaṃ kapardinam īśānaṃ



He has an important sister:


svasur yo jāra ucyate ||


and these interesting relationships:

...the husband of his mother; may the gallant of his sister hear us; may the brother of Indra be our friend.



Goats pull his car:

ājāsaḥ pūṣaṇaṃ rathe niśṛmbhās te janaśriyam



and we reach one of the first remarks about how there are different deities:


“One (of you) approaches to drink the Soma poured out into ladles, the other desires the buttered meal.”




A "charioteer":

sārathiḥ





Although many of the invocations in the translation are non-existent, at other times they miss something, such as here, Pusan is Pasupati:

The rider of the goat, the protector of animals, in whose dwelling good is abundant

ajāśvaḥ paśupā



He has an apparently secret attribute, flying boats:


your golden vessels, which navigate within the ocean-firmament



yās te pūṣan nāvo antaḥ samudre hiraṇyayīr antarikṣe caranti |


The only possible implication is lightning bolts, which is consistent with Apam Napat.

Finally, the Devas do something quite interesting:

yaṃ devāso adaduḥ sūryāyai kāmena kṛtaṃ tavasaṃ svañcam ||



They give Pusan the daughter of the Sun.


But Pusan is the Sun.

This is currently still the basis of the marriage rite.

The Veda goes on to a rather intricate adventure involving for instance the Aswins winning this bride anew. One would not expect IVC to follow to this level. However it could be that a Ghee Offering is representative of Pusan. They could have done that.


The relation of Pusan to "personal path" is completely obvious from one of his first epithets as Pathaspati.


That does not match what presumably later literature does to the constellation:


The star Prajapati is Delta Aurigae at the head.

It doesn't make much sense to say a person is the constellation, and then another is the head, another the shoulder, and so on.

Fortunately the book admits these limitations as such:


These yoga-
taras are according to the Surya-Siddhanta as identified by Bur-
gess. In this case also it is difficult to say whether these stars as
identified were known as such in the Vedic times and in the
later period prior to the evolution of the Siddhantic system of.
astronomy in our country.'


Any possible timing is very difficult because the archaic tracking did not use even divisions:


With the introduction of
computational astronomy, the above unequal division was found
very inconvenient for practical calculation. As a result the
ecliptic was subsequently divided into 27 equal parts and Abhijit
was excluded from the list.


At the time of the Vedanga Jyotisa Calendar (1350 B.C.) when
the nakshatra cycle started from Dhanistha, the equal division
system was fully established.


We are not sure that works. If we account for variability in measuring the signs, plus perturbance and acceleration by the earth, the points marked by that system might be up to 500 years older.

It is also not clear why this is claimed for Yama:


the first-
born and the chief of the Fathers, was placed on Draconis, the
Pole-star of B.C. 3000


And we find two descriptions of the Celestial Ganges:


We have called the stellar river
Yami, the great daughter of the Sun-God. The heavenly
Yamuna (*i*£Tt) or Yami is supposed to take its rise from the
celestial Brahma-Putra (t^) r U., a portion of the Milky Way
adjoining Brahma Mandala, the Constellation Auriga, and to
fall to it again.



As the constellation lies side by side with Bhadra, the
northern branch of the Milky Way (Vide, Introduction, Ex. I.)
like husband and wife they form a pair.

*Let Bhadra says Bharadvaja, *be now a loving friend to
thee...


Here again, he says this, but there is nothing there which would suggest this quite common term is being used for the Milky Way, which is a minor and presumably much later usage.

The hymns about Pusan culminate on his attaining Usas, who is called "Dawn" but really means closer to what we would call "pre-dawn twilight" which is ruled by Venus. Or, this is how you observe a heliacal arising. If you are "marking an equinox", this is how you do it.



For its epoch, this is one of the markers:

Dhanistha is the first in the
VedangaJyotisha', the series in the Brahmana and the Sanhitas
always begins with the Krittikas.


First what?

Frustratingly, the main subject of "Vedic Astrology" is not stars, but timekeeping, which, from the critical translation, is based on Prajapati, the five-year Yuga.


Jyotisa <--> Kala vidhana sastra


Essentially it is a civil calendar. What this means is that an exact year is not 365 24-hour days, but lasts about another six hours, which in our system we ignore, until replacing an extra day every four years.

The Vedic system treats the fractional part as a day. So they basically say it is a 366-day year. It makes a more complicated correction based on solar and lunar days over the Yuga. Thus it is effectively the Moon that is tracked day-by-day, like beads on a string, perpetually. It goes on to calibrate sub-units of time down to seconds or smaller. In fact, it assumes you learned about "the stars" elsewhere, as it has next to no use of them, and Text 12 is only a litany that assigns deities to Nakshatras. Therefor, "the stars" are common knowledge, and this "wheel of devas" is the new or additional information. In this regard, we find Pusan in the final group:



Ahirbudhnya, Pusan, Aswins, Yama.


Your devata is the one you are born under. This is not "new" information in any way except by making a written transmission to us.

If you compare this to Wiki's List of Nakshatras, that applies a wrap-around, so you see it starts Aswins, Yama, Agni, Prajapati, and goes on to include the twenty-eighth or Abhijit. This attribution results in Agni -- Pleiades, Prajapati -- Aldebaran, Pusan -- Revati (Zeta Piscium), as rulers of the sign or Mansion of the Moon. It's not always "identity", for instance each of the Krttika or Pleiades has a name. It doesn't say Pusan is Revati. It says he is lord of the Mansion that Revati is in.


VJ depicts The Year as running from Agni to Yama, not otherwise.

Beginning it with Aswins/Aries is a Ptolemaic-era shift. The problem is, yes, it was a favorable time to mark the Zero Point of Aries and have the equinox be there, which does not tell us there were any prior zero points associated with equinoxes. It happens because geometry and trig have been improved, while the ancients only had trial-and-error of observations.


What is not being included is the near-parallel with Capella; estimates for Pleiades as a good marker for the spring equinox are around 2,330.

Nebra disk ca. 1,600 is used to say the Pleiades are "important" but that may be a supernova. With Pleiades or Krttika as first sign of the year:


This is so before the classic list lowers this nakṣatra to third place, henceforth giving the first to the star couple β Arietis and γ Arietis, which, notably in Hipparchus, at that time, marks the equinox.


The Vedic year was designed for the purpose of rites, the rites are made of mantras, and it is really "Agni first" that is said in the mantra.

That's not adjustable. The equinox can be whenever it wants.

The division of signs into deva and yama nakshatras supports a Krttika equinox ca. 2,300; cf. Taittiriya Brahmana 1.5.2.7. on p. 12. That is to say, northward and southward apparent motion of the sun, matches spring marked by the list. That is what the translator thinks. But this is the northward division:


Krttika to Vishaka


and southward:

Anuradha to Bharani


S Kak 2011 gives the citation:


krttikah prathamam visakhe uttamam tani devanaksatrani
anuradhah prathamam apabharanihyuttamam tani yama
-naksatrani yani devanaksatrani tani daksinena pariyanti
yani yamanaksatrani tanyuttardni iti.


Krttikas are the first and Visakhe are the last; those are
deva naksatras. Anuradhas are the first and Apabharani
is the last; those are the yama naksatras. The deva
naksatras revolve from the south; the yama naksatras
revolve from the north.


It doesn't say "northward after the solstice". The implication is Yama Naksatras "revolve from the north" as compared to the South Pole. Thus, they appear south of the equator. It's just a description. It's not a "timer" or indicator of any changes or epochs. Krttika is the "first" in a line segment.

So it does mean north and south, as fixed directions from the equator. This is not time but a spatial definition:

...an equinox is either of two places on the celestial sphere at which the ecliptic intersects the celestial equator.

Over time, the stars appear to move relative to a fixed projection from our planet.

Therefor, the Celestial Equator begins at the "first point of Aries", that is, the equinox.


So the mantra is just observing the two halves of its time. It doesn't say "because the equinox begins the year", it just says Agni is lord of the Krttika, seen as the first on their side of the projected disk.


Currently the heliacal rising of Krttika marks the Summer Solstice:

In the Northern Hemisphere, at the Spring Equinox, the Pleiades rises during the day, and can be seen only briefly at night. Each day the sun gets a little closer in alignment to the Pleiades so that during the Summer Solstice, the Pleiades rises just before the light of dawn. The first visible rising of the Pleiades before the sun is called the heliacal rise of the Pleiades. During the Fall Equinox, the Pleiades rises at midnight. At the Winter Solstice the Pleiades is visible in the east just after dark.

The Veda hasn't mentioned heliacal rising. It's a Sun -- Moon -- Solstice conjunction. The Pleiades are a quarter of the sphere away, so their importance is inherited or derived, because this is about the Yuga, not the year, or equinox.


It's the same result for a different reason. An entirely different reason.



The Vedanga Jyotish is quite distant from an original source; its coordinates in time are given by Text 19:


Winter Solstice at the beginning of Sravistha (Dhanistha or Delphinius)

Summer Solstice at the mid-point of Aslesa (Sarpa asterism in Hydra)


It is useless for navigation, for the Pole Star or Capella or anything that is not in the lunar path. It doesn't really talk about the "sky". It has kept a mantra that would appear to be relevant to the height of IVC without changing the order to compensate for shifts that probably would have already happened. At its maximum age, ca. 1,800, the thing would have warped, and if it is as young as 1,200, it would be totally gone. I get the sense that the subject of "intricate timekeeping" was probably developed within a "primordial star list". That it is easier to make Houses where the Moon physically goes each day. Nothing to compute. You're just watching.

So that would mean the star information ought to be relevant to IVC. The deity assignments may not be, although it might have some rough approach. The statements in TB use Krttika and the asterism names (but only enough to indicate the sets). This actual recording is so late as to seem irrelevant, however, it may simply be continuity. It's Sanskrit names for stars, and, we are investigating whether the Sanskrit language is as old as the overall IVC. It is understandable they might change things they say about stars, but, there is no reason to think they would have difficulty identifying them. AV 19.7 is basically a mantra to the Lunar Mansions. It doesn't "prove" their antiquity; it is the implication of VJ following something far older and already complete that is found only in tiny bits in the Rg Veda that makes us say those "bits" probably indicate that something about the stars goes back to IVC era. It may be noted that the same Lunar Mansions are used by Arabs and Chinese, though giving them different names and stories, on a mathematical level they are equal.




In the same era, Mesopotamian Mul.Gam may truly be using Capella as the new year and major star of divinity. If there was a universal meaning here it might not be "Pusan" but it might be "Goat Star". It is a Shepherd with one or three goats, depending if "the Kids" are counted. Curiously, in IVC script, One and Three are almost interchangeable or commonly work together, whereas the normal counting sequence, one, two, is a significant hurdle.

I don't see how references to "charioteer" or "Brahma" would tell us anything about pre-2,000.

It is the fusion of Pusan to Goat that may be old enough and may be supportive of Goat Star.

It's a logical bridge, since the oldest Naksatra reference assumes knowledge that is found in a much later text, which is usually not a good case, but it would be if it was based on strict mantra transmission, which would be obsolete by the later period.



Which is actually Agni? Returning to the Popular references, this is unlikely to be Kanva Ghaura talking about an axe:

hiraṇyavāśīmattama


since this hymn mainly concerns Pusan repelling liars and thieves.


Agni is Nath (meaning Elnath) or Beta Tauri, south of but in the longtitude of Capella, whereas Urah is Beta Aurigae (Menkalinan). Elnath has also served as Gamma Aurigae, in other words, has been thought of in both these constellations.


In the physical sense, here are these two stars in the flux of the Milky Way:




Here, Mars visits just under the Pleiades at the top. Elnath is the bluish star towards the left:





This view is rotated slightly so that the diagonal blue line is the plane of the Milky Way, which passes through the middle of Auriga. Elnath is not named, and you can see it connecting Auriga and Taurus. It is close to the horizontal plane of the ecliptic, and hence, can be "occulted" by the Moon or is in a Nakshatra. Obviously, Capella would share the timing of it:





Capella and Elnath may be the same but they do not share the Krttikas' timing. It passes to Aldebaran -- Rohini -- Prajapati, then to Mrgashira -- Agrahayani or Lambda Orionis.

Elnath is some 28 deg Taurus.


It is followed by a tricky asterism:

Mṛgaśīrṣa (मृगशीर्ष) or Mṛgaśiras (मृगशिरस्), also called Invakā or Invagā, seems to be the faint stars λ, φ1, φ2 Orionis. They are called Andhakā, ‘blind’, in the Śāntikalpa of the Atharvaveda, probably because of their dimness.


Lambda Orionis with the Phis as little specks beside it, marks the day between that of Aldebaran and that of Betelgeuse:




Or the proximity can be found in the degrees of Tropical Gemini, Capella 20, Elnath 21, Meissa 22. Or a more detailed list adds Usa right after. It's tighter than for example the "shoulder" and "the Kids" and so forth. It's some three to five hours of lunar travel. It's a stack of Three Circles, somewhat like the nearby and more obvious "belt of Orion", but more instantaneous and aligned to the galactic anti-center.

And so I have tended to overlook the deer-slaying legends with Rohini and so on, as probably being later additions. In the primordial sense, for a day such as "Agrahayana", Agra could mean "first" but also "best; pinnacle". The meaning "first" would of course imply it was used to observe the equinox centuries before the Pleiades. However, neither this name nor "Deer Head" can be traced. Mrgasira is used in the Atharva Veda. Its typical legend comes from Aitareya Brahmana. The Rik it is commented to seems very inappropriate, as, I would say, are the majority of similar stories. The hymn is about the Angirases also discovering the Maiden. It goes on to Parsu Manavi, who, similar to Ila Devi, is part of some forgotten history. Such as how she may be known in the west as Adam's Rib.



Fortunately, it is easy to get a validation of this as a physical stack:






while the Goat Star itself has another easy guide:





It does not seem older references tell us anything about its possible co-timer, "Deer Head". Rg Veda does not use "rohini" or "punarvasu" as a proper name; it does not quite have "Mrga" or "Deer" in a way that supports the claims; perhaps the closest by Gautama Rahugana is one of the main Vedic lessons, that Indra slays Vrtra, the deer of maya.

Otherwise, it is more allegorical or used in similies of:

deer-like (wandering) cloud

Maruts

streams of Ghee

Indra's friend Vrsakapi


It says nothing about Ardra, has various uses of "Mrga", and "rohini" mostly just as a color.

Mrgasira is difficult to tie in as a star, which leaves Aja and Pusan only in potential form. They exist as an image or form, but I do not think we can construe them as definitely meaning the Capella star or constellation based on the foregoing.

If we want to say two Goats of IVC, they are inverse of each other that we might say Day and Night. Ibex is solar and possibly even forms a Clock. If it had a counterpart, or "night goat", you might go with a bright star that was visible most of the time, such as Capella.


The Mesopotamian "Crook" is only the eastern half of Auriga because it is in the hands of Perseus:


6' In its right hand it carries a crook.
7' In the crook a (star called) “The Crook” stands.
8' The head of the crook is the head of a ram.


Another expression is Udu Nita or "Star Lamb" = Sag.du Mul.gam "head of the staff"

ziqpu XVI (α Aurigae, Capella)

'The Crook,' is an ancient Mesopotamian asterism the corresponds to Capella with the eastern half of classical Auriga. The Uranology Text E (MLC 1884) places 'The Crook' in the hand of 'The Old Man' (Perseus), and speaks of a number of its component parts including its head which is in the shape of a ram's head, its handle, and its shaft. The remaining stars and star-clusters of Auriga that are not part of 'The Crook' may be understood as groups of sheep standing in the background of the image.

Capella is not really in an asterism and this design would be relatively huge. Comparatively, it would be hard to surmise more than "goats of Auriga" might become those of Pusan. I'm not thinking this whole "Shepherd" motif transfers into IVC. The close timing of Capella and Agni -- Elnath to Mrgasira "Deer Head" and how this moment transacts "up" is very noticeable.

The name refers to the asterism as one unit, i. e., the Phis are naked-eye visible, and so the deer head is probably that immediate configuration. It says nothing about a deer that it is the head of. Just says it's a head.

So far there is one IVC Deer and it "looks up".


Synonymous for Mrigasirsa, the expression "Agrahayana" is indeterminate:


Hāyana (हायन) denotes a ‘year’, usually in compounds.

Six months constitute an ayana. Distinguished as the southern and northern corresponding to the course of the sun towards the north and south of the equator.


The most literal meaning of the latter would be the solstices. "Ayana" has a broad meaning from "road, path", to more specific meanings that *could* include equinoxes, but usually when directions are specified such as northward course, it is dealing with solstices, such as the VJ does for itself.


Text 21 is The Visuva, which is an equinox, but only a computation for it is given. No text gives any example Naksatra it was computed for. So, it is practically ignored as a criteria of anything. This negativizes any reason to expect that India was concerned with "marking" it.


KD Abhyankar reads correctly that the "beginning" is at the time of the full moon of Magha (Regulus). This is what the VJ says, but, it is talking about the beginning of a Yuga, not a year. The Sun and Moon in Dhanistha/Sravistha is beginning of the month or bright fortnight of Magha, so obviously the moon has to wheel around to become full. The timer is the conjunction.

There is no equinox or full moon "New Year". It's the 367th day of the Yuga. The main point of VJ is to enable you to calculate anything. It's not as smooth as trigonometry. But it seems to show a lot of trial and error, because it would take many yugas of observations to figure out these adjustments and corrections.

It is really difficult to observe the Winter Solstice. If this was the important thing, in about 1,000 years, you'd have to re-define the Yuga as it starting in the next Naksatra. Other works including Jain texts record it in Sravana, so this is observed.


This solstice is very difficult because the sun appears to stand almost still for five to seven days. It is amazing there is a kind of camera obscura passage that allows sunlight on the solstice for about seventeen minutes to reach the inner chamber of a long tunnel at Newgrange in the Boyne near Tara Hill, where the Ard Ri were inaugurated. Aside from this, it is really difficult to determine the exact solstitial day.

If Krttika is 1/4 the way around from Dhanistha, then, it may consequently be close to the vernal equinox. It's not possible for "first Naksatra" to inform this system about when the year begins. It's only describing a physical ring. Because the Yuga began on the Winter Solstice, that is when the year begins.


One is locked in that mode until there is a national consensus to re-define the Yuga. The Solstice will go one Naksatra in about 900 years, which might be a reason to do that, but we are primarily concerned with the mantric Yuga, which was the actual subject.


Curiously, Magha at the Summer Solstice matches Regulus among the Royal Stars, which is a similar type of "Fixed Cross", although it uses the major luminances like Aldebaran rather than minor asterisms. Regulus is in near opposition to Fomalhaut or Revati.


Comparatively, Rg Veda does not have "Pasupati", but, it does have "pasupa" as "herdsman" a few times, and in a few cases it is related to Agni, who does things like a herdsman. So far, I would have to say that Pusan is the case of "identity" or he "is" it, or is directly named as an epithet.


Here, I feel my goat friend has become my manes or Pitr, as the main thing I have learned here is that it celebrates someone who is qualified. It isn't truly ancestor worship, in the sense that if you are honest, most of your ancestors were probably not exemplars of Heaven, and the teaching is to use discernment, rather than automatically placing our own family above all others. Instead, it is likely there is someone who is not your personal ancestor, that deserves memory and recognition.

As we see in IVC that Five is unusually powerful, it could perhaps be the Yuga.

[shaberon]

Vedic and Korku Astrology



I noticed something as part of the transition that happened here. There had been about a month where I had gotten used to not seeing my friend every day. There are a lot of woods, and so I took it as a good sign he was mobile and going out so far I couldn't find him. And on his last day, he was sitting in an unusual spot. I believe it was his way of saying goodbye. It was somewhere I would easily see him without looking. I saw him and spoke to him from distance and went back inside, and, within less than an hour, I felt that I hadn't seen him the day before, so I should walk out into the yard. Then when I found him in the same spot, I also found he was having some difficulties and we wound up calling the medics.

Since that day there is one goat left, and, she has somewhat of the Markhor look, but we got her rather recently from a herd and so there isn't that same kind of personal bond.

As I mentioned with respect to the ethos that is possibly in the IVC script, last night I made a manes or Pitr offering to my friend that had passed.

Today, I found that other goat in the same spot, and she got up and walked right over and talked to me.


That makes it easy for me, personally, to understand them metaphysically as vehicles of Pusan.

They literally share a name with a different deity. There is an Ajaikapad in Patan, Nepal, with a Goat:





Yet so far it does not seem possible to establish that either Pusan or Aja Ekapad "is" or "governs" the "Goat Star", Capella, for the main reason it is not known that any truly ancient texts deal with anything besides the belt. You could do it with Stacked Three Circles meaning Mrgasirsa -- Agni (Elnath) -- Capella. Or, if it was known for a temporary Moon like the Nebra disk implies, you could do that. I can't come up with anything convincing in Vedic Sanskrit that makes the association, but I am pretty sure the IVC Goat does unusual things that may be about Pitrs or stars.


I tried to dredge Kak 2011 on Astronomical Code of the Rg Veda for something substantial to go on, but, I think it undermines its own thesis by the following admission:



To return to the Rgvedic code one can think of various theories
to tie the numbers to possible astronomical observations.


Briefly put, its most direct approach is done by syllable counts of the Vedas and various means of dividing them. I was looking for additional ways in which the mantras might be saying something about astronomy. I was unable to find much. I suppose it is like myself, in the early 21st century we were trying to explain the Epics and Puranas, with anything from the Vedas as "corroboration", because we didn't know much about what the Veda actually said.

I now find this to be a wrong move, since literature is separated from scripture by multiple centuries, and evidences both a loss of understanding as well as fabrication of arbitrary explanations.


Secondarily, the problem for anyone who wants to push the epoch of the Puranas to a remote era, it will have to go through a lot of archeological and written legacy of IVC. My guess is the IVC script is far less likely to support any Purana in great detail, but ought to have a greater chance to partially match Vedic languages in parts that are not claimed to be new/its own.


Moreover, I think it is true that the Rg Veda is arranged with a maestro touch, but in its own mantric way that has nothing to do with counts in the thousands that may resemble years or cycles.


Nevertheless, a few possible points are raised here, and when it comes to bricks and shapes, then you do have something that can be directly compared to IVC, such as perhaps even the Trapezoid glyph:



...the twelve-day agnicayana rite that
takes place in a large trapezoidal area, called the mahavedi, and
in a smaller rectangular area to the west of it, which is called the
praclnavamsa or pragvamsa.



The mahavedi trapezium measures 30 prakrama on the west,
24 prakrama on the east, and 36 prakrama lengthwise. The choice
of these numbers is related to the sum of these three equalling one
fourth the year or 90 days (SB 10.2.3.4). The nominal year of 360
days is used to reconcile the discrepancies between the lunar and
solar calendars, both of which were used.


In the mahavedi, a brick altar is built to represent time in the
form of a falcon about to take wing, and in the praclnavamsa
three fire altars are built in specified positions, the garhapatya,
ahavanlya, and daksinagni. The garhapatya, which is round, is
the householder’s fire received from the father and transmitted to
the descendants. It is a perpetual fire from which other fires are
lighted. The daksinagni is half-moon shaped; it is also called the
anvaharyapacana where cooking is done. The ahavanlya is square.
Between the ahavanlya and the garhapatya a space of a rough hour¬
glass is dug out and strewn with grass; this is the vedi for the gods
to sit on.

In addition, eight dhisnya hearths are built on an expanded
ritual ground.

The garhapatya is
the earth (SB 7.1.1.13), the dhisnya hearths are space (SB 7.1.2.12),
and the ahavanlya altar, which is made in five layers, is sky (SB
8.2.1,2).


Time is represented by the bird.



This is why I do not generally like the term "sacrifice" as a translation:


In this play, symbolic deaths of animals and
humans, including the yajamana himself, may be enacted.




Now if we take the Veda as it is, Pururavas is Vasistha:



This development of Vedic ritual is described in the Puranas where
it is claimed that the three altars were first devised by the king
Pururavas.


They very visibly become the source of their own problem:


Puranic genealogies begin with the mythical Manu Vaivasvata.
He had several offspring of whom his daughter Ila bore a son named
Pururavas Aila; their further successors represent the Aila or Lunar
branch of the Vedic people. Manu’s chief son Iksvaku became the
king of Madhyadesa with the capital at Ayodhya. The Aiksvakus
are the Solar dynasty.


That is, yes, the Veda is supportive of the two regions of Aila Pauravas and Ayodhya Prthus, but Vedic Manu is entirely different. Vaivasvata is neither the beginning of time nor the sire of the human race, but, a teacher, probably in the Atharva Veda and Ayurveda lines, who happened in the "middle period" or height of its establishment. The Rg Veda probably expresses two prior Manus.


Kak says:

Brahmavarta, was especially sanctified


in reference to what we find in III.23:

pṛthivyā iḻāyās pade


A spot of earth (Prthu) marked by cow's foot (Ila) has the quality of "revati" to devotees in this area:


dṛṣadvatyām mānuṣa āpayāyāṃ sarasvatyāṃ revad



in the footmark of the earth in the form of a cow; i.e. on the northern altar



According to VR Patil on Ila:


Ilaspade is found in five out of ten rigvedic Mandalas and mandala-wise its occurrences are;
Ilaspade/2(1), 3(2), 6(1), 1(2) ,10(5)

Among all five aforementioned mandalas in which the term, Ilaspade occurs,
show one common feature, that is, presence of active reference of Yajnas being conducted on the
bank of river Saraswati. The term, Active reference practically means, presence of at least one
independent verse, addressed to river Saraswati, wherein the composer invokes her by way of
performing Yajna ceremony.

The speciality of the verses of two Late Mandalas
(Mandala-1 and 10) is that both reflect presence of Ilaspade term/ phrase twice in the same verse.


As a slightly odd conclusion:


In reality, Rigved begins with the very first verse of Mandala-2. Ideally, it should commence
with the past history of the characters; Ila, Pururavas, Nahusa and Yayati who are the real cause
for the initiation and shaping of Rigved.. Many scholars do not give much importance to the Hymn
Rv-1.31. But in the complete rigvedic text, it is the only hymn in which, we find names of all four
pre-rigvedic characters (representing four generations) who overshadow the rigvedic composition.


Yes, but it says Agni is the First Angiras. Not all of this reasoning is accurate. However, the point about "hundred winters" = "mortal" could apply here:


tvam iḻā śatahimāsi dakṣase tvaṃ vṛtrahā vasupate sarasvatī ||


Possibly, a mortal Ila conveys the power/strength "Daksa", although the hymn is addressing Agni taking all these forms, including Vrtrahan and Sarasvati. References support "hundred" combined with various seasons and other things to represent "ideal lifespan" for a person. It is possible that Ila and Bharati are actual people named for deities. The trouble with Vedic history is in discerning when a name is "cycled". Rish Atri of Book Five probably starts the last Gotra, although his name has been used both for an ancient Rishi and perhaps another more recent one.

As to whether there should be a Horned Ila Devi similar to Hathor, or, an IVC yogini, I am not sure.




Returning to the astronomical ideas, Sunahsepa speaks of twelve months and their "supplement". It is less like twelve Zodiacal signs, and more like twelve lunations with remainder. So this is thought to indicate development of the calendar as described in Vedanga Jyotish.

There is no sense that Vena is Venus as stated several times.

I'm not sure if this is the real answer, but it may point to the right question:


The precession of the vernal equinox was noted by transfer¬
ring Orion’s mythology to Taurus and Aries. Thus Tammuz was
killed by his hostile brother Sirius, Osiris by his hostile brother
Seth (Ursa Major), Tvastr, Dyauspita, Prajapati were killed by
their youngest son Indra or Rudra (Sirius). Terrible events in an¬
cient myths usually refer to dramatic celestial phenomena, thus
providing chronological markers.


Because this marks a later era, it is more likely to be correct:


In the Puranas, the myth of the churning of the ocean, amrta-
manthana, represents, at one level, the shifting of the astronomical
frame.


It's not in the Veda. There needs to be an explanation why the "age of Rishis" comes to an end, which would be the end of Yugas of a certain character. They have to change the Pole Star and the cardinal stars. If you can give these reasons, adequately, then you are fine. We would say the Rg Veda changes the Sisumara or Crocodile of IVC, or this inaugurates the Yuga or Samvatsara of Divodasa. Because it uses the term "fixed", the former Crocodile may have been what we call Draco. The new Dhruva or Pole Star was Kochab, so the constellation recorded in Brahmanda Purana works. Note that in the Bhagavata, the same name has become the entire cosmos. IVC definitely has a Sky Crocodile, and, if its intention had anything to do with north, the pole had been passing through three Draco stars.




Looking at supposed fire altars:


Recent studies haves shown that the unit of dhanus was used
consistently in India in town planning and architecture for over
4,000 years, going back to the Harappan period.


A brick-lined fire pit at Kalibangan
has five layers of bricks in the style of the Vedic altar. A platform
in the citadel at Kalibangan has seven fire altars in a north-south
row, which parallels the six Vedic dhisnya hearths that are placed
in the same directional orientation, the seventh hearth could be
one of the additional hearths of the Vedic ritual where utensils are
cleaned.

The yantric palace at Dashli-3 in North Afghanistan c.
2000 BCE...

Another monumental complex excavated at Dashli is round,
with nine spoke-like extensions jutting out of the periphery. Within
this area are rectangular quarters as well as altar-hearths mounted
on brick platforms. The nine spokes (or openings) recall the image
of the body with nine openings used often in Indie literature. This
complex is in turn surrounded by other buildings with two other
concentric circular walls.



Concerning "the end":


According to the indices, one of the hymns of the Rgveda (10.98)
is composed by Devapi and this hymn mentions Santanu, Bhisma’s
father. This appears to be the youngest hymn in the Rgveda and
thus the reference is supportive of the Indian tradition. The Ya-
jurveda does not mention anyone later than Dhrtarastra and the
Atharvaveda mentions a Parlksit ruling over the Kurus. There is
no mention of Puranic kings who came after the Bharata battle in
the Vedic Samhitas.


No, the Vedas know nothing of that stuff, nor do they know Santanu is Bhisma's father. The Rishi praying for him is an Arstisena; Santanu is presumably the mysterious Aulana.


"Remembered" Vedic names:

Ajamidha (RV 4.44.6), Mandhatr (RV 1.112.13, 8.39.8,
8.40.12) and Rama (RV 10.93.14). Furthermore RV 10.34 is at¬
tributed to Mandhatr and RV 10.179.1 is attributed to Sivi and
10.179.2 is attributed to Pratardana.

Of kings lauded in the Rgveda Vadhryasva, Divodasa, Srnjaya,
Sudas, Sahadeva and Somaka appear as kings in the North Pancala
genealogy but there is no description of their exploits. Other
Rgvedic kings such as Abhyavartin Cayamana, Srutarvan Arksa,
Playogi Asanga and Svanaya Bhavya are unknown in the epics and
the Puranas.


Exactly. Portions of it are retained and muddled but the actual knowledge base -- which must have been so common as to be perfectly plain and clear -- has vanished.


This is said to be Dirghatamas on seasons and an inter-calary month:


The tradition of the seven rsis, the stars of the Ursa Major, is
ancient and it goes back to the Rgveda:

Of those rsis born together, they say that the seventh is
born by himself, saptatham ekajam, while six are twins,
God-born rsis, sal idyama rsayo devajah. (RV 1.164.15;

AV 9.9.16," 10.8.5)

While the rsis are not named in the Rgveda...


That is, the verse is not really suggestive of Seven Rishis of the Great Bear. It may have to do with time or the weather, but it's not identifying stars. More accurately, Atiratra is the nocturnal New Year's rite.


The KausTtaki Brahmana (19.3) speaks of the time of the winter
solstice:

On the new moon of Magha he (the sun) rests, being
about to turn northwards; these also rest, being about
to sacrifice with the introductory atiratra; thus for the
first time they obtain him; on him they lay hold with
the caturvimsa; that is why the laying hold rite has
this name. He goes north for six months...




This, perhaps, is a notable use of numbers:


Book 1 which consists of 191 hymns is classed into 15 groups of hymns by
different rsis. Book 10 also has 191 hymns and its first 84 hymns
are classed into 25 groups based on rsis, and its remaining 107
hymns are counted singly.



Here are some cognates.

Zarathushtra’s
Six immortals born of Amesha Spenta (Boundless Immortality):

• Vohu Manah ( Su Manah ): Good Intention; Persian Bahman

• Asha Vahishta ( Asa Vasistha): Best Law; Ardvahisht

• Kshathra Vairya ( Ksatra Vairya ): Heroic Dominion

• Spenta Armaiti ( Spanda Aramati): Bounteous Devotion

• Haurvatat ( Sarvatata ): Wholeness

• Amaratat ( Amaratata ): Immortality




This is the challenge or difficult operating procedure. Returning to Dirghatamas:


The use of the five year yuga is natural to do a basic syn¬
chronization of the lunar and the solar years. Longer periods are
required for a more precise synchronization rules.


In RV 1.164.48 we are explicitly
told of the 360 parts of the wheel of time.

dvddasa pradhayas cakram ekam
trini nabhyani ka utacciketa
tasmin sakam trisata na sahkavo
arpitah sastirna calacalasah (RV 1.164.48)


Twelve spokes, one wheel, three navels, who can com¬
prehend this? In this there are 360 spokes put in like
pegs which do not get loosened.

The division of the circle into four quadrants of 90 degrees each
is described in another hymn:

caturbhih sdkm navatim ca namabhis cakram na vrttam
vyatidr avivipat (RV 1.155.6)


He, like a rounded wheel, hath in swift motion set his
ninety racing steeds together with the four.


Note, further, that the day is divided into 60 nadikas in the
Vedanga Jyotisa. Since the day is to the year what the degree is
to the circle, this means that the degree was further divided into
60 parts.


So, yes, that may lead to the "cleaner" 360-degree circle, even if it is not the right number of days for a year.

The Vedic text is very limited on any specific mentions of stars, unless you decide you are right about something, such as the Dogs must be the Canis constellations (as Tilak does). I don't know what those Dogs are. That's the whole point is I don't know what those Dogs are. And I don't think India took in "star signs" from the west in the IVC era, but I do think the actual primary navigational stars would have been important to everyone; the North Star is the same everywhere, but light cycles and seasons are not.


This gives us another stand-or-fall theory like the ones of Tilak, Parpola, and others, who make a career that depends on a single assumption. The only difference is we are taking an actual Vedic mantra and extrapolating it to the time when it would have been valid; this, perforce, implies knowledge of the stars Krttika and others forming the ring traveled by the Moon. In theory, this would be an everyday common discussion, that times itself to the intensification of IVC script.

Its details are not in the Rig Veda, but it is most assuredly categorically present and persistent.

Svastya perhaps invokes a goddess of Naksatras:

svasti mitrāvaruṇā svasti pathye revati |


cf. the chariot of the Maruts:


rodasī pathyā


traverses heaven and earth and the paths (of the firmament)


and for Resurrection:


punaḥ pūṣā pathyāṃ yā svastiḥ ||


Usas is the closest identity for Pathya according to Vasistha.



So far, on this "path", the Naksatras have no satisfactory etymology or derivation. The expression arises a number of times in the Rg Veda, some of which I would call very nearly untranslateable, such as by Vimada Aindra Prajapatya:


tvaṃ tān vṛtrahatye codayo nṝn kārpāṇe śūra vajrivaḥ | guhā yadī kavīnāṃ viśāṃ nakṣatraśavasām ||


Murdhanvan Angirasa Vamadevya:


vaiśvānaraṃ kavayo yajñiyāso 'gniṃ devā ajanayann ajuryam | nakṣatram pratnam aminac cariṣṇu yakṣasyādhyakṣaṃ taviṣam bṛhantam ||



That one is doubly difficult because now you have the "Yaksha" as well.

When traced back through Vamadeva, one of the most explicit Astrological names to be found is Rahugana.

None of the Rahu myths are even alluded to in the Veda. If it is just an "eclipse" without any special stories, that means it is a group of people who made an observation, which generally isn't possible more than once in a lifetime, if at all. If they make a whole Rishi clan based on seeing it, then, they are many observations away from being able to predict or calculate it. This concept has been completely reversed to credit Atri with liberating the Sun. Rishi Atri is interesting, but, none of the legends about him are real. He echoes what most likely are spiritual metaphors such as "down a well" which were in common circulation. Again, that's because he is a late Rishi in a fully-evolved system, not a creation story.

My dismissal of the Puranic histories comes from a close analysis of the Danastutis. We don't get a 100% answer on every Vedic trivium, but, we do get a fairly solid skeleton about a fair number of Kings who lived at the same time as Rishis. From this perspective, it might be reasonable to say that Atri's grandson may have been the last generation to witness a meaningfully-intact educational system or bardistry that understood the actual Vedic saga.

Dirghatamas the Sarathi has passed the tenth yuga. Although the expression "car or chariot" could pre-date him by only a limited time, this use of a five-year yuga extends indefinitely. Again this is the main concept which everything else is an adjustment to.

A mantra based on Naksatras with Krttika beginning "north of the equator" matches the equinox around 2,300.

The teaching by Lagadha that the Yuga begins with the Solstice in Sravistha--Dhanistha may be some 500 to 1,000 years after this.

The Rg Veda does not have Krttika in it. But it names probably only a few asterisms.


One of the closest things to a derivation is that Sunahshepa says Varuna moves the Moon across the constellations -- Rksa -- by night (Nakta). Naksatra is used in a fairly normal way. Despite such presences, I have spent time ignoring any possibility that concrete knowledge could be applied to them. This may be naive because it does not appear to be the job of anyone to teach what the stars are. Not physically by basic naming conventions.




To understand it, Book Ten may have some of the last material, but it has some of the oldest, as one of the most original Rishis is Ayasya:

abhi śyāvaṃ na kṛśanebhir aśvaṃ nakṣatrebhiḥ pitaro dyām apiṃśan | rātryāṃ tamo adadhur jyotir ahan bṛhaspatir bhinad adriṃ vidad gāḥ ||

“The protecting (deities) have decorated the heaven with constellations as (men decorate) a brown horse with golden trappings; they established darkness in the night and light in the day; Bṛhaspati fractured the rock and recovered the cows.”

Commentary by Sāyaṇa: Ṛgveda-bhāṣya
Protecting deities: pitṛs, or progenitors, the Aṅgirasas, who appear to have been among the ancient astronomers, the inventors of the lunar asterisms (nakṣatras)

You can't quite invent the daily path of the Moon, but you can give it mnemonics and attributions.


In the way we know them, Pleiades -- Seven Sisters appears to be post-Vedic. Krttika -- Cutters is more likely original, but, only by implication. The same logic however also applies in a case study of small populations. Korku is a Munda language found in isolated pockets all the way across central India to Maharashtra. This so-called "Australic" family has larger pockets in east India, but is most primordially expressed by Khmer:







What we can do is assess the relative chronology of something non-Zodiacal and without Naksatras. Something purely observational, not quite for navigational purposes, but based more on stars that are seen in a quite plain way.


Agricultural Scene

An excellent, very detailed set of interviews on a small-scale level across multiple villages is compiled in Korku Astronomy. They have absorbed several Indic elements, such as Shiva and Bhagwan, but otherwise they have no reflection of Vedic or Puranic culture. And it is actually in their myths of stars that one can see the brush of external influence.

If they did not "invent agriculture", let us see if the Krttika are in step with Vedic "old wealth", cattle:


The Korku also are fascinated by the Orion
region. They identify the belt of Orion as the
plough, and Rigel and Saiph as bullocks, even
though their involvement in agricultural activities
is a relatively recent phenomenon. Betelgeuse
is identified with the man ploughing the field.
They can see a whip in the fainter stars of
Orion, near Bellatrix, while some villagers (all
living in the forest) can see birds’ eggs at the
head of Orion (near Meissa).

Very few Korku
identified Taurus, but the Pleiades were identified in seven forest villages as the location of
minced cow meat, while four villages identified
it as a tool for beating wheat to remove the
husk.


While some beliefs, such as eggs seen in
Orion or the bird’s nest seen in Auriga were only
reported by forest villagers, and are easily
associated with a forest environment, minced
cow meat and cowherds—also reported only in
forest villages—are not. These relate more to a
pastoral existence, which was only introduced to
the Korku with agriculture. Meanwhile, other
typical forest elements, such as the bird and
eggs seen in Canis Minor, were reported by
forest and plains villagers.



In Hatida:


2) They know of the plough in Orion.
3) They know the Pleiades as the minced
meat of a cow.
4) They know Auriga as a bird’s nest, with
Capella as the bird and the southern
stars as eggs




We would surmise the forest dwellers have the older version, and plains dwellers adapted slightly different roles that likely represent "newer" or more complex agriculture. Auriga is then given one of the most Sanskritized names, Kunva (Well):


They
add that when it is seen in the west at
sunset the monsoon will arrive


With Auriga as a Well, the Bird moves and the tool or Krttika changes:

Pankheru (bird)


6) They identify Sirius as a (generic) bird
(pankharu) and Adhara and Wezen as
two eggs of the bird (Bhori Akkom).
7) They identify the Pleiades as Bhot Mungali (Mogari)—a tool used to beat wheat
to remove the husk


That constitutes a "modular unit of change", or something like that, three significant changes in a panorama.

Well, we found that ploughing comes from Kalibangan ca. 2,800. In Mesopotamia, Man-with-plough was the original sign that got transmuted to Aries in the post-Vedic era. In India, the man has a Korku -- Sanskrit name:


Nangarnara manus


who is Betelgeuse.


They refer to the belt of Orion as Harnangar—a plough with three blades.


2) They recognise the belt of Orion as
Harnagar—the plough.
3) They recognise the head of Orion as
Bhori Akkam—the eggs of a bird.
4) They recognise the Pleiades as the
minced meat of a cow.


4) They recognise that Orion is not seen
from April to September. This is because in April people plough the fields
and if they see the heavenly plough they
will imitate it. Hence the Gods hide the
plough during these months.


Nangar shows up as Marathi "plough" with "nara" and "manusa" being obvious enough.

In mainstream astrology, it is this Naksatra:


Ardra – "the storm god" Betelgeuse

Ardra simply means "wet".


The sign however is ruled by Rudra, who has to do with Waters and particularly Medicinal Waters.

It is notable the Korku generally recognize the sign Scorpio, but almost nothing else matches what we would call constellations.

Seeing that Aldebaran and parts of Taurus become overhauled as "thrashing ground", which is an operation of bullocks pulling a thresher around a pole, it was previously simpler:


6) They identified the Pleiades as the
minced meat of a cow (gai jijilu).
7) They identify Aldebaran as a cowherd
(bailmarya tara)


There is one more thing I know of that will nearly fill in a segment of arc for us: Tisya as a sky object in V.54 by Syavasva.

Tisya also has the connotation of a deity with Krsanu and Rudra in X.64 by Gaya Plata. Krsanu also has a type of earthly counterpart as somapalas and friends of Purukutsa by Kutsa Angiras.


Now, the interviewers believe that primordial forest myths are a holdout relic from the era of these "western Korku" emigrating from east India. That it is more pristine, reflects an older era. If so, what I am getting is that it is practically required to fill in the blanks, especially if Naksatras come from a pre-Vedic setting. The following arc will show us the beginning of the set up to the first point we can be sure we specifically found a Sanskrit asterism:


Krttika -- Pleiades, Agni; unknown in the Veda, shredded cow meat to the Korku

Rohini -- Aldebaran, Prajapati; untraceable in the Veda, cowherd to the Korku

Mrigasira -- Lambda Orionis, Soma; untraceable in the Veda, Eggs under the Bird (Capella) to the Korku

Ardra -- Betelgeuse, Rudra; inscrutable in Sanskrit, Man-with-plough to the Korku

Punarvasu -- Castor and Pollux, Aditi; unknown to Korku before Auriga-as-Well

Tisya or Pusya, faint stars in Karka -- Cancer, Brhaspati; unused portion of the sky for the Korku



What seems obvious is that Orion isn't anything, that bright stars can be whole people, such that Aldebaran and Betelgeuse are distinct individuals with animals and plough.

However, Eggs under a Bird are a constellation, binding together Mrgasira and Capella.

Aldebaran is the tara or star of or similar to Venus:


5) They recognise Venus as rising at sunset and sunrise. The morning star is
called Suko and the evening star Bel
Marya


i. e., the Evening Star is the time when Shepherds return home.

But, if we scrutinize that for a moment, whether it is for a "cow" or is a generic "herdsman", it is effectively the epithet "Shepherd" and, fairly enough, approximately close to the epithet "Prajapati".


This is where I think they foul up Vedic history completely. The Brahmanas talk about a rivalry or duel between Visvamitra and Vasistha. There is no hint of this in the Rg Veda. Visvamitra simply isn't there any more. The guy could have croaked normally. Note you also don't get an "exit scene" for King Sudas. In fact, there is almost no such "dynastic information", you don't see "X died and was replaced by Y" in hardly any cases (if any). Visvamitra is a bridge between the Kausikas/Gathin Kausika and the lineage of Prajapati.

In Rg Veda, we find "Prajapati" as a Rishi name as well as a Divine name. It refers to:


Savitr by Vamadeva

Indra by Asita Kasyapa


and in Book Ten:

Himself by Surya Savitri

Himself by Hiranyagarbha Prajapatya

Himself by Sabara Kaksivata

Himself by Tvastr Prajapatya



We already find two "descendants of Prajapati", who is the author of III.38.


His full name appears at III.54:


Ṛṣi (sage/seer): prajāpatirvaiśvāmitro vācyo vā


where there is some very indirect astronomy in verse 5:

Who knows what is the truth, or who may here declare it? What is the proper path that leads to the gods? Their inferior abiding places are beheld, as are those which (are situated) in superior mysterious rites.”

Commentary by Sāyaṇa: Ṛgveda-bhāṣya
Abiding places are beheld: as the constellations; superior mysterious rites: in the latter they are made known, it is said, by the Veda

Then, to compensate for the nearly-non-existent Visvamitra Gotra, we might say that, following this Prajapati, is perhaps the most important statement in the whole Rg Veda according to the Rishi of V.33-4:


uta tye mā paurukutsyasya sūres trasadasyor hiraṇino rarāṇāḥ | vahantu mā daśa śyetāso asya gairikṣitasya kratubhir nu saśce ||


Ṛṣi (sage/seer): saṃvaraṇaḥ prājāpatyaḥ



Note that this Samvarana character is known later to Srustigu Kanva:


manau sāṃvaraṇau

“As you did drink, O Indra, the effused Soma beside Manu, the descendant of Saṃvaraṇa, by Nīpātithi and Medhyātithi, by Puṣṭigu and Śruṣṭigu, O Maghavan (so do you drink it here).”



There is also a minor chain of these two among the sub-composers at IX.101.10:

Ṛṣi (sage/seer): manuḥ sāṃvaraṇaḥ


X.101.13:

Ṛṣi (sage/seer): prajāpatiḥ



So we would say that Manu Samvarana is roughly contemporaneous to Manu Vaivasvata, both of whom represent the major height of the Vedic system, and they are preceded by one or more other Manus.



Now. At the furthest outreach. Lambda Orionis was Eggs during a time that only requires ploughing, i. e., Kalibangan ca. 2,800. But then in pre-Vedic Sanskrit ca. 2,300, it is a Deer Head.

The Rg Veda does not support any Brahma and Rohini stories, but, it does have a quintessential deer-like enemy.

It must, in fact, be a primordial Indra lesson from the Old Books.


There is Indra defeating:

Mrga the Danava by Gauriviti Saktya

Weapon of Mrga, slew the Danava by Gatu Atreya (then Susna or another form appears)

assisting Usana against Mrga, as we have just seen from Samvarana Prajapatya

overpowering Mrgaya and Arbuda by Medhyatithi Kanva


Book Ten, Anga Aurava, Rjisvan v. Pipru

Book One, Savya Angiras, Rjisvan v. Pipru


Perhaps most poignantly is the statement by Gauriviti:


You have subjugated Pipru and the mighty Mṛgayā for the sake of Ṛjiṣvan, the son of Vidathin...

or that Vamro Vaikhanasa calls him Rjisvan Ausija.

Rjisvan is Kaksivan, or his brother?


The foe is in Book Ten spoken by Indra Vaikuntha:


Mṛgaya under subjection to Śrutarvan...I humiliated Veśa for Āyu; I subjugated Padgṛbhi for Savya.


There it is in fact possible that Ayu is a person. However the "deer" seems to have been defeated by someone different. This will again obviate the Puranas because according to Gopavana Atreya:


Śrutarvān, the mighty son of Ṛkṣa


Then it is only necessary to say:


ārkṣe

as donors for Priyamedha.

That is, "sons of Rksa" would have been a stock phrase at his time.

Either Rksa and Srutarvan are Vidathin and Rjisvan, or, they are close allies. Both contest Mrgaya.


Consequently, Rjisvan becomes a composer in Book Six. This is why we would say Priyamedha and some other Kanvas are quite old, while there are others in the age of Atreyas, all trying to retain some of the same memories while adding new ones.

If there was any kind of star myth being crafted, it would be Indra defeats Mrga. This event would not have the antiquity to explain a meaning or name that might have been taken up during IVC. It is given distasteful associations of mayavin and dasa with geographical mention of Arbuda. So you would be talking about rubbing shoulders with "western Korku" and others. That is because it is also a Soma-producing region. So with this early conflict, and then examples with Agastya and the Atreyas, certainly seems to suggest greater access through the "wilderness", which seems in keeping with the Rishis' knowledge or Astrology in the megalith culture of south India by 1,500 or possibly before.

It sounds to me like the Veda is imposing the Agni series of deities onto extant stars that are being harnessed as Naksatras in a meaningful way. The first important series of asterisms has no visibility throughout the Rg Veda, while it is an entire scene in "agricultural magic" in a peculiar way, it must have been important to be remembered by forest hunter-gatherers who have nothing really to do with its origin. However we observe the spread of Rice Agriculture from the lower Ganges to IVC. It would be a close parallel of the plough of Kalibangan and quite possibly a continuous bloc of Munda speakers, who are probably behind the entire western distribution of chicken and rice.

As Arbuda is also inhabited by Kadru and the Sarpas, then, there is another Sanskrit rationale for the Aslesa sign.


The point is to try to isolate the oldest examples of usage. This probably would not inform, but may approximate, IVC script subjects.


Also:

The Gond community of India knows the asterism as Tipan (Three Stars). They know that the monsoon comes when Tipan appears at sunset. Orion’s Belt and Sword are called Naagarda (a plough). When they appear in the early night sky, they signal the beginning of the farming season.

Gond Astronomy is similar but flat in some details, although here and throughout Maharashtra tribals, the plough is the same everywhere. The Korku demonstrate "layering" the best. But what we are seeing is a conflux of Australics and Dravidians in the same region of the latest IVC phase, e. g. Daimabad up to about 1,600.

It may be that IVC sees a quite similar "agricultural scene" around Orion. When this sets, Scorpio rises, which is why that is the only other section of sky discussed here. If not the entire sign, at least part of it is associated with the scorpion.


Finally, for the Moon, we expect the Veda to be obstinate and recalcitrant. The moon disappears in the "Soma" subject, and, as the alternative, the expression candra is very common as "shining", "high quality", or "gold". This translates to "self-illuminating":

svaścandram


whereas Usas has a gold chariot:


candrarathā


She's not in the Chariot of the Moon. So we have to be careful on narrowing it down.

The Moon is like gold because both shine due to reflected sunlight.

At least in character, the term "soma" associates more to "cool rays", such that moonlight is seen as being almost entirely beneficial, whereas the sun is aggressive and threatening and actually damaging sometimes. It's raw power and re-transmitted power.



This is important because "Soma or Chandra" is the deity of Meissa or Mrgasira. The first five deities of the Naksatras are also the lords of the five years of a Yuga. Moon is right beside Rudra. If Soma is also a drink sometimes just called "waters", and, Rudra is pre-eminently Medicinal Waters and in the sign "Wet", something is going on here.


It is possible to mete out a few examples where Candra = Moon. Gotama Rahugana on Horse Head:


They found on this occasion the light of Tvaṣṭā verily concealed in the mansion of the moving moon.

atrāha gor amanvata nāma tvaṣṭur apīcyam | itthā candramaso gṛhe ||



Enfolded in praise by Gaya Plata:


To Narasamsa and to Pusan I sing forth, unconcealable Agni kindied by the Gods.
To Sun and Moon, two Moons, to Yama in the heaven, to Trita, Vata, Dawn, Night, and the Atvins Twain.



Almost at the end of the whole Rg Veda in X.190:


From Tapas kindled to its height Eternal Law and Truth were born:
Thence was the Night produced, and thence the billowy flood of sea arose.

From that same billowy flood of sea the Year was afterwards produced,
Ordainer of the days nights, Lord over all who close the eye.

Dhatar, the great Creator, then formed in due order Sun and Moon.
He formed in order Heaven and Earth, the regions of the air, and light.


The due order is the other way around in Purusha Sukta:


candramā manaso jātaś cakṣoḥ sūryo ajāyata |



You could call it his "mind", but, this is magic in Heaven; the Soul of Purusha becomes the Moon.

This Sukta has the all-important Viraj and refers to Three Seasons in the sacrifice of Purusha.


We can be fairly confident Soma = Moon when found in Yajur Veda Navagraha Suktam:


Apsu may somo abraveedh,
Anthar viswani bheshaja,
Anim cha vishwa shambhuvam,
Aapascha viswabheshaji

Moon has told me,
All medicines are in water,
And the fire bestows happiness of all,
And waters are the panacea



This ends on something very unusual. We don't get an equivalent "Soma = Moon", but, we can find it as a name rather than a beverage. Whether it means that beverage or the Moon remains to be seen.

These are grammatically dual; when we see names like "Maitravaruna", they are not compounds, but conjunctions, of two distinct entities being called together, often followed by phrases like "the two of you". There is no confusion when there is something famous stuck to a different something famous. In the case of Soma, there is a whole heap of conjunctions:


Agnisoma I.93 by Gautama Rahugana

Indrasoma in II.30

Indrasoma gives light to Usas in VI.72

Indrasoma in VII.35 with other compounds, e. g. Indrapusan

Indrasoma as Bulls in VII.104


we are able to find only a few solo occurrences:


Soma perhaps equivalent to Indu in VIII.48

Soma as protection in VIII.79, followed by dwelling in the Heart; a complete Soma hymn

Agnisoma Punarvasu in X.19

Soma with the spirit/soul (manas) still within us in X.57

Agnisoma in X.66



That notches up the "year arc" we started since after Ardra comes Punarvasu (Castor and Pollux).

I was going to ignore it as a potential Naksatra name because it just has a generic meaning, "wealthy again", but here we have a dual name besides something that refers to "twin stars".

Concretely, "the Vasus" or Vasavas, the ranks of Vasistha, "provider of dwellings", must have been the social fabric for unspoken time in the "Ikshvaku" or "Ayodhya" setting.

The Veda does not really tell us anything about Mandhata; the Puranas say he crossed over to the west and defeated those raiding bandits, or Panis, etc., which may be reflected in the aridization of Balochistan from around 2,000. Therefor the IVC seals should utterly fail to have anything to do with the Vedic backstory. They should have something to to with the prior underlying ethos, and Krttika was the equinox during most of IVC, regardless of what anything else says.

Because Five is so very weird and seemingly powerful in the IVC script, that would be grounds for considering a five-year Yuga and the first five Naksatras starting at Krttika.

It is noticeable that Moon is not quite deified in Rg Veda, until we find it separating the more primeval Indragni.

Of course, this is how the script and particularly the "story of Five" seems to work.

Maybe that is "informative" to Vedic logic, some of these basic pairs being moved around. I have not tried to look for that. The Rishis' names follow a framework as well, in the sense that occasionally they carry a third name, reflecting on its importance. And so if you look at the "black Veda" so to speak, which is probably the real origin, then it is really an Iksvaku saga:


Pururavas -- Vasistha

Mandhata -- as "confirmed" by existence rather than information

Trasadasyu Paurukutsa Gairiksita


The picture is rather that the perhaps minor kingdom of the Bharatas had decayed, and Trasadasyu becomes probably the single-most powerful and important individual by making some kind of huge and glorious realm, around the time of Kasyapa and the Tarksyas or Trksis, Arstisenas, as again Ikshvakus. The notable part of the "established system" is that the third name refers to a temple or pilgrimage site of Vishnu Trivikrama, who holds the major key to the theology on a personal practice level.

The "white Veda" on the other hand might be called that of Manu and transmissions retained in continuity.

It is intriguing that the Scorpion may be part of Scorpio without the whole sign as we know it. The creature would be opposite a three-bladed plough. Those might be IVC ideas. It would have simply physically been the case. As to whether they evolve the Yuga or Naksatras, I don't know we have tried asking it.

[shaberon]

Moon and Soma Book Nine



Before returning to the glyphs, this will be another look at the Sanskrit Moon by ejecting later material.


We have gotten to 2,300 as the epoch of the oldest known Soma Presses, and the Pleiades Equinox that matches the Krttika-first list of Naksatras.

Of course, there is probably something to both of those that antedates these facts, but those are fairly concrete evidence, and quite germane to Sanskrit.


Book Nine of Rg Veda is often called "Soma Mandala" although its main focus is probably Pavamana (purification). It's not really a quest for raw materials, but, a physical filtration combined with a magical charge-up. As far as we can tell, this is identical to not just IVC Unicorn but the whole milieu of Monumental Objects. However it may not be in Kot Diji "pre-script", it may not be an archaic Iranian diffusion, it may be an Afghan concoction, or Pamiri or Kopet Dag, from within the Bronze Age. It could be from the Sivaliks, Aravallis, or Vindhyas in the same way. It could even be from the plains with a preference for mountain varieties.


Enigmatically, the Moon does not turn out to be obvious in IVC script, and, it is not obvious in the Veda either, even though tracking it is the basis for the Naksatras, and it is one of the most basic things for any culture to speak of.


We found that candra is frequently an adjective, but candramas designates a mobile orb, understood as Soma:

At times, Soma is the celestial Moon described in Atharva Veda 10 & 11.6.9 which says “Soma; whom the learned men call Chandrama the Moon making all delight” and “The Supreme Being keeps making Soma, the eternal delight”

This is clear. But there are so many instances of "Soma", does anyone have a grasp on its meanings?

These are a few more cited suggestions:

Soma is the home of ṛta RV1.43, Soma is also the juice of a plant used in Yagna as a substitute for Amṛta.

This amṛta significantly applies to Soma and Rudra, later to Agni RV7.4.6 and the Maruts; but in a few instances, it applies to Mitra-Varuna as they are the deliverers of Soma. Soma and amṛta signify truth, medicines, knowledge, health, and immortality which are the same as Rudra, as he is pra-jāḥ amṛtasya “immortals family possessing the amṛta” and parasmin dhāman ṛtasya “home to the highest truth (ṛtasya)” RV1.43.


Like all Devas is Rudra also offered Soma? It is on very rare occasions that Rudra is offered Soma, in those rare occasions it’s in a metaphorical sense because Soma is already conjoined with Rudra, why? Because Soma-Rudra becomes conceptually one entity in many hymns and the very first homage to Rudra is conjoined with Soma RV1.43, but this duality soon becomes one in Rig Veda 6.74

Soma is also used as a synonym for amṛta and it is this Soma that the Devas compete RV1.108

Here's another one. From a study that adds the epithet Vanaspati, this is perhaps similar to Contest Heroine:

The charm to crush the tigers belongs to Atharvan and is born of Soma. The strength of Soma is at the basis of such power of the charm.

- AV IV.3.7

As a form of Giriksita:

The Soma plant is once in the Rigveda described as maujavata, which according to later statements would mean produced on Mount Mujavat. Soma is also several times described as dwelling in the mountains (giristha) or growing in the mountains (parvatavridh).

Twenty-four varieties are recorded, beginning:


Amshuman, Munjavan, Candramah...


crafted into multiple recipes:

The purified (unmixed) Soma juice is often called Suddha (pure), but much oftener sukra, or suci, ‘bright’. This unmixed Soma is offered almost exclusively to Vayu and Indra, the epithet sucipa ‘drinking clear (Soma)’ being distinctive of Vayu, but is admixed with milk for Mitravaruna and with honey for the Ashvins.


Soma is identified in the Rigveda as having three classes of admixture (tryasir), with milk (gavasir), sour milk (dadhyasir) and barley (yavasir). The admixture is figuratively called a garment (vastra, vasas, atka) or a shining robe (nirnij).

Three Mountains:

The abode (sadhastha) of Soma is referred to frequently and once, however, mention is made of three, which he occupies when purified, the epithet ‘trisadhastha’, having three abodes, being also applied to him. These three abodes may already designate the three tubes used at the Soma ritual. The epithet ‘tripristha’ three backed is peculiar to Soma.

It is really "three backs" or "three roofs".

The Veda does to some extent continue a "horns" motif:

Soma being so frequently called a bull (ukshan, vrishan, vrishabha) is sharp-horned (tigmashringa), an epithet especially applied to the Moon in Yajurveda which in five of its six occurrences in the Rigveda is associated with a word meaning bull.


It is an immortal stimulant I.84.4

Soma is immortal and the Gods drank him for immortality IX.106.8

He confers immortality on the Gods and on men VIII.48.3

He places his worshippers in the everlasting and imperishable world where there is eternal light and glory and makes him immortal where king Vaivasvata lives I.113.7

Soma is the ‘soul of Sacrifice’ IX.2.10

rishikrit, ‘the maker of seers’ IX.96.18

The closest thing I can find to one of those last references is Vivasvatis invited to a Soma Offering. I.113 is something else.

There is no dispute about its connotation of "Amrta", but the rest of these need to be reviewed.

If it is supposed to be "early", I.43 is by Kanva Ghaura, and interestingly it is a Kad or "when" hymn, whereas we have seen "Ka" and "Ko" more prevalently, these being mostly what we call "rhetorical" questions. Then it seeks to cause Aditi to give us the gifts of Rudra. The quotes that were attributed to Rudra are really from the first line addressed to Soma. The two seem "closely related", but there isn't anything technically explaining this. It's typical for a hymn to switch deities from line to line, which in itself is not enough to show identity, relation, etc., although here, you certainly get a sense of the same work continuing.

This is much more basic.


VI.74 was horribly understated. First of all the dualization has been reversed:

somārudrā dhārayethām asuryam


Suddenly that's the order of two Naksatras, and we are asking them for the One Power called Asura. Moreover, the entirety of my current ethos is summed up by their unknown possessions we call the Seven Jewels of Enlightenment:


sapta ratnā dadhānā


There are a few brief normal invocations, and then the introduction of a catharsis or spiritual crisis, where in reality we are guilty of something, which causes us mental anguish. Therefor we are seeking Liberation from Sin which is called:

varuṇasya pāśād


The Noose of Varuna.


We would associate it with control of the Underworld. Here we find it in an unmistakable duality of the Old Books.

Saunaka says after the Seven Jewels, it is supposed to be Cakravartin Abhyavartin which is why in the last hymn of Book Six, Payu does a sort of Brahma Varma with limited use of deities, but including:



“May the brāhmaṇas, the progenitors presenters of the Soma, the observers of truth, protect us; may the faultless heaven and earth be propitious to us; may Pūṣan preserve us from misfortune, let no calumniator prevail over us.”

may Soma speak to us encouragement

somas tvā rājāmṛtenānu vastām |


and so even there it soaked us in Amrta. The hymn sanctifies arrows and other "things", and is not clearly about a person or deity, but does show Soma as important for success. Besides Indra, it is the only thing regularly attributed with defeating enemies.

On the other hand, Buddha Gavisthira Atreyi says that Agni brings the Seven Jewels into every house.

I think that is the point of the Veda. Something that was originally unknown and brought in by force, becomes stable throughout all communities. The Seven Jewels are iterated by one of the earlier Rishis, and then by Atreya's daughter, spanning some eighty per cent of the content.



In IX.2 by Medhatithi, Indu is the original Atma of the Yajna. Close to, but not exactly the remark given. I have not tried to finesse the vocabulary in this book, mainly because it's not easy to distinguish "soma" as a proper or common noun, or "indu", but of course the practice overall is based on Soma Offering, which in some way must be differentiated from that of the IVC times.






Candramas arises in some lore standards:


Lament of Trita Aptya

Water Moon


There, it is just a term, not quite deified. The Moon is not clearly, or at least not vividly, deified in the Veda, which doesn't add up, compared to how the sun is. This can be fixed immediately. A subtle juxtaposition is seen in the verses of Surya Savitri as first for "the two":

Devatā (deity/subject-matter): somārkau


then:

Devatā (deity/subject-matter): candramāḥ

“New every day (the moon) is born; the manifester of days he goes on front of the Dawns; he distributes their portion to the gods as he goes; the moon protracts a long existence.”


The Mansions of the Moon impart qualities or attributes to Usas, and fastens them to the Deva Loka. This suggests that its house at sunrise is more significant than its transit during the day, but all we can be sure of is he is acting like a mirror. At any rate, we can be sure he has mantras, which, here, follow the trend of "Soma" being used in combinations, and Candramas by itself.

At that, examples such as Agnisoma are proliferous, while so far there is *one* Somarka and *one* Somarudra.




We found an interesting comment where someone thinks Book Two "starts" the Rg Veda. This isn't so chronologically, however I would agree it is true in terms of an entering wedge that we do not have for IVC. It is the most concise and important synopsis, almost to the extent of a textbook, for a headstart on how everything works. As mentioned, the pure historical Veda goes back to fragments (which are partially solvable); but everything known about the practice stems from Ten Rishi Gotras, identifiable not by founders but by Apri Hymns, and here we get something that originates with Dirghatamas.

He did not call it that and probably did not know there was such a thing; it is a style of hymn that refers to most of the main ritual components. The other Apri Hymns repeat this convention while changing the phrasing mildly. These can be "layered" fairly easily.

His first one is nearly unattributed, since it is remembered as the Apri of Angiras Gotra.

But then he has one of the first attested descriptions of a 360-degree circle, and so he has been noted for a few things, but not given a clear picture.

His group of hymns is like a continuous strand; I.162 certainly superficially looks like a Horse Sacrifice, but, if we probe it for symbolic meanings, the deity or subject is Reality Source Mitradayo.

This is the same expression we still use, an ending with -daya, and moreover when he calls Soma "udaka" this is the very same as in Vajrodaka or Vajra Udaka Tantra. This archaic guy with no lineage named after him, has all of the linguistic foundation. But he is effectively the transmitting Angiras Rishi, of whom everyone else is a minor modification.


In a strand of deities emitted through Mitra, there is an unusual compound with Life:


aryamāyur


we find the generic meaning of "Vidathin":


vidathe < vidatha
[noun], locative, singular, neuter

“meeting; wisdom; council.”



Aside from the Horse, the Goat comes in as a Visvarupa:


...the various-coloured goat going before him, bleating, becomes an acceptable offering to Indra and Pūṣan.

A black goat is also dedicated to pūṣan, along with soma (Yajus. xxix.58)

“This goat, the portion of Puṣan fit for all the gods, is brought first with the fleet courser, so that Tvaṣṭā may prepare him along with the horse, as an acceptable preliminary offering for the (sacrificial) food.”

It is exactly here the Goat is given the apparent "Hotr" role also simply that of Agni:

...the goat, the portion of Pūṣan, goes first, announcing the sacrificer to the gods.

atrā pūṣṇaḥ prathamo bhāga eti yajñaṃ devebhyaḥ prativedayann ajaḥ ||

If we tend to think the Horse updates prior mythology, then again, this role of Goat could be a carry-over from IVC. The capability of Tvastr to mantrify it may be as well. Pusan may be a little harder to detect, but might occur with Ghee.




From the translations, one misses Rtu and the other, Tvastr:



Of Tvastar's Charger there is one dissector, -- this is the custom-two there are who guide him.

There is one immolator of the radiant horse, which is Time; there are two that hold him fast

ekas tvaṣṭur aśvasyā viśastā dvā yantārā bhavatas tatha ṛtuḥ |




In actuality, the hymns go on to something about a Magic Horse:

“Your great birth, O Horse, is to be glorified; whether first springing from the firmament or from the water inasmuch as you have neighed (auspiciously), for you have the wings of the falcon and the limbs of the deer.”

“Trita harnessed the horse which was given by yama; Indra first mounted him, and gandharva seized his reins. Vasus, you fabricated the horse from the sun.”

The translations again have difficulty expressing it as a Samaya with Soma:

“You horse are Yama and you are Āditya; you are Trita by a mysterious act; you are associated with Soma. The sages have said there are three bindings of you in heaven.”

Yama art thou, O Horse; thou art Aditya; Trita art thou by secret operation.



ási yamó ásy ādityó arvann ási tritó gúhyena vraténa
ási sómena samáyā vípṛkta āhús te trī́ṇi diví bándhanāni

This is no mundane topic, it's completely mystic:

Thyself from far I recognized in spirit, -- a Bird that from below flew through the heaven.
I saw thy head still soaring, striving upward by paths unsoiled by dust, pleasant to travel.

ātmā́naṃ te mánasārā́d ajānām avó divā́ patáyantam pataṃgám
šíro apašyam pathíbhiḥ sugébhir areṇúbhir jéhamānam patatrí

Sayana says this is a "mane", but the text actually says Horse with Horns:


hiraṇyaśṛṅgo


Horns made of gold hath he: his feet are iron: less fleet than he, though swift as thought, is Indra.

híraṇyašṛňgó 'yo asya pā́dā mánojavā ávara índra āsīt




fleet as thought, Indra is his inferior (in speed)

the first who mounted the horse was Indra.




Further along is some very difficult conceptualization about Horses and Cars:

“They yoke the seven (horses) to the one-wheeled car; one horse, named seven, bears it along; the three-axled wheel is undecaying, never loosened, and in it all these regions of the universe abide.”

“The seven who preside over this seven-wheeled chariot (are) the seven horses who draw it; seven sisters ride in it together, and in are deposited the seven forms of utterance.”

This may be a clearer expression of numerology:

what is that one alone, who has upheld these six spheres in the form of the unborn?


The one sole (sun), having three mothers and three fathers

Three mothers and three fathers: the three worlds, earth, sky, heaven; and the three deities presiding over them: agni, vāyu, sūrya

Expressions of The Year:

“The twelve-spoked wheel, of the true (sun) revolves round the heavens, and never (tends) to decay; seven hundred and twenty children in pairs, Agni, abide in it.”

“They have termed the five-footed, twelve-formed parent, Puriṣin, when in the further hemisphere of the sky; and others have termed it Arpita, when in the hither (portion of the sky); shining in his seven-wheeled (car), each (wheel) having six spokes.”


“He who knows the protector of this (world) as the inferior associated with the superior, and the superior associated with the inferior, he is, as it were, a sage; but who in this world can expound (it); whence is the divine mind in its supremacy engendereḍ ”

Well, it is very rarely the Rishis push us to a vocabulary lesson, so we should perhaps take a look at what sounds like the Solstice tracks.


Purīṣin (पुरीषिन्).—[adjective] dwelling in or on the earth


This has another Vedic parallel where it may be riverine:


sarayuḥ purīṣiṇy


The next expression "Arpita" has meanings such as "to place", "insert", "offer", which seems generic but this has some very specific and limited applications in Rg Veda. For instance, it is the Mundane Egg placed upon the Navel of the Unborn:


ajasya nābhāv adhy ekam arpitaṃ


Goat rider Pusan placed over the whole world:


ajāśvaḥ paśupā vājapastyo dhiyaṃjinvo bhuvane viśve arpitaḥ |



Then we will find it in one of the largest hymns, from Book Nine, as used by three different authors, although it is the same phrase in each case.

Sikata Nivavari:

drāpiṃ vasāno yajato divispṛśam antarikṣaprā bhuvaneṣv arpitaḥ | svar jajñāno nabhasābhy akramīt pratnam asya pitaram ā vivāsati ||


He, clad in mail that reaches heaven, the Holy One, filling the firmament stationed amid the worlds,
Knowing. the realm of light, hath come to us in rain: he summons to himself his own primeval Sire.



Three Sages:


indo bhúvaneṣv árpitaḥ

placed upon the waters

Indu, mid the worlds of life




Atri:

vimāno ahnām bhuvaneṣv arpitaḥ |

placed in the firmament as the measure of days

Dweller in floods, King, foremost, he displays his might, set among living things as measurer of days.
Distilling oil he flows, fair, billowy, golden-hued, borne on a car of light, sharing one home with wealth.


We will just cite those and note the "Bhuvaneshvar" connotation. Atri seems to have used it twice.





For Dirghatamas, the main subject was again translated as Soul of the Year between Surya and Sarasvati in I.164.48:


Devatā (deity/subject-matter): saṃvatsarātmā kālaḥ



which is where he introduces the Sadhya class of deities:


yatra pūrve sādhyāḥ santi devāḥ ||


Thus, the Sadhyas are not a Puranic contrivance; both they and the Rbhus are quite prominent in Vedic lore, in importance if not frequent appearance. Just like IVC, something may only be seen one or three times, but the point is it is following the same ruleset. Dirghatamas "introduces" many things to us, but I'm not sure he invented any.


In VI.44, Samyu literally refers to "Soma" in verse 20, and re-iterates it in synonyms such as Madhu and Amrta:

ayam akṛṇod uṣasaḥ supatnīr ayaṃ sūrye adadhāj jyotir antaḥ | ayaṃ tridhātu divi rocaneṣu triteṣu vindad amṛtaṃ nigūḻham ||


“This Soma made the dawns happily wedded to the sun; this Soma placed the light within the solar orb; this (Soma) has found the threefold ambrosia hidden in heaven in the three bright regions.”

Lost in translation, the Atharva Veda reference in Sanskrit to "Tiger" uses the downflow of Sindhu and Vanaspati as the direction of falling. The translation garbled that into Celestial Tree. It's not, it's Vanaspati flowing downwards like rivers.


This adversary is Mrga:


Let the beast's teeth be broken off, shivered and shattered be
his ribs!
Slack be thy bowstring: downward go the wild beast that
pursues the hare!


and it is a dual power:

Indra's and Soma's child, thou art Atharvan's tiger-crushing
charm.


This "hare" is indicated by:

cʰaśayúr


in this sense:

...in the Atharva Veda, a few unspecified animals were described as Sasayu in the sense that they lurk to catch hares as prey. The Satapata Brahmana (XI. I. 5. 3), a commentary on the Sukla Yajur Veda, and Jaiminiya Brahmana (I. 2. 8) of the Sama Veda mention the presence of the hare in the moon. The Aaranyaparva of the Mahabharata also mentions the hare as a breakfast item, a lake named Sesa Tirtha, and also the rabbit-bearing moon (III. 226. 2). Further, Sanskrit names like Sasadhara and Sachin mean ‘marked by hare’ i.e., the moon.

The Rg Veda has a single Hare:


The hare grasps the assailing beast of prey

śaśaḥ kṣuram pratyañcaṃ

Kṣuram= a long hard, sharp claw, like a razor, belonging to lion, tiger, etc., i.e., a strong fierce wild beast


That one is a "reverse" about the weak overcoming the strong, pebbles smash mountains, as if this hare had Atharvan's Tiger Charm.


I see a progression of metaphors. The Tiger is defeated first because it is the fastest and most dangerous thing. But this is rare enough as to be unrealistic. The more expected adversaries are the Wolf and the Thief, which are widely distributed across a number of Rg Vedic hymns, and the Tiger is not.

That remains similar to Contest Heroine if it has any connotation of "solves all problems", like the first domino.

I don't think anyone ever stood in the road making attacking tigers expire by singing.

I do think it is a realistic metaphor about taking care of the quickest and most obvious things first, while the true challenges like to hide and keep coming back up. Those, in turn, represent the inner meaning of most Vedic hymns, or, their usage is to make examples for things to be understood as symbolic of angst and struggle.


The Rg Veda has some clans that have not been studied that are its story. In terms of objective history or its relative chronology, the Varsagiras are hugely important in the wake of whatever happened to Sudas or his successor. This, so to speak, re-instates Ikshvaku priests or promotes them. In terms of the knowledge base or inner meaning, a very important group is the Vatarasanas, identified by their followers as joint composers of X.136 and self-named in the mantra:


munayo vātaraśanāḥ


A Vedic Muni is a rare spawn, a follower of Wind Family. This is also known by Vasistha.


Now, it will force a linguistic float, because its only other mention is by Irimbithi Kanva:


vāstoṣ pate dhruvā sthūṇāṃsatraṃ somyānām | drapso bhettā purāṃ śaśvatīnām indro munīnāṃ sakhā ||


He asks for Indra's friendship to the Munis. He is speaking self-inclusively as a follower of something known to Vasistha.

The line before this is subject to mis-interpretation, if thought of as individual people. This is an entire Indra hymn, so it is talking about his metaphorical parent:


yas te śṛṅgavṛṣo napāt praṇapāt kuṇḍapāyyaḥ | ny asmin dadhra ā manaḥ ||


“(Indra), who was the offspring of Śṛṅgavṛṣa, of whom the kuṇḍapāyya rite was the protector, (the sages) have fixed (of old) their minds upon this ceremony.”


There, we have something quite possibly Dravidian:


Kunda Apayya


and yet he has framed it in the past tense.

As we have seen, Kunda becomes applied to Auriga, which is not a constellation definable by Nakshatras. It's not a word otherwise known to the Rg Veda.



Wind Family has only potentially a couple of named descendants in Book Ten:


168 Anila VAtAyana

186 Ula VAtAyana


This is going to get a little weird. It's the Unicorn. In folklore, we have Ekasrnga also called Rishi Asrnga. And in the Veda we find important uses of Horns -- and Soma rushing through the Filter is sharpening its Horns -- but there is no Unicorn. In fact, the closest thing we can find is a version of the Anukramani that individually names the Vatarasanas:



Ṛṣya-śṛṅga, Etaśa, Karikrata, Jūti, Vāta-jūti, Vipra-jūta, and Vṛṣāṇaka


This is done just before a hymn attributed to Seven Sages, X.137, which does not name them.

Seven Sages are also credited with Soma Pavamana IX.107, and not known personally.

I don't know if the named Vatarasanas should automatically be impressed to the anonymous Seven Sages that follow them, because I am not sure that phrase is reducible to anything specific. Instead, I take them as a kind of IVC-like riddle; if there were seven, you could say of any of them, "he was first" and it is technically true. On the other hand, it might be one person with seven aliases.



The only thing that is not terribly obscure about this is Etasa.

In fact, he was brought into the fold right in the line after Pipru vs. Rjisvan:


“Indra, the granter of wished-for felicity, compelled the many-fraudulent Etaśa and Dasoṇi, Tūtuji, Tugra and Ibha, always to come submissively to (the rājā) Dyotana, as a son (comes before a mother).”


they were guilty of:

daśamāyaṃ


i. e., craft or maya of the Dasas. And so here we see it is possible to confess or repent, etc., and not just be obliterated due to birth. Consequently, Tugra is very famous.

Etasa is known in a certain way, which is confusing for Surya -- Sun, but properly sorted by Nodha:

Indra has defended the pious sacrificer Etaśa when contending with Sūrya, the son of Svaśva.


Surya is a person, and the crisis as described by Kaksivan:


having driven those who offer no sacrifices to the opposite bank of the ninety rivers


It sounds like the side Etasa was on, or, he has literally switched sides as this "expulsion region" is being formed.

So it is probably not "the sun" as translated in the following statements from Vamadeva:


for the sake of a mortal, discomfited the sun, and have protected Etaśa


Medhatithi and Medhyatithi:


“When Sūrya harassed Etaśa, Śatakratu conveyed (to his aid) Kutsa, the son of Arjuni, with his two prancing horses (swift) as the wind, and stealthily approached the irresistible Gandharva.”


Gauriviti:


“Then, for this exploit, all the gods gave you Maghavan, in succession, the Soma beverage; whence you have retarded, for the sake of Etaśa, the advancing horses of the sun.”


Grtsamada:


“The divine Indra, when lauded (by Etaśa), humbled the Sun (in behalf) of the mortal who offered to him the libation; for the munificent Etaśa presented him with mysterious and inestimable riches; as (a father gives) his portion (to a son).”


Vamadeva:


“He has hurled the wheel (of the chariot) of the sun, and has stopped Etaśa going forth to (battle); the dark undulating cloud bedews him, (staying) at the root of radiance in the regions of its waters.”



The better explanation is probably not from later commentaries, but a single Vedic mantra. It's not the sun. It's a person of that name.





Book Nine is really the Kasyapas' book. It begins with a "composers' nucleus" similar to Book One and Book Eight. It is by force an accumulation, as it goes through the Kasyapas and maybe to "the end", but it also has archaic parts.

The nucleus is immediately visible from an Anukramani chart:


1
Madhucchandas Vishwamitra

2
Medhatithi Kanva

3
Sunahshepa Ajigarti

4
Hiranyastupa Angiras


That's the condensed version of the very beginning of the current Rg Veda redaction. Book Eight is a little different, as it places several non-Kanva authors around the middle, such as Kasyapa Marica of Book Nine and so on.


This book uses Indra regularly, and has limited or single references to allied forces like Vishnu. Its only mention of "Gva" is from the backstoried Uru Angiras:


By whom Dadhyac Navagva opens fastened doors, by whom the sages gained their wish,
By whom they won the fame of lovely Amrta in the felicity of Gods.


who has followers in Book Ten:


ANga Aurava: X.138

HavirdhAna ANgi: X. 11 -12


"Son of Uru" is not the same as Vedic Aurva:

aurvabhṛguvac


So it is breadcrumbed, using a minor reference by Uru to infer something expressed in greater detail elsewhere.

In other areas, it does a particular form of its own construction.

Another one who might as well be called the Architect is Ucathya. I started noticing that Book Nine has a large amount of quotes in it. In fact, it is practically built by various sages randomly quoting others. It begins to display a familiar Sanskrit technique of inter-textuality by having the same line appear in another time and place. Book Nine does this with an unusually large number of couplets. And in one case, it quotes an entire Gayatri.


The presumably Ucathya original IX.50.4 copied by Dhrulacyuta Agastya:


09.025.06a 8 ā́ pavasva madintama
09.025.06b 8 pavítraṃ dhā́rayā kave
09.025.06c 8 arkásya yónim āsádam


the other repetitions in Ucathya:


09.050.03b (ditto 09.26.5b) [Idhmavaha Dharlacyuta]

09.050.05c (ditto 09.30.5c) [Bindu Angiras]

09.051.01b (ditto 09.16.3b) [Asita Kasyapa]

09.051.05c (ditto 09.1.4c) [Madhucchandas Vaisvamitra]

09.052.01c (ditto 09.6.3b) [Asita Kasyapa]


Sapta Rishis/Pavitra Angiras quote, among other things, Ucathya:


09.067.09b (ditto 09.50.3c)

pávamānam madhušcútam

the purified honey-dropping heroic Soma


as said by Gotama; but this is arguably too common to be very noticeable. In many of these cases, we might expect a small phrase to be the same. Most of the rest of IX.50.3-4 is copied by Agastyas in IX.25-6. The "ditto" areas are just a machine algorithm lightening its data load, i. e., one of the main basic computing tasks, to reduce repetition by using small markers, such as perhaps also found in IVC script. There is probably a PhD in evaluating those statistically and figuring out the direction of copying. Ucathya is among the oldest Rishis, so he sets the tone.





Asita Kasyapa uses the Dirghatamas "Apri" technique, copies Ucathya, and forms the basis of this book.



5-24 are composed by Asita (or Devala) Kasyapa.


The rest of Book Nine is weighted towards them:


53-60 Avatsara Kasyapa

63 Nidhruvi Kasyapa

64 Kasyapa Marica

93 Kasyapa Marica

99-100 Rebhasunu Kasyapa

113-114 Kasyapa Marica

(end)



Marica is only in Atharva Veda and Ayurveda. Kasyapa's main discipleship was outside the priesthood.


While the number of Atris is throttled:


32 Syavasva Atreya

101 Andhigu Syavasvi with Yayati, Nahusa, Manu Samvarana, and Prajapati Vaisvamitra



There are more representatives of Book Six:

Rjisvan

Kasu Bharadvaja

Pratardana Daivodasi

Ananata Parucchepa -- Divodasa's grandson

Rjisvan with Vasisthas and Angirases.



If Rjisvan enters Arjika country--Soma territory, which most likely is the Beas, his co-author is Uru Angiras.



As per the importance of Book Four:

Tryaruna Trivrsna and Trasadasyu Paurukutsa -- probably the main figures of the entire effort



There is also a cluster following Bharga Pragatha.

"Aurva Bhrgu" was referred to by:

prayoga bhārgava


Those names are always distinguishable, but a lot of old reviews have lost this. Bhrgva and Bhargava are distinct like Aurva and Aurava.


The word Soma, which occurs thousands of times in the
hymns of the Rigveda, is found in the name of only one
composer RSi: SomAhuti BhArgava.

That would be Book Two.

In Book Nine:


47-49 Kavi Bhargava

62, 65 Jamadagni Bhargava

75-79 Kavi Bhargava

85 Vena Bhargava


and in the samhita we see:

bhṛ́gavaḥ


a few outstanding characters:


106 Caksu Manu, Manu Apsava

Agni Dhisnya Aishvarya



following Trita and Dvita, Parvata and Narada have the epithet:


śikhaṇḍinyau vā kāśyapyāvapsarasau


Kasyapa and the Apsaras.



It sounds like a continuity from Vasistha and Urvashi.


The phrase "deva soma" is used a few times in Book Nine, indicating he is of the same nature as any of them, but "Candra" and "Rudra" are not found.


IX.54:


sómo devó ná sū́ryaḥ

Soma, a God as Surya is


IX.28:


mánasas pátiḥ


The text of Book Nine is relatively uninteresting, since it is all basically the same subject, and, it keeps using an eight-syllable pattern. The interest is in how it is collected from a wide variety of sources.

The chart I linked may not be 100% perfect but, in the published Rg Veda, the credits are damaged for the first part of Book Three until it corrects at Ghora Angiras in III.36.


Combining the resources, the chart can let you find an example such as Ayasya quickly turn to his section we find he first offers to:


bhagāya vāyave


Unlike the chart, the published version does not use the epithet "Seven Sages" for IX.67 but gives the composers individually:

bharadvāja

kaśyapa

gotamoḥ

atri

viśvāmitra

jamadagni

vasiṣṭha

pavitra vasiṣṭha vobhauḥ


On the other hand, it just has Usana for 87-89, rather than the Grtsamada-based cluster which seems unlikely.

Of course, we think there was an attempt to monopolize Grtsamada by "Saunaka", along with confusions over *bharg-/*bhrg-, *aur-/*-aurav, when attempting to re-read something that was forgotten, i. e. a domain where Tugra and others were current news.

I don't see a difficulty if something like the above was collated, i. e. if it is unlikely that Bharadvaja and Kasyapa lived and worked together, you can still splice the hymn accordingly. For instance, Atri has Goat-rider Pusan, which is remarkably distinct from the rest of the hymn, giving it a pieced-together feel. This is especially easy if the sources were all metered similarly. And then we see the proliferous amount of copying in Book Nine -- a testament to this very thing. If Ucathya said something in relatively ancient times, it is remembered and repeated by others; that seems to be the case. The lack of attribution is not plagiarism, but "goes without saying".

Sama Veda is mostly just a ruleset on how to quote the Rg Veda in order to make songs accompanied by Gandharva Veda (music). Since this is a rather specific school, it can probably accurately be attributed to Bharadvaja.

In that sense, it is possible IVC might refer to Gandharva Veda, since there seem to be remains of what were perhaps lyres. Most likely it also had Samans of some kind, but clearly the Vedic ones are new.


The idea here has been to press the language and hence ideas conveyed by that language to their most primordial aspect. The IVC script and Book Nine are to some extent the same.


The Veda does not have animal totems in the manner of IVC, rather, it uses them as various and sundry representatives of their obvious traits. Here is a Book Nine Elephant Ibho:


He, when the people deck him like a docile king of elephants.
Sits as a falcon in the, wood.


Does it have anything to say about Mrga, yes, the obvious speed of a deer.


"Like a bull" should again be Mrgo:


Soma hath sought the beakers while they cleansed him, and like a wild bull, in the wood hath settled.


Again the original is Mrga:


Brahman of Gods, the Leader of the poets, Rsi of sages, Bull of savage creatures,
Falcon amid the vultures, Axe of forests, over the cleansing sieve goes Soma singing.


This is "the sprinkler" Vrsa:


Indu is Indra


That's the Apri Hymn. Sounds familiar. Indu is very common such as in IX.12:


In close embraces Indu holds Soma when
poured within the jars.


Indu conveys a Garbha to cattle.

Perhaps discovering Rodasi Manavi and:

devó devī giriṣṭhā́



But sixty some-odd times in Book Nine, Indu is flowing out of the Filter, Indra's Vajra is the sound of the Soma, Indu does not seem to include the first mashing. It does not seem difficult to find the appropriate blend of meanings for Indu:


1) The moon; दिलीप इति राजेन्दुरिन्दुः क्षीरनिधाविव (dilīpa iti rājendurinduḥ kṣīranidhāviva) R.1.12 (indu is said to mean in the Veda a drop of Soma juice, a bright drop or spark; sutāsa indavaḥ Ṛgveda 1.16.6).

2) The मृगशिरस् (mṛgaśiras) Nakṣatra.


The latter seems to be the case at least from a version that has become adulterated:


Narada Purana 56.178

Mrgasira (Indu)



That is to say, some of its information was forgotten or altered, while it has simply chosen a synonym for "Moon".

So, if we think basic ideas for the stars is pre-Vedic, then, is the Moon a Vedic deity. No. There is no reason the moon, itself, should be much different in the pre-Vedic era. It may not have had detailed cycle counts, but it is next to impossible to dismiss basic observations such as months, fortnights, and weeks, and as far as we can tell, days of the Moon.


In that case, it is relevent to consider some colloquial or regional variants for Mrigasira Naksatra, from a page informing us that its sacred plant is Khadira or Acacia Catechu:





śaśi-daiva

= शशिन् shashin containing a hare , i.e., the Moon ++ दैव daiva deity


indu-bha

= इन्दु indu Earthen Moon + भ bha star-station, nakshatra


cāndra-masa

Atmaja

Invaka = Indubha


This is true to the extent that if Indu is the presiding deity, Aindava names the asterism.

In that logic, it seems likely that Child of the Waters refers to Ardra. In the atmospheric sense it is lightning, but if we look at Trita Aptya or Apam Napat, or possibly some kind of Raudras, it may work.


Ancient Voice makes a concordance of proper names in translated verses. Indu is in everything except Books Three and Five, yet is in Nine an outrageous amount of times.


I personally work from the versions with Anukramani and the one with raw text. The whole Book-Nine-on-one-page could be seen for instance on:


Dharmapedia

Theasis



As soon as we look outside, such as X.142, we run into a forced translation:

This immortal Soma...

ayaṃ hi te amartya indur


Indu has a pivotal or quintessential hymn in II.22. But even there, "Indu" is rendered as "Soma".


Also, considering the lineage:


Pragatha Kanva --> Bharga Pragatha --> the Bhargavas


Indu is significantly figured in, but again clouded over, in Pragatha's Soma VIII.48:


Soma, enjoying the friendship of Indra

indav indrasya sakhyaṃ



That Soma which, drunk into our hearts, has entered, immortal, into us mortals...

yo na induḥ pitaro hṛtsu pīto 'martyo martyām̐



O Soma, rejoicing with your protecting powers...

tvaṃ na inda ūtibhiḥ sajoṣāḥ pāhi


Soma is perhaps the preferred name, up to the level Soma Raja. Calling it Indu is almost indistinguishable, but obviously that is the term actually used many times.



They even keep doing it to Pusan X.26:




Pūṣan, is cognizant of such excellent praises; like Soma he is the showerer (of benefits)

sa veda suṣṭutīnām indur na pūṣā vṛṣā |



Again mistakenly put, Indu not Indra in Soma I.91, which appears equal to Vrsa and Vanaspati; Indu not Soma in I.121.


And so we are trying to be careful not to take "Indu is Indra" out of context. That is a weird Apri Hymn. It simply doesn't fit. It barely connects to the standard components; and has turned it all into a thing Soma does. Like others, this is more of the sense of that once Indra has imbibed the Soma, he is equal to it, while in the next verse, it is requested to consecrate or anoint (anghi, a conjugation of anjana) Vanaspati. However, most other material would equate/identify Soma with Vanaspati.

Since the end of the Book is the beginning, its steady refrain from Kasyapa:

indrāyendo


is used in the command, "Flow, Indu, for Indra". So obviously, they were not the same to start with.

Moreover, this is really IX.113 where we find:

rājā vaivasvato


which refers to Svar Loka.


He alludes to Rjisvan's geography of Himachal Pradesh and an incident with Usas, and is following the Dirghatamas-alike reverence for the third world. Curiously, he credits Gandharva with adding Rasa to the Soma:


gandharvāḥ praty agṛbhṇan taṃ some rasam


and ends by mentioning Seven Directions of Various Suns and Seven Adityas.


This additive, "rasa", is very generically water, juice, etc., and has to be shaped by context. Ostensibly, it is one of the major rivers, in fact the one crossed by Sarama according to Divo Daksinya Prajapatya and The Panis.

It may even be synonymous to the Soma itself; however, as an additive, the most likely candidate appears where a comment to Haryata Pragatha suggests it is goat's milk.


“The daughter of Sūrya brought the vast Soma large as a rain-cloud; the gandharva seized upon it and placed the juice in the Soma; flow, Indu, for Indra.”

or:

Hither hath Surya's Daughter brought the wild Steer whom Parjanya nursed.
Gandharvas have seized bold of him, and in the Soma laid the juice. Flow, Indu, flow for Indra's sake.


While tricky at the beginning, either way has Gandharva adding Rasa to Soma. It could be internally, i. e. water into a plant, or it may be milk; Kasyapa ends by saying "your juices come together". This seems to have to do with the "thousand streams" of purification.


So, metaphorically, if this is an invigorating substance, then yes of course you attribute it with strength and power and say it is the king and active agent. It may illumine the mind, but this is verily a literal description in IX.61:


pavamāna rasas tava dakṣo vi rājati dyumān | jyotir viśvaṃ svar dṛśe ||


“Purified Soma, your juice as it increases shines bright; it (makes) a pervading universal light to be seen.”



That's not mistakable. It's not sukra or suci, many fluids might be "bright" or "shiny", but how many drinks make their own light?

It doesn't say "Soma", it says "Pavamana, when your Rasa increases..."

Here are multiple expressions bundled together in IX.67:


kakuháḥ somyó rása índur índrāya pūrvyáḥ
āyúḥ pavata āyáve

For Indra floweth excellent Indu, the noblest Soma juice
The Living for the Living One.


So, I think, the Moon may be heavily deified, as there are nearly two hundred instances of "Indu". But they are both the moon and juice, depending on context; and Candrama is also Soma. Is it Moon Juice because it really does give off light?

The most straightforward thing I can come up with is that the Manas of Purusha produces a Manasapati, which is the Moon, which further extends its name to something made by man. The subtle counter-point is that the juice that is pressed and consumed is not "the real Soma".


This is my explanation. I've tried searching outside reviews, and a bunch of targeted and aggregate browsing. I haven't seen this. I found it by spending time trying to understand what Rg Veda says for itself. And the first sign of weirdness came from Apala Atreyi:

“A young woman going to the water found Soma in the path; as she carried it home she said, I will press you for Indra, I will you for Śakra.”

...drink this Soma pressed by my teeth together with fried grains of barley, the karambha, cakes and hymns."

In actuality, this will show us the Black and White Veda at the same time.


Surya Savitri begins with several verses on Soma:

“Earth is upheld by truth; heaven is upheld by the sun; the Ādityas are supported by sacrifice, Soma is supreme in heaven.”

“By Soma the Ādityas are strong; by Soma the earth is great; Soma is stationed in the vicinity of these Nakṣatras.”

“He who has drunk thinks that the herb which men crush is the Soma; (but) that which the Brāhmaṇas know to be Soma,, of that no one partakes...

...no terrestrial being partakes of you.”

Vāyu is the guardian of Soma, the maker of years and months.

So, at least part of that hymn is the basis for the current Indian marriage rite. The entirety of it is very subtle and quite complex; for marriage, there is a shorter, simplified version ported through Sukla Yajur Veda. This text is smaller than Rg Veda and more focused. It is "white" because it is organized, straightforward, and relatively easy to follow. You soon find that Waters are a major factor in the invocation for domestic and community well-being.

The "Rivers Hymn" is unlikely to be literal, or, it has real rivers mixed with imaginary:

Arjikiya with Susoma



This is where we uncover the Black Veda.

Note that we just observed "copistry", where we get an example similar to IVC statistics. Copied phrases can perhaps be divided into random and intentional; but there are copied couplets which show intent; and then there is an entire Gayatri which must be hugely selective.

The statistically-largest copying in the Rg Veda is four lines, similar to an IVC tetragram.

That this also pertains to Waters should be apparent from the Rishi:


triśirāstvāṣṭraḥ sindhudvīpo vāmbarīṣaḥ


it still has revertable translations:


“Give us to partake in this world of your most auspicious Soma, like affectionate mothers.”

śivatamo rasas


It just said Rasa is the Most Shiva. This may not be a "Vedic name" but it is certainly a word.


The statistical fact has been seen by others in X.9:

This and the following ṛcas of the sūkta are repetitions from RV.1. 23, 20-23; in maṇḍala 1, Soma speaks to Kaṇva; in this present maṇḍala, Soma speaks to Āmbarīṣa Sindhudvīpa, a rājā

I.23 is really Medhatithi, and is essentially a copy of four verses from one hymn to the other.

Again, we think this is probably backwards. Medhatithi liked what he found, and added a verse to Indra. He changed the meter and extended the first verse with a mirrorlike phrase. We are told the first *half* of the hymn has been kept for daily use.

Medhatithi is the nucleus of Books One, Eight, and Nine, and my impression is he collated most of the Rg Veda. I think he made these patterns artistically and probably compiled about eighty per cent of what we see, leaving it "open" for a few later Rishis to contribute, without affecting the circuitry.



This is the part he took from Sindhudvipa:

“Soma has declared to me; all medicaments, as well as Agni, the benefactor of the universe, are in the waters.”

“Waters, bring to perfection, all disease-dispelling medicaments for the good of my body, that I may behold the Sun.”

“Waters, take away whatever sin has been (found) in me, whether I have (knowingly) done wrong, or have pronounced imprecations (against holy men), or have spoken untruth.”

“I have this day entered into the waters; we have mingled with their essence. Agni, abiding in the waters approach, and fill me (thus bathed) with vigour.”

Sindhudvipa Ambarisa is a follower of Ambarisa Varsagira, who is re-done in the Puranas, but they are a different story here.

This is a daily purification hymn.

Soma can claim both the three- and four-line large copies.

If you look "forwards", you find this copied into Book One to Sukla Yajur Veda, and if you look "backwards" then there is more in Book Ten and it is conjoined to the lost Vedic saga.


"Waters" are not quite the same as "Man with plough" representing Betelgeuse -- Ardra. There is, however, a startling epithet about this by
Kutsa:


mandhātā́raṃ kṣáitrapatyeṣv


It's Mandhata so it doesn't necessarily sound agricultural -- although it may sound like the Solstice:

Wherewith ye made Rasa swell full with water-floods, and urged to victory the car without a horse;
Wherewith Trisoka drove forth his recovered cows, -- Come hither unto us, O Asvins, with those aids.

Wherewith ye, compass round the Sun when far away, strengthened Mandhatar in his tasks as lord of lands,
And to sage Bharadvaja gave protecting help, -- Come hither unto us, O Asvins, with those aids.

The title is outright deified in Vamadeva IV.57:


Devatā (deity/subject-matter): kṣetrapatiḥ


“Lord of the field, bestow upon us sweet abundant, (water), as the cow (yields her) milk, dropping like honey, blend as butter; may the lords of the water make us happy.”


The deity is dual:


Śuna and Sīra


and we find a very telling agricultural goddess:


Auspicious Sītā

May Indra take hold of Sītā; may Pūṣan guide her


She is definitely a ploughed furrow.

With a different phrasing, he also applies *ksetra- to Trasadasyu.


"Ksetrapati" is used by Vasukarna Vasukra, who finishes by clearly identifying descendants of Vasistha.

So far, "Ksetrapati" is heavily skewed to Mandhata, Trasadasyu, and Vaisistha, or Ikshvakus.


It is used formulaicly by Vasistha; he also uses Ksetra as the dwelling Vishnu prepares for the Manusas.

It is deified in one more area from Manu Vaivasvata on Dampati:


agniṃ vaḥ pūrvyaṃ girā devam īḻe vasūnām | saparyantaḥ purupriyam mitraṃ na kṣetrasādhasam ||


I glorify with song, for wealth, Agni the God, the first of you.
We honour as a well-loved Friend the God who prospereth our fields.


It seems to have an "original human" in Atharva Veda Viraj VIII.10 after Vamadevya Saman provides Waters:

Prithi the son of Vena was her milker: he milked forth hus-
bandry and grain for sowing.



The "ksetrapati" actually has a rather interesting geometric performance, which involves another title as well; the very beginning of the whole Atharva Veda is for Vacaspati, followed by a verse on Munja grass.


The very last hymn, Aswins XX.143, must be subsequent to the Rg Veda events:

Car praised in hymns, most ample, rich in treasure, fitted with
seats, the car that beareth Sūryā.


Ksetrapati reprise:

Sweet be the plants for us, the heavens, the waters, and full of
sweets for us be air's mid-region!
May the Field's Lord for us be full of sweetness, and may we
follow after him uninjured.
Asvins, that work of yours deserves our wonder, the Bull of
firmament and earth and heaven;
Yes, and your thousand promises in battle. Come near to all
these men and drink beside us.



So the Atharva Veda is contained by Vacaspati and Ksetrapati. Viraj contains the latest Vedic characters such as Prahlada and Dhritarashtra which means this hymn is much more influential to the Puranas than anything in the Rg Veda. The Ksetrapati is really a Madhu doctrine, which of course translators are not sensitive to. It has units of time cycles and what look like "creations", which on behalf of the Seven Sages, uses Mantra and Tapas as Food:



King Soma was her calf. the Moon her milk-pail. Brihaspati
Āngirasa, her milker,
Drew from her udder Prayer and Holy Fervour. Fervour and
Prayer maintain the Seven Rishis.




We just mentioned Manu Vaivasvata has a hymn dedicated to Dampati, that is, started as the Yajamana or the concept that a person at home can validly practice spirituality. it then layers this up to Married Couple.

Therefor it is all a type of consecration towards householders, using various deities, beginning:


Parvata, Nadi, Vishnu, Pusan the sinless Aditya


The Nadi Sukta is half symbolic "rivers", and, Waters is categorically one of the most-shared things into the Sukla Yajur Veda along with Marriage in terms under Surya Savitri. This is all about getting Devas to work by Mantras in your home life.



Yajur Veda with Anukramani shows that Vacaspati and Visvakarman or Vishvakarman "the husband" are nearly the whole subject of this work.

Brahmanaspati <--> Visvakarma in the last reference by Grtsamada. That makes sense since both are "son of Tvastr".

It uses Vacaspati Visvakarma by Shasa and Bhuvanputro Vishvakarma; Prajapati also says:


brhaspataye vacaspataye


Vachaspati also receives a flow of Soma, "whatever name you have".



YV only has one "ksetrapati", Rudra. Kutsa 18:

namo namo rudrayatatayine ksetranam pataye



In that sense, it does appear that Ksetrapati is the deity of Ardra.

You don't think of Mandhata and Trasadasyu as farmers, so, it quite possibly means ownership of land in those cases, and in Ikshvaku terms, Mandhata had something that Trasadasyu restored.


Human Sacrifice YV 30 contains some interesting dedications:



Yama, Atharvan, the years of the Yuga, then:

for the Ribhus a hide dresser; for the Sadhyas a currier; 16 For Lakes...


and goes on to various Waters. And there is a very unusual appearance:


for the Man tiger a madman


The long list includes people such as Bhils who really have this Weretiger practice.


So there are two primordial utterances about Rudra:


Somarudra

Rudra Kshetrapati


If we negate "Rudra" as a personal name designated by the Veda, then, we would be left with two attributes quite possibly relevant to IVC. And they are near the beginning of the Naksatras in the same relevant way. Deductively, this reaches to 2,300, and, inductively, the plough to Kalibangan 2,800.

[shaberon]

Soma, Gharma, and the Aswins



I don't have pre-determined answers. I realized I have posted a few things that were mis-informed about something fairly important. Maybe not recently, but during my tenure.


Before addressing that, I continue to find "it works" in the capacity from the saddening experience of my late friend, attempting to switch it to a "positive presence" strongly akin to the Vedic Pitr, who in this case is not human but the vehicle of Pusan, and this is what we call Bhava or the applying of personal experience to "teaching" terms. This is what works.

In turn, I would say our remaining, big, fat goat, is not sour, unfriendly, or stupid, so it seems to me that a person in a Goatherd occupation could probably coax a significant portion of them to become good friends in a fairly personal way. In the sense of true husbandry not pallid livestock. It's easily conceivable the species has this nature at a surprisingly deep level. I'm not sure that sheep have this kind of reputation. They were widely domesticated in a quite early era, but I have never noticed them in Iranic or Indic artifacts.

I'm not a farmer or a herder or anything, just a person whose First Goat actually is a supreme guide on the personal path of life and death.


Those are doctrines from archaic Sanskrit which quite possibly matches the IVC time frame and maybe the IVC Markhor Goat.

It is also entirely plausible the Naksatra names go along with this. Especially since the Moon uses them.

Those words for Moon are not distinguishable from a magic drink, which is not distinguishable from IVC seals. If we keep in mind the system of weights from 2,300 is current to the present moment, the basic stars and Moon may well be sidecar.


I figured out something that is just not displayed properly. This was from looking into Brihaddevata by Saunaka:

This Mandala, addressed to Soma, containing one hundred and fourteen hymns, is called 'Pavamana,' and seven lessons (anuvaka) are (contained in it).

This sloka is not found in A or m1, but in B only. Nevertheless it is probably original, as the wording of the introduction to the ninth Mandala in the Sarvanukramani appears to be based on it:

navaman mandalam pavamanam saumyam.

We keep giving it the wrong name. It should be Pavamana Saumya.

He is difficult to read; he makes a comment on IX.73, filter or pavitra:


is called a praise of the Kettle (gharma) as (representing) the Sun (surya) and the Soul (atman)


Our version renders it as means of purification, and it is not obvious to me where "kettle" becomes involved.


The interpretation of "gharma" comes from Yaska, as seen in response to Pravargya:


According to Nirukta 14,11 gharma is a name of the Great Soul (Mahän Atman).



This is again a somewhat well-rounded term, encompassing summer, a vessel in which things are heated, or things heated in that vessel. In Rg Veda it carries the most basic "heat" meaning such as in I.112:


rendered the scorching heat pleasurable to Atri

taptaṃ gharmam omyāvantam atraye |



Atma III.26:


I am the living breath of threefold nature, the measure of the firmament, eternal warmth

arkas tridhātū rajaso vimāno 'jasro gharmo




Now, is this critical for Soma, yes. There is a perfectly clear distinction in IX.83:


“Lord of prayer, your filter is stretched out; you who are the sovereign, enter its members from all sides; the raw (liquid) whose mass is not heated attains not this (filter); it is the boiled (liquids) bearing (the sacrifice) which attain it.”


That makes sense in cooking, generally, but this is not ordinary cooking.


It will explain the Vedic mantras to think of the physical reality of Gharma in the Mayabheda Sukta:

In the great pravargya ritual the mAhAvIra pot containing the milk of a cow and a goat, i.e. the gharma offering, is intensely heated until it starts glowing. When the pot starts glowing the hotar looks at it starts reciting the sUkta RV 10.177 (In some traditions in south India they only recite RV 10.177.1 & 3). This sUkta is traditionally referred to as the mAyAbheda sUkta. Regarding this the sUkta the shaunakIya R^igvidhAna redacted by the early vaiShNava viShNukumAra states:

pata~Ngam iti nityam tu japed aj~nAna bhedanam |
mAyA bhedanam etaddhi sarva mAyAH prabAdhate ||

He should constantly do japa of the [mantra-s beginning with] pata~Nga that destroys ignorance. It is breaks the [spell of] mAyA and drives away all mAyA.

shAmbarIm indrajAlAm vA mAyAm etena vArayet |
adR^iShTAnAm cha sattvAnAm mAyAm etena bAdhate || RVdh 4.115-116

By this he should block mAyA be it of the shambara or the indrajAla variety; By this he repulses the mAyA of the unseen ones and of the consciousness.

So it is mantrifying Bird -- Patanga.

But the "cooking" is a very difficult technique that uses a special kind of blast furnace which can reach about 2,800 degrees, almost equal to the surface of the sun.


Unfortunately it leaves us with the roots of sectarian splits and later ignorance. After describing a story of Bali and Brahma:

This tale clearly belongs to the tradition of the primacy of prajApati that began in the late Vedic period. The rise of prajApati to primacy within the shrauta system happened at the expense of indra and this clearly indicated in this tale. Moreover, the designation of prajApati as an originator deity was also clearly in competition with indra’s role in generating or structuring the universe. Thus, the tale has indra’s own creation as being transient and destroyed by prajApati (brahmA). We know that this prAjApatya tradition with brahmA at the forefront was a major force in the period the composition of the rAmAyaNa and the mahAbhArata (in both texts the sub-current tension with the aindra-para tradition is seen). It was the same tradition that was a big force among the vaidika brAhmaNa-s in the days of the tathAgata and was vehemently attacked by him. The tradition eventually succumbed to the competition from within in the form of the shaiva, vaiShNava, kaumAra traditions and attacks from without from the bauddha-s.

VIII.49-59 have been segregated as "Valakhilya hymns" for unknown reasons. A unique and possibly repairing view is that Prajapati becomes the Arunas, Ketus, and Vatarasanas, his nails are Vaikhanasas, while hair becomes the Valakhilyas.

But this was a person's actual reaction to witnessing the glowing mass:

Even so at the somayAga as the great flames leapt from the mahAvIra pot when the goat and cow’s milk were added to the superheated ghee, we awoke from the advaitin’s discourse and started wondering about the real meaning of the original mAyAbheda sUkta deployed in the pravargya and it dawned on us that it was close to the ritual in which it was used.

No wonder you have to handle the stuff with tongs made of Unicorn Horns.


But Yaska's Nirukta or basic Sanskrit etymology just told us it was Atma. What is? A kettle? Heat energy? It's something other than Agni released by rubbing twigs. According to Dharma Saurya:

these (priests) have taken the Gharma from Dhātā, the radiant Savitā and Viṣṇu.


Nrmedhapurumedhau:

men heat the gharma with sāman hymns.



What is unusual about the name "Pavamana Saumya" is, that it takes something that regularly looks like "son or descendant of" or "disciple of", and makes it into the object of a verb.

Its concordant usage is as by Sankha Yamayana:


our ancient progenitors of the Saumyas, the possessors of great wealth

ye naḥ pūrve pitaraḥ somyāso 'nūhire somapīthaṃ vasiṣṭhāḥ |


Our ancient Fathers who deserve the Soma, who came, most noble, to our Soma banquet,-
With these let Yama, yearning with the yearning, rejoicing eat our offerings at his pleasure.

Again you have to stitch the versions to conceive "somapitham vasisthah":

Our first fathers, Somyas -- Vasisthas, arrived at our Soma Assembly.



Later he describes them in three classes.


This was explained a hymn previously by Yama:


aṅgiraso naḥ pitaro navagvā atharvāṇo bhṛgavaḥ somyāsaḥ |


Angirases, Atharvans, and Bhrgus are Somyas.



There is such a person as Rishi Budha Saumya.



A boiling process with butter or milk is described by Suparna Kanva:


The seven sister-streams of the Soma, in the hot the offering



Several hymns refer to Soma in the dual with terrestrial and aerial roles. Such as a comment to Garga:


Soma as the moon and Soma as a product

for which a parallel is given by Gotama.



So the "product" Soma is boiled, but that is not the same as the following. This is much better because I thought they were talking about the furnace; this is not so according to modest science of 2021:

Pravargya is Vedic and scientific process that generates very high Sun surface like temperatures in the range of 5,000 K to 9,225 K by producing a fireball (fire column) for shorter periods (1 to 3 seconds) that can produce UV (ultraviolet) rays to mitigate viruses/bacteria. The fireball helps converting fatty acids in the ghee, high nutrient organic compounds present in cow milk and goat milk into vapors having kinetic energies capable of increasing immunity, reducing the bacteria/virus counts, reducing air, water, and soil pollution in and around the vicinity where Pravargya process is conducted.

Sensitive cameras detect temperatures in excess of 5,000K in the White and Pink regions of the fireball.

It's not Soma, but the admixture of milk to (superheated) boiling ghee. Some of the ghee overflows and falls in the fire, acting like a fuse to ignite the main body. The steam blast creates unusually high pressure; organics burn in various colors. The furnace does not reach solar temperatures, but, it does need to push the ghee beyond its normal boiling point.


The rite is not known by that name in the Veda. From a modern Taittiriya Aranyaka:

The Introduction contains a study of the Pravargya ritual, which is "One of the few rituals that has been explicitly referred to in the Rgveda (usually under the name "Gharma"). The abstract and spiritual nature of what is probably the main purpose of the ritual - the participants should acquire the lustre of the sun - the simple means by which it can be performed and the way the main implement, the pot which is heated red-hot, is worshipped, give it a special place in the vast assortment of Vedic rites.

Same as what we do, there is a study on the earliest attestations which are Gharma. This author is of the mind that Atri is "Old" and looked mostly at Book Five, but published nearly everything.


It is found in Dirghatamas such as "milking verses" in I.164:

It is said; the three Riks 26,27and 28 of Asya Vaasa Sukta are chanted during the Pravargya (प्रवर्ग) – a ceremony preliminary to the Soma-Yaga, at which fresh milk is poured into a heated vessel called, mahā-varri or gharma.

But, this Pravargya is a preliminary or an introductory ritual or an application in Soma-Yaga; and, is not an independent one.

The author shares our idea that it was not a full-fledged "Pravargya rite", that it lacked developments like ceremonial disposal of the vessel. It was probably a one-trick, basic method strongly associated with Aswins. This is exactly the sense from Sasakarna Kanva:


“When verily you arrive, Aśvins, the ṛṣi understands with excellent (comprehension) the praise (to be addressed to you); he will sprinkle the sweet-flavoured Soma and the gharma (oblation) on Atharvan fire.”


The generic uses of gharma -- heat in Rg Veda are few in number, such as in Book Seven, Three Gharmas with Usas.

But then we run into VII.70 "at-home" use of the ritual.

Frog VII.103 is said to logically imply "Pravargya" in the sense of "New Year's rite". Again one is prone to suspect IVC Frog may be similar.


That makes it completely clear why reverence of Light might be held around sessions of Gharma, while we are still left with the testimony that Soma is boiled and shines with its own light. That product is not the real Soma which is non-material. Filling by drops is why it is like the Moon.

Gharma is a milk and butter bomb. It falls exactly into the science of weaponry, and I suppose you better stand back from it. It kills Covid and cleans the atmosphere out to a 50km radius or so noted. Surely its main effects are not larger than a small village, and the point is to participate and be near it.







Saunaka refers to a missing Gharmastuti Khila from Book Ten, but, his indexing is off and hard to deal with.


Questionably a substance, Ayasya uses it as the Sweat of Brahmanaspati with Boars:

brahmaṇas patir vṛṣabhir varāhair gharmasvedebhir



Book Ten elsewhere seems to reflect it as a ritual substance, such as in Sankha Yamnaya X.15:

satyaiḥ kavyaiḥ pitṛbhir gharmasadbhiḥ ||



Damana Yamayana uses it to replace Kravya with Jatavedas. That's Corpse-eater Agni and Veda Knower Agni.

It is somewhat customarily apparent in Bhutamsa Kasyapa to Aswins, and then in another line translated as Soma.


Another possible symbol-or-substance in X.114:

Two perfect springs of heat pervade the Threefold, and come for their delight is Matarisvan.
Craving the milk of heaven the Gods are present: well do they know the praisesong and the Saman.


Perhaps, two kinds of milk in a threefold mixture.

The end of the Rg Veda wraps up with it shortly before Couple. X.181 has Pratha Vasistha and Sapratha Bharadvaja for the Rathantara and Brhat Samans, and then combined as "Dharma Saurya" with Gharma.


The Rg Veda is pointing at the Sama Veda with Gharma, largely as having been applied with the Aswins.


Everything is new there. Sama Veda is impossible without Riks, which are a formalization of Mantras. The Samans are not said to start before Rishis of the Gotras. There are Vedic centuries without them. Gharma is arguably a new technology if it depends on superheating rather than familiar boiling. Aswins are the symbol of New Wealth. Aries is practically non-existent, and, one of the most arbitrary signs in existence, but it has stars in the Naksatras. Presuming stars to probably have older Sanskrit names than the deities assigned to them, the more generic and original term for the two-star asterism is Asvayuja.

This term has a single appearance in the Rg Veda, right after the curious beginning of Syavasva on Three Mountains:


gharmastubhe diva ā pṛṣṭhayajvane dyumnaśravase

pṛṣṭhayajvane: by whom the sacrifices called pṛṣṭha are made, these are said to be six, of which two are specified: rathantara and bṛhat


They didn't know how to deal with "gharma" connected to *-stubhe, "song or praise". In the next verse, considering this is to the Maruts:


vayovṛ́dho ašvayújaḥ

strengtheners of life are your strong bands with harnessed steeds


Maruts and Aswins have both been called Raudras. Sarpas, Pitrs, Visvedavas, and Vasus all have Naksatras, while Maruts do not. At least not in VJ which doesn't have any "shared" or "subordinate" positions; there is the compound Indragni. It is possible that Hasta -- Corvus is mantric Hiranyapani, however Maruts as subjects of the Moon is not given in the AV Samhita either.


So the Naksatra is Horse-harnessers. In the primal calendar it was next-to-last before Yama, in Bharani, which is Lilii Borea and the other part of Aries.

They would be after Revati (Pusan) usually, and Abhijit -- Vega if counted for "leap year".

Oppositely, if you were tracking the equinox (by heliacal rising), you would watch it go from Krttika to Yama. In this sense the Aswins would be in the Vedic future, which they may have figured out was predictable. I doubt any of this is concerned with that.

It is the name used in the mantra without Abhijit:


(AVŚ_19,7.5c) ā́ revátī cāśvayújau bhágaṃ ma ā́ me rayíṃ bháraṇya ā́ vahantu ||5||


It's not "Asvini", it's an expression about "yoking", like Sisumara to the Aswins.

This obviously pushes the technological upper limit of the horse. It was barely created by 2,300, and although Asva does not physically mean "horse", it does not lend itself well to most other species, nor is it native to India.

Well, again, we would have to learn "Rsabha" is a bull, whereas "Rasabha" is a donkey; it has another name, "Gardabha", which is used in less-favorable contexts.


Kaksivan simply says they have a donkey:


tad rāsabho nāsatyā


Two more statements specifically say they yoked donkeys.

Hiranyastupa:


kadā yogo vājino rāsabhasya


Krsna:


yuñjāthāṃ rāsabhaṃ rathe


So, the Veda is not really committing an anachronism, because it shows they were not horsemen -- this association must have evolved. Even if it is "donkeys", this must be imagined as a personal car that goes faster than a bull-yoked plough. It would have been a basic cart, not a chariot, but this is all that is needed to match the sense of the meaning. That is, if the stars named Asvayuja were to claim the antiquity of 2,300, that would be fine. The Aswin deities may embody a donkey-to-horse transition; but I am not sure they are cognates of anything, or necessarily related to the fact that "twins" feature in many mythologies.

"Indra" does not name a star, but presides over Jyestha -- Antares and a couple of its neighbors in Scorpio.

It opposes Prajapati -- Aldebaran.



As a non-knower of Veda, I posted things on Pravargya which caused a misunderstanding -- that was before the studies linked here. I thought the intensity was being done by some kind of furnace. It took all of about two seconds to see through how it works, once you know it is literally a bomb, not sustained combustion. It's throwing water on a grease fire. Just happens to be guided a little bit. Not particularly advanced, but right offhand I do not know the oldest evidence for clarified butter. I am not sure it would be much older than the era we are looking at. The modern horse is bounded by age from the discovery of milk taken from wild horses in Kazakhstan around 3,000. They were milked like cows and did not survive into the gene pool of the domesticated variety. This is a loose evidence that is not really connected to IVC. It may be interesting that these Kazakhis (Botai) were part Lithuanian. Anyway, it is entirely physically possible that a Gharma rite could have been held for stars called Asvayuja which referred to donkeys, in 2,300.

Perhaps this is not a true timer, since a Krttika equinox would have been valid for nine centuries, it just means such phrases were probably standard somewhat before the end of it. It doesn't prove they wrote Atharva Veda on the day it started. And the point is, it would generally and mostly be true for IVC.

Secondly, the Soma Filter is by far the most important "thing" in the IVC script. I can claim it is script because of the Pathani Damb anomaly in the OP of the thread. Otherwise, it is everywhere in the visual realm, with only some exemptions.



The Gharma sorts itself out because it is quite plain. Obviously in 2,300 you'd be talking about "the light". The Sun traveled through nature into the cows who gave us these products, and comes out again to touch us. The result is you become sun-like.

It's uncanny that such a mark could be a sign of a Buddha, but yes we remember it. That part tells me nothing. The news was it's not a furnace, because, of course, I am a devotee of mantra who has nothing to do with those living traditions. No one in India would make this mistake.


So, as a rough estimate, we might also think IVC had living memory of a supernova that would have eclipsed Capella, because it was like the Moon. Capella is not a Naksatra, but it shares timing with the one that is ruled by the Moon.


Were they taking a hint?

If the event had been so long ago it was forgotten, that would not affect Capella and the Lunar Mansion it is aligned to.


There is not an old Sanskrit word for "Moon" that does not equally apply to a beverage.

To me, it seems to refer to the entire chain of energy transfer, similar to that of the Sun, but works differently with Rudra -- who is also frequently plural -- just like Ardra.


I can not come up with an easy solution for the fact that Pavamana Saumya is not just "bright" but "glowing".


It's not a stray remark. It might be uncommon, but there are a few references about self-luminous liquid Soma. Indu generating light:

janayañ jyotir

Parasara describes Pavamana's radiance:


jyotiṣāvīt



With "Sapti = steed, courser", this creature embodies the light, as in IX.29:


The singers praise him with their song, and learned priests adorn the Steed,
Brought forth as light that merits laud.

Soma, distributor of abundant wealth, those radiances of yours when you are purified are over-powering...


Indu the Sapti by Pratardana Daivodasi.

Similarly by Dvita.


Maybe they are exaggerating. But when subjected to analysis it sure does look like they mean a beverage that emits light. This is aside from the conceptual parts like "you illuminate the Sun" and cosmic things about night and day, these are references to the liquid in the apparatus.

I have no idea what that is about.

Most of the other sayings work fine. This is a well-spoken "To give us" in IX.4:


sanā jyotiḥ sanā svar viśvā ca soma saubhagā |


It's easy when it's an obvious spiritual experience. And so it would be easiest to insist the filtration leaves an opalescent or pearlescent constituency that has nice optical effects on received light. But that would be covered by sukra, candra, suci, and so on, which are so common I'm not sure they are ever left out. But some of those quotes are rather concrete.

Of course, there are some terrestrial things that produce light. Lignin, the second-highest biomass of plants, glows, and is responsible for fox fire.

Otherwise you are relegated to animal sources.





So, if a chemical process did something with Lignin, it is not all that strong. If something was filtered that deposited elemental Phosphorous or Sodium, you'd get some light, and, indeed, a "steed" popping around. Sodium metal could possibly be taken from baking soda; Phosphorous can be obtained from a variety of sources, none of which are plant biomass. The light is attributed to filtered Soma, not the stuff filtered out of it.

If the "product" could be based on many ingredients from multiple regions, then, there must be something inherent to the process that is of note. That makes it all glow. It's a whole book dedicated to the filter. Even these are of diverse and sundry kinds. Therefor, if I think I understand Soma in all its aspects, I have no idea what the Rishis mean by Purification.


It's like pouring chai through a straw mat. Why would you particularly exalt this?


From what we have seen, a few horses turn up in IVC, only after 2,100. Because of thirty-four ribs, those were probably Nabathean Arabians. It is correct the Sintashtan horse became in high demand all the way to China across the northern route we presume Shortugai would have been interested in. This is just background, since I'm not sure any transfer of the animal has yet been detected. To acquire the Sintashtan Spoked Wheel only requires a technology transfer, not any actual horses. The expression "New Wealth" would seem to have become phenomenally important very fast. Although a Camel is quite superior on many of the arid journeys of Central Asia and the Middle East, they are the opposite pole, quite slow-breeding, whereas horses are faster in that sense as well. We have seen India position itself in Syria and most likely maintain some kind of mercantile presence for a long time, making it rather more convenient to obtain horses of the southern variety.

It seems they would literally steal most roles of the Donkey, except for it perhaps being more well-suited in mountainous regions.

Consequently, they might swipe the *asv- title, and the donkey retained names ending on -bha. Gard is noise, shouting, etc.; Ras is similar, except:


5) Ved. To praise. -II. 1 U. (rasayati-te, rasita)


meaning it is embedded throughout the generic low-level language of the Veda in compounds and conjugations.


Abha is a stand-alone of "bha" as used in compounds, meaning light and color.





"Asva" certainly eventually came to be focused on Horse, but we found that Pusan is Ajasva, not a Goat Horse but rather having a goat for a steed, which is unrealistic or only possible for small children. In other words, "steed" is a flexible role that a goat or donkey could have.

The Aswins' steeds are harnessed by the mind according to Amahiyu:

manoyujo 'śvāsaḥ



Glancing at a similarly-spelled expression, sister is Svasa, which just as soon means "fingers", and, rarely, breath.


In Rg Veda it is possible to find as Breath by Saryata Manava.



Varuna has the Sister Usas according to Agastya.

She is the Elder Sister of night according to Kaksivan.


The reason for bringing this in is because there is another Vedic Moon tradition besides the Naksatras, which is almost entirely forgotten, but not if you think of Grtsamada like a textbook:


Wide-hipped Sinivālī, who are the sister of the gods

sinīvāli pṛthuṣṭuke yā devānām asi svasā



There are goddesses ascribed to the quarters, and they are scarcely known in the Veda itself except by the Atreyas. I don't think Atri is important because he is named after an older sage, but, rather, the opposite, because he is like a brilliant redux on a massive system. He was very well-informed and clever.

He was not necessarily much more than a hundred years after Bharadvaja; they were almost certainly separated, but not necessarily by a significant amount on the scale we are studying.

In other examples, rivers and meters would both apply for Bharadvaja:


Sarasvatī, who has seven sisters



which seems to be reflected by Nabhaka:


Varuṇa who rises up in the vicinity of the rivers, and in the midst (of them) has seven sisters

sindhūnām upodaye saptasvasā



Familial relationships by Agastya:

Heaven, (serpents), is your father; Earth, your mother; Soma, your brother; Aditi, your sister



Double duty according to Kaksivan:


Uṣā, endowed with truth, who are the sister of Bhaga, the sister of Varuṇa



And here is another where Jamadagni says not to kill the Cow:


the mother of the Rudras, the daughter of the Vasus, the sister of the Ādityas, the home of ambrosia



The Vedic context has absolutely nothing to do with the Pleiades.

It can be used for streams of ghee in houses around certain river basins. That is, yes, the phrase Seven Sisters appears just as Seven Sages does, yet there is nothing that vaguely resembles far later assertions about them.


If I suggest that all Vedic characters and events were after the main use of IVC seals, we would probably be saying right after. The underlying attitude is that the Rishis were against writing because they wanted material to be fully mentally interiorized. This is why we can begin to understand the Veda and the IVC script remains a mystery.


I find a huge clue in the geometrical similarity between IVC texts and Vedic mantras.

Both eras seem to represent India doing something that is more mental than what seems apparent in other areas. They have little pictures of Monumental Objects and no monuments. This has been held against them as "primitives", but the more likely explanation is lack of interest. Such as the development of musical arts in support of a high-order lyric capability.


It's Pavamana Saumya, and it's undefinable. Apparently it is not an ingredient, but a process, that causes a liquid to emit light. I'm not sure we can re-interpret that many Rishis to scrub away what they said. But this Light coming out may be the Horse.

Maybe the IVC script can help us here.


I find it therapeutically beneficial that Vedic Pusan works with my individual ethos which is Forest of Turquoise Leaves. It is Khadiravani of the Acacia Grove. And so it is perfectly easy and natural for a Goat to be a Path Guide here. We have the same concept as Pusan, in life and death. That means for me personally, it will probably be easier for me to meet my friend again than anyone else. My actual expectation is he is there now. That is because I am positive that the vast majority of his memory is peaceful forest.



The correspondingly archaic symbolisms of Bird include Time, fire altars, possibly Capella. In its relatively generic expression Patanga:


Name of the author of [Ṛg-veda x, 177] and of this hymn itself


None of these actually have titles, those are colloquialisms. The actual thing is:

Ṛṣi (sage/seer): pataṅgaḥ prājāpatyaḥ

Devatā (deity/subject-matter): māyābhedaḥ



It isn't necessarily Maya -- Illusions that's being "cut", especially since the Vedic use of maya is more along the lines of craft, possibly magic, which can be good or evil. The compounded term is less specifically ccheda or krttik because it is very broad, even cyclical.


Mīmāṃsā (school of philosophy)

Bheda (भेद) refers to category of declaration on Brahman and Ātman.—Bheda-śruti refers to those affirming identity between Atman and Brahman.


Bheḍa (भेड).—[bhī-ḍa tasya netvam]

1) A ram, sheep


So, it has the reputation of ramming, breaking, cutting things apart, making divisions, the divisions themselves, such as individual beings, and subsequently the spiritual view of One Life in all.

Although bheda = cut is not wrong, it may not be the best option here. This is Asura Maya selecting the translation with Bird:


pataṃgám aktám ásurasya māyáyā hṛdā́ pašyanti mánasā vipašcítaḥ
samudṛ́ antáḥ kaváyo ví cakṣate márīcīnām padám ichanti vedhásaḥ

THE sapient with their spirit and their mind behold the Bird adorned with all an Asura's magic might.
Sages observe him in the ocean's inmost depth: the wise disposers seek the station of his rays.

The flying Bird bears Speech within his spirit: erst the Gandharva in the womb pronounced it:
And at the seat of sacrifice the sages cherish this radiant, heavenly-bright invention.

I saw the Herdsman, him who never resteth, approaching and departing on his pathways.
He, clothed in gathered and diffusive splendour, within the worlds continually travels.



There, Herdsman is not Prajapati but Gopa, which is also strewn amongst these hymns.

"Bird" is also sensible in Dirghatamas to Aswins:

Thyself from far I recognized in spirit, -- a Bird that from below flew through the heaven.
I saw thy head still soaring, striving upward by paths unsoiled by dust, pleasant to travel.


Kaksivan fine-tunes their variety to Hawk becoming their Asva, notably for the occasion when they win Usas:


ā vāṃ śyenāso aśvinā vahantu rathe yuktāsa āśavaḥ pataṃgāḥ |

ā vāṃ rathaṃ yuvatis tiṣṭhad atra juṣṭvī narā duhitā sūryasya | pari vām aśvā vapuṣaḥ pataṃgā vayo vahantv aruṣā abhīke ||



That's correct this is marriage number two for her. The full story is bigger and a bit weirder than the short version in marriage ceremonies.


The chance of it having something to do with Time is given by Sarparajni:


Song is bestowed upon the Bird: it rules supreme through thirty realms
Throughout the days at break of morn.

dhāma = related to duration of time: he shines for thirty stations (or ghaṭis, one ghaṭi =24 minutes) in the day;

Stations = muhūrtas, or periods of 48 minutes


Thirty muhurtas = one civil day in Vedanga Jyotish.


She can't possibly mean the Rooster as in the Avesta. And we have to retro-fit "muhurtas" here, because technically this is only about thirty abodes of the day, but it seems an obvious implication.


There are a limited number of fire pits in IVC, leading rise to whether it was a Vedic intersection:


The presence of fire altars has not been limited to just two locations; rather, they have been discovered in four different places, namely Lothal, Kalibangan, Banawali, and Rakhigarhi.


Kalibangan seems to have small ones in each house.


Once this was used to support the Kurgan hypothesis, but, I am glad there are others than me, who reject some historians' claims, because the Russian fires and funeral evidence do not match the Sanskrit versions; at best, sharing the categorical similarity.


So the Syena pretty specifically is a mascot for the Veda, because it is not the Bactrian Eagle. It most closely means the group of golden hawks. It quite possibly is loaned back into the Zoroastrian realm as the Simurgh. It is heavily in Book Nine and rife throughout the Rg Veda. And so it may be its association with Soma is archaic. This is the sense as used by Havirdhana:


“The hawk sent (by Agni) to the sacrifice has brought the dripping copious all-seeing (Soma) libatioṇ; When the Arya people choose the victorious Agni as the ministrant priest, then the sacred rite is celebrateḍ”



So this is indeterminably archaic by Kaksivan:

FLYING, with falcons, may your chariot, Asvins, most gracious, bringing friendly
help, come hither, --



Then for Bharadvaja, they do not know how to translate Amsu:

And the hawk bore to Indra the exhilarating Soma

As the Hawk rent for him the stalk that gladdens


Both are correct.

So far I would not say this image jumps out at me from IVC seals. It might be written in there somewhere.


Here are a couple more attempts on Gharma:


Ṛṣi (sage/seer): dīrghatamā aucathyaḥ



“I invoke the cow that is easily milked, that the handy milker may milk her; may Savitā accept this our excellent libation, that his heat may (thereby) increase; it is for this, verily, that I earnestly invoke him.”

“She comes lowing, abounding in rich (products), desiring her calf in her mind; may this cow grant her milk to the Aśvins; may she thrive for our great advantage.”

or:

I invocate the milch-cow good for milking so that the milker, deft of hand, may drain her. May Savitar give goodliest stimulation. The caldron is made hot; I will proclaim it.

She, lady of all treasure, is come hither yearning in spirit for her calf and lowing. May this cow yield her milk for both the Asvins, and may she prosper to our high advantage.



At least we can figure out what it is, so, we can see this is almost certainly a reference to "Pravargya", even if there isn't goat milk, the same thing will happen. It may have been part of IVC, or, it may be a "Vedic invention". Hard to tell.

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by shaberon (here)
Gharma is a milk and butter bomb. It falls exactly into the science of weaponry, and I suppose you better stand back from it. It kills Covid and cleans the atmosphere out to a 50km radius or so noted. Surely its main effects are not larger than a small village, and the point is to participate and be near it.

~~~

That's astonishing!!! I'd never heard of that before.

[shaberon]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
That's astonishing!!! I'd never heard of that before.

It turns out that some people have discovered something similar by surprise.

Water superheats relatively easily in a microwave.


What this means is, in order to boil, you have to break the surface tension of the liquid. The only "tech" required for this is:


a smooth surface.

Cookware with scuffs and scratches traps enough tiny little air pockets that it prevents the effect; shaking and stirring do the same thing. But if your water is superheated and you disturb it, it will burst like a balloon.

Reheating a mug of coffee might get it hotter than you think.

And yes, this phenomenon has not been at all pointed out in Homa studies; you might see "ghee offering to the fire" or something like that, without the proper description, but now we can just Youtube the Pravargya videos.


When could mankind have started this? Here is another little update or correction.

Most of the primitive agricultural sites from 8,000 B. C. E. show signs of dairying.

That means that humans drank animal milk for 4,000 years before the "lactose tolerance gene" evolved.

Impossible? Nope.

The gene gives you a type of efficiency shortcut. It causes an enzyme to be released in the small intestine that breaks the lactose sugars so they become digestible.

Before then, the same thing was done in the large intestine by gut flora primarily from consuming the products of fermentation.

So that genetic adaptation was by no means necessary and therefor did not heavily condition the flow of history as surmised.

In Mongolia, where they still have an 80% subsistence population based on dairying seven species, the lactose-tolerance gene is present at about 6%.

The ancient arts of cheese and yogurt can now be studied on skeletal teeth, and this makes it easy to say how widespread and early dairy consumption was.

In IVC we are finding industrial scale extraction of lead from galena. There is no good reason to say they could not have figured out superheating. It appears straight away in the Rg Veda as an everyday fact. It seems unlikely the Rishis invented it.


The reason it may be Indian and unknown to other cultures is because India loves ghee.

It doesn't take any special tech to make this, but it does take the interest -- or taste -- in doing so.

What impresses me is the contour of the mushroom blast. Everything a few feet away from it is fine. The mandapa has a roof that is basically right over the top of the fireball.

[shaberon]

Lunar Goddesses; Aja Ekapad, Rohini, Sita, and Citra



I have a little difficulty remembering every tiny little detail off the top of my head. I mentioned an "alternate moon" system which I thought was the quarters, but, it is not. It is still fortnights where, in the extended version, each goddess has a companion beside her. They don't represent the lunar phases, just the time of the new and full moons.


When is the Moon not a drink? When it is female.

That's not exactly the case, because these devis are not said to be the orb but rather those certain days.

This to me seems highly strange because of its geometry in the texts.


In Rg Veda there is only a single reference to each of them individually. What is curious is we find the only form of "krttika" which is not seen in the mantras. Sinivali in X.184 with Sarasvati and Aswins:

Ṛṣi (sage/seer): tvaṣṭā garbhakarttā viṣṇurvā prājāpatyaḥ


Tvastr is "cutting a sculpture of a person" or fashioning the embryo.

She's "diminutive" or Sinivali is the last little sliver of crescent before the moon goes dark. This is the Pregnancy Hymn.

The sense of the mantra may be that garbhakartta is Vishnu who fashions the womb, whereas Tvastr works on the rupa or embryo.

There is no Vedic expression that attaches -ka to make "kartika" or any kind of individual, although the verb "karta" is standard. So far, one may find four permutations of it used by Vasistha in Surya VII.62 referring to creation. Virtually all of its uses are based in "make, do", with nothing about "to cut". Agastyaasks for:


(although I be) as insignificant as grass; lift us up, that we may live

ūrdhvān naḥ karta jīvase ||


Surya Kartrbhir as a "creator" by Vasistha.


The asterism is not exactly "cutters" in the Gond and Khasi terms, just minced meat. Chances are, in Sanskrit, something other than "krttika" would have been chosen for this meaning; the Veda is full of examples. The use of it coming first seems to have a connotation far closer to garbhakartta.


Individual Pleiads are generally named for rain. So, although krttika is their archaic name or that of the asterism, chances are "beginning of the year" has more to do with creation and rain than "cutting" the old one away.


Sinivali is invoked to sustain the embryo and is considered a wife of Vishnu (AV).

The other one is the time of Full Moon Raka in V.42 with Sarasvati:

Ṛṣi (sage/seer): atriḥ


sarasvatī bṛhaddivota rākā


Raka's epithet Brhhaddiva is shared from the preceding V.41:

“May Iḷā, the mother of the herd, and Urvaśī with the rivers, be favourable to us; may the bright-shining Urvaśī (come), commanding our devotion, and investing the worshipper with light.”


abhi na iḻā yūthasya mātā sman nadībhir urvaśī vā gṛṇātu | urvaśī vā bṛhaddivā gṛṇānābhyūrṇvānā prabhṛthasyāyoḥ ||

Atri honors the Kanvas as well as Ausija, which most likely refers to Kaksivan. Those are clues as to why we think he is relatively late if not last.




Urvasi is Brhaddiva and the Source of Waters.


Urvasi is the mother of the Pauravas by Vasistha -- Pururavas. Vamadeva refers to plural urvasis as restoration from impotence. She is not the deus ex machina or Clockwork Deity who had this one-time cosmic creation and vanished into a theory, she is distributed throughout. In her own hymn, she effectively is:

Saranyu, daughter of Tvastr

Usas, daughter of Saranyu or "of the gods"


That's completely solar. But we just came from the moon. And the water. So this is like Agni branching into each zone of existence.



Again we are trying to probe it for linguistic basic-ness that could be a close fit to IVC.


The lunar goddesses with their companions are prevalent in Atharva Veda.

That happens to be where the Gharma hymns are from. Such asvasatkara.



Atharvan is where the Veda is from. We can be sure he instituted mantras and rites and so I would strongly think Brhaspati and some of the corresponding mythology. There might have been an Agni -- Fire that he re-launched as Hotr-Priest. Things like the stars and Moon he probably could not have changed very much. We have to presume IVC *started* Soma, otherwise we are reduced to claiming that IVC is identical to the Veda. I'm sticking with some degree of change due to loss of Tiger Contest.


So, they are not quarters, but there are four goddesses as timings for the Moon. They certainly are not obvious by quantity of hymns. However it is sole domain over a particular thing, which is one of or is the most important observance. The main pair has a Rg Veda template, seen in this list of invocations by Grtsamada in II.32:


Devatā (deity/subject-matter): dyāvāpṛthivyau

Devatā (deity/subject-matter): indrastvaṣṭā vā

Devatā (deity/subject-matter): rākā

Devatā (deity/subject-matter): sinīvālī

ending on:

“I invoke her who is Gaṅgū, who is Sinīvālī, who is Rākā, who is Sarasvatī; (I invoke) Indrāṇī for protection, Varuṇānī for welfare.”


What we notice is not a true compounded name of Indra and Tvastr, but a suggestive "or", being a rare instance where a guess was made. This seems unnecessary because it is follow-through verses to Dyavaprithvi without anyone else named:


Let not man's guile annoy us, secret or by day: give not us up a prey to these calamities.
Sever not thou our friendship: think thereon for us. This, with a heart that longs for bliss, we seek from thee.

Bring hither with benignant mind the willing Cow teeming with plenteous milk, full, inexhaustible.
O thou invoked by many, day by day I urge thee with my word, a charger rapid in his tread.


On the other hand, this actually is a compound with something we just posted as half an astronomical year from Vasukarna Vasukra:


purīṣiṇendravāyū

the two senders of water, Indra and Vāyu




To synthesize these are not all stray, random deity names anyone can conjure up, this is Gaya Plata in Mata Brhaddiva and Pitr Tvastr:

uta mātā bṛhaddivā śṛṇotu nas tvaṣṭā devebhir janibhiḥ pitā vacaḥ | ṛbhukṣā vājo rathaspatir bhago raṇvaḥ śaṃsaḥ śaśamānasya pātu naḥ ||


“May the bright shining mother (of the gods) hear us; may father Tvaṣṭā, with the gods, and their wives, (hear our) words; may Ṛbhukṣan, Vāja, Rathaspati, Bhaga, may the joyous adorable (company of the Maruts) protect us their praisers.

Citra

The Asvajuja sign is defined as beginning opposite Spica. It's quite obvious in later calendars when Aswini begins the year. However, it was quite possibly meaningful for a system of "even divisions". If there was an uneven, older set, one would guess that is because the Naksatra asterisms are not equal, and so one sign could be up to four times as long as the shorter. Spica or Citra greatly resembles Sita in the Mesopotamian equivalent Sala:

Šala's primary role was as Adad's spouse, through which she was also believed to have power over crop fertility. The Standard Babylonian astronomical text Mul-Apin equates the constellation "The Furrow" (Virgo) with "Šala, the ear of grain" (Mul-Apin, Tablet I line 52). The brightest star in Virgo is still known today as Spica (L. "ear of grain").

Šala's genealogy is unclear.

The name Šala (with a long vowel in the first syllable) has no clear Akkadian or other Semitic etymology.

Šala has been identified, although not conclusively, with a nude goddess who appears with the storm god on Akkadian cylinder seals, often holding lightning bolts or surrounded by rain. On a Middle Babylonian kudurru TT her symbol is an ear of grain.

The suggestion by way of Syria:

Hemtun concludes
that this naked goddess (Inanna) is representing asterism Auriga, because in one
seal, she stands on the ‗oxen‘ in ‗Indian style‘. Note the similarity between this
Sumerian seal and the Indus seal depicting ―deity of tree‖ in the ―goat seal‖. This
seal illustrated here is from Syria (circa 1800 BC) and the naked goddess was the
symbol of rain and fertility in Levant.




Sanskrit Sala has more meanings than you can deal with. Next to impossible to guess if it may be an Akkadian sharing. However, Indian Citra is basically the same "ear of grain", or seed, etc., that seems universal through Virgo. In Rg Veda, this is far worse than candra in terms of trying to sift it out from over a hundred generic usages. Nothing about it suggests to me the night sky; instead, it is subject to alliteration and wordplays with candra. Danucitra is a quaint expression for "dewshine". There is quite plainly a Raja Citra who rules along the Sarasvati. Rjisvan says she is with the Gnas and:


citrāyuḥ sarasvatī vīrapatnī

Indra is a few times called citra vajrahasta, and Vamadeva describes Usas:


aśveva citrāruṣī mātā gavām ṛtāvarī | sakhābhūd aśvinor uṣāḥ ||


This may be the least astronomical statement you can make:


sa citra citraṃ citayantam asme citrakṣatra citratamaṃ vayodhām | candraṃ rayim puruvīram bṛhantaṃ candra candrābhir gṛṇate yuvasva ||



So it seems like it is never stellar, and it is one of the most generic and transferrable tags in the language.

Most of Virgo is in Hasta possibly Hiranyapani, followed by this generic non-item. As far as we know, the only tangible symbol is ear of grain. This, of course, has a spontaneous and unusual representation in the IVC script. Moreover, the preference for using Spica as a marker is because its apparent motion is next to nothing, something like 1/10,000th of an arcsecond, and so you have a choice between using this very bright star, or, using the dead center in Mula, which is the least desirable.

There is a huge implication in Rg Veda that ear-of-grain would be associated with Sita.

But IVC archeology tells us that Sita was invented around 2,800.

Nothing is technically elaborate about this symbol; it's more self-evident than most. Yet IVC does not have a corresponding Virgo symbol, there is no Person holding Ear of Grain that I know of. Were the star in isolation to be considered grain, then, yes, the seals might have it.

Vamadeva makes the possibly unique expression Kinasa -- Ploughman, and due to the inflections, the agricultural devis match "dog" and "plough or equivalent of Sita". Or, sunam being repeated for "well-being" may be the meaning of Suna. But they are not "slaughterhouse" and "head" that would be marked differently. In fact "they" are only a compound:


śunāsīrā


There isn't much of anything about a sign "Hasta" although this duality is visually drawn in IVC:


Hasta (हस्त) refers to the “trunk (of an elephant)”, according to the 13th-century Matsyendrasaṃhitā: a Kubjikā-Tripurā oriented Tantric Yoga text of the Ṣaḍanvayaśāmbhava tradition from South India.





So the ending -kartta in a Rishi's name could be "cutting" more like "sculpting" if it applies to Tvastr, and has the meaning forming an embryo. We can be positive this is a focus of this group of deities, which may have pre-Vedic roots, including New and Full Moon goddesses.

Tvastr is the regent of Citra.

In this way, he has the domains of pregnancy and harvest. This is plausible in Sanskrit, before the Veda is actually telling us Tvastr is the lord of its mantras. The sense is there probably were non-Vedic mantras that they overwhelmed. Arya enemies of Sudas. I have not seen anything that tells me about what would amount to foreign devas. We can't give examples of anything they exiled to Avestan or Tamil country.

There is the Mura Deva of the Yatudhana according to Vasistha.

Perhaps because Urvasi calls him one.

Payu launches Agni Raksoha like a weapon at the Mura Devas and Yatudhanas. He repeats it adding the synonym Rakso which we know as Rakshasa. Hiranyastupa banishes Rakshasas and Yatudhanas. Agastya has Surya drive away Yatudhanas. Brhaddiva Atharvana wards them off.

No names are ever given.

The "Deva" just has a description "stupefaction, bewilderment", so it is a behavior that makes a person Stupid.

Aggression comes next or is a secondary meaning to it. The main point appears to be mental in nature. And they appear to be successful, i. e., those are Old Rishis, and later on it does not seem to be an issue.

The prefix Yatu is used quite liberally:

Destroy the evil spirit, whether in the form of an owl, or of an owlet, of a dog, or of a duck, of a hawk or of a vulture...


In many of those instances, you might be able to say, well, they're just demonizing somebody, and I think the real meaning is there is not a specific social group stamped with a particular name, it's about attitude and behavior. Mura is more or less the opposite pole of Arya in this regard. It's not a bloodline or birthright caste. It is possible to migrate from one to the other.

The similarly-spelled Yadu is generally western, and at times fluctuated in alliance to the Aryas or Bharatas, or I would say Manusas. The Veda certainly uses five regions of men, which would seem like the last thing it could possibly invent. Something like that could be equivalent to Lothal. Certainly the use of Five in IVC script is no ordinary counting number, but a label on the order of Five Peoples or a Five Year Yuga, and quite possibly both.

It is quite plain that the Zebu who mainly uses Five is a complete stoic who Does Nothing, like a foundation, yet has an advanced vocabulary compared to most animals.

The Ibex gains a Soma Press and is used in the Three-headed Chimera.

The Markhor has a mirrored relation to it and is part of the Tiger Centaur.

It is a special agent of Four and Seven.

Markhor B-9:







It's not very different from our remaining goat.

This symbol is used by Tiger Centaur, the Ivory Rods, and a Zebu.

The Zebu has an uphill motif as if imitating Three Mountains. I have not found it online. Then there is the unique instance of Branch and Five with Human Markhor.

This numerological frame is very apparent; and similar to a path guide as Pusan is said to be.


Aja Ekapad

Vedic Sanskrit distinguishes a ram with terms like mesa and avya. The goat however shows no differences between ibexes and markhors with a name indistinguishable from deity. This similarly-named deva always has the extension Ekapad. This is how it is summarized by a study on Naksatra Kalpa:

These Rsis are, thus, specifically related to the Atharvaveda, Saunakiya recension. Whitney had drawn attention to the important fact that most of the divinities presiding over the constellations belong to the old Vedic pantheon. Brahman, the deity of Abhijit, may be said to be a late one. Otherwise no deity from the Puranic pantheon is seen therein, nor the divinities of the later times. Many of the deities such as Aja Ekapad, Ahi Budhnya, Bhaga and Aryaman are almost forgotten in the epic period and Apah, Visvedevas, Aditi and Pusan are put into the background.

The Naksatra-Kalpa mentions a number of tribes which are said to be affected by the different constellations. The Satadris, Kaisikas, Iksvakus, Kurus and Usinaras are met with in the ancient Sanskrit literature. However, names like Kalamrsas, Krandas, Ucchusmas, Avadhumamarkatas (1.7.10), Ahinaras, Kuntis (1.8.6) and Avrtas (1.8.8) are not found elsewhere.

Mostly so. This apparent namesake of the goat appears infrequently, although comes first in a litany by Vasistha that includes Apam Napat and Prsni.

Grtsamada uses it in a similar invocation with Apam Napat, where these additional definitive comments are separated from the damage to the continuity by about 2,300 years:


Ahirbudhnya and Aja ekapād are two rudras;

aja ekapād is the name of the sun, the unborn, who goes with one foot


When he figures something is related to another part of the Rg Veda, this is indicated; he attributes many other sources so you can start to tell what goes into the Satapatha and Taittiriya lines, and so Sayana is more or less accurately reporting on changes to the knowledge base with only some examples that are actually relevant to the era.

One aspect of "son and grandson" of Waters is the use of surprisingly faint stars to create an asterism near Brahma Hrdaya. Back to this in a minute. The deity also has some uses apart from Ahirbudhnya and Apam Napat by Vasukarna:


the flowing Sindhu, the atmosphere, the firmament, Aja Ekapād, the rain-bearing thunder-cloud

samudraḥ sindhū rajo antarikṣam aja ekapāt tanayitnur arṇavaḥ |



Notice four attempts on the similar verse from his previous hymn:


pāvīravī tanyatur ekapād ajo divo dhartā sindhur āpaḥ samudriyaḥ |


May the armed and thundering (voice of mid-heaven), the upholder of heaven, Aja Ekapād, the ocean, the waters of the firmament

Thunder, the lightning's daughter, Aja-Ekapad, heaven's bearer, Sindhu, and the waters of the sea

Paviravi (i.e. the divine speech), the thunder, Aja Ekapad, the supporter of the heaven, (the river) Sindhu

The thunder, the daughter of Paviru Aja Ekapad, the supporter of the heaven, Sindhu, the waters of the ocean


The aspect that seems most directly bonded to him is divo dharta, if we can conceive Sindhu and Apah as their own identities, and Thunder is blurred in its relation, Aja Ekapad retains an expression that is not atmospheric, or extends beyond it.


There is one generic use of "ekapad" in a form of advice from Bhiksu:


“He who has but one foot takes a longer time on a journey than he who has two; he who has two feet comes after him who has three; he who has four feet comes up overtaking the two-footed (and three-footed), beholding their traces as he passes by.”


Sayana interprets that as portions of wealth because the advice is donations. This mainly shows that it has to do more with "one foot" than "lame" and the deity of this name rules a sign called Purva Bhadrapada which is the first of two feet.

That means that two asterisms are viewed as forming what we would have to call a constellation.

The original name from Atharvaveda uses Prostha:

Proṣṭhapada (प्रोष्ठपद, ‘feet of a stool’) or later Bhadrapadā (‘auspicious feet’), a double asterism forming a square, the former (pūrva) consisting of α and β Pegasi, the latter (uttara) of γ Pegasi and α Andromedæ.

Proṣṭha (प्रोष्ठ).—

1) A bull, an ox.

2) A bench, stool.


This again has one reference in the Rg Veda. It identifies a nation by Bandhvadaya Gaupayana:

Rathaproṣṭha Asamātis


Is it a bench on wheels or an ox-driven cart?

The chieftain is described as:


To Asamati, spring of gifts, lord of the brave, a radiant car,
The conqueror of Bhajeratha

Him in whose service flourishes Iksvaku, rich and dazzling-bright.
As the Five Tribes that are in heaven.


Probably better:

bhajerathasya satpatim ||

(the descendant) of Bhajeratha, the protector of the good

“In the good government of whose (realm) the opulent and victorious Ikṣvāku prospers (so that) the five orders of men (are as happy) as if they were in heaven.”




The Gaupayana Rishi even identifies his own heritage:


Thou for Agastya's sister's sons yokest thy pair of ruddy steeds.


Again it is correct the Veda seems to direct him towards Vidarbha and Maharastra, and then it is rather extraordinary how critical he is in Tamil, while a corresponding Megalith Culture does appear to carry the IVC India symbol into astronomical markers.




The two astronomical feet cover what we would call the cusp of Aquarius -- Pisces and then most of Pisces, although "above" them in Pegasus. The second is ruled by Ahirbudhnya. Rather, there are two two-star asterisms, first and last, which can easily be four feet of an ox.

While the mysterious deity might literally mean one-footed goat, the emphasis may be more on it as the first of two feet or two sets of them. The undeveloped but persistent name has one additional context in Atharva Veda which has given rise to speculation on it as Axis Mundi.

The area in question already introduces a new deity in Rohita XIII.1.

There happens to also be the Rohitas as a class of hymns.

Before taking off on which Shiva another "red" deity is, the hymn seems to contain some pretty specific astronomy:


Rohita, car-borne by a speckled leader, thou, pouring water,.
goest on in triumph.
22Golden, refulgent, lofty is the Lady, Rohinī, Rohita's devoted
Consort.
Through her may we win various spoil and booty, through her
be conquerors in every battle.
23Rohita's seat is Rohinī before us: that is the path the speckled
Mare pursueth.
Kasyapas and Gandharvas lead her upward, and heavenly sages
ever watch and guard her,
24Sūrya's bay steeds refulgent and immortal draw the light-rolling.
chariot on for ever.


So, i. e., Rohini, a feminine name for Aldebaran, is given a relationship to a male counterpart, while the sign is listed as the domain of Prajapati.


Rohita appears to be described as the superior form of the visible Agni and Surya; he does a quick creation myth via Soma and the Maruts and quickly arrives at a mention of Aja Ekapad, outside of the cluster where he is usually found:


Rohita gave the Earth and Heavens their being. There Para-
meshthin held the cord extended.
Thereon reposeth Aja Ekapāda. He with his might hath stab-
lished Earth and Heaven.
7Rohita firmly stablished Earth and Heaven: by him was ether
fixt by him the welkin.

In the original:

(AVŚ_13,1.5a) ā́ te rāṣṭrám ihá róhito 'hārṣīd vy ā̀sthan mŕ̥dho ábhayaṃ te abhūt |
(AVŚ_13,1.5c) tásmai te dyāvāpr̥thivī́ revátībhiḥ kā́maṃ duhātām ihá śákvarībhiḥ ||5||

(AVŚ_13,1.6a) róhito dyā́vāpr̥thivī́ jajāna tátra tántuṃ parameṣṭhī́ tatāna |
(AVŚ_13,1.6c) tátra śiśriye 'já ékapādó 'dr̥ṃhad dyā́vāpr̥thivī́ bálena ||6||

(AVŚ_13,1.7a) róhito dyā́vāpr̥thivī́ adr̥ṃhat téna svà stabhitáṃ téna nā́kaḥ |
(AVŚ_13,1.7c) ténāntárikṣaṃ vímitā rájāṃsi téna devā́ amŕ̥tam ánv avindan ||7||


So Aja Ekapad and Paramesthin are his close cohorts, or, are they just his additional epithets?

Unlike *most* creation myths, this runs through Rohita taking incarnation by verse four of this Sakvari ideology:

Up to the lap of births, to lofty places, hath Rohita, the germ
of Dames, ascended.
Conjoined with these he found the six realms: seeing his way
in front here he received the kingship.

AVŚ_13,1.4a) rúho ruroha róhita ā́ ruroha gárbho jánīnāṃ janúṣām upástham |
(AVŚ_13,1.4c) tā́bhiḥ sáṃrabdham ánv avindan ṣáḍ urvī́r gātúṃ prapáśyann ihá rāṣṭrám ā́hāḥ ||4||


Here returns the important Atharvanic Lord of Speech:

To us, Vāchaspati, may Earth be pleasant, pleasant our dwelling,
pleasant be our couches.
Even here may Prāna be our friend: may Agni, O Parameshthin
give thee life and splendour.
18And those, Vāchaspati, our own five seasons, sacred to Visva-
karman their creator.
Even here our friend be Prāna: Parameshthin, may Rohita
vouchsafe the life and splendour.


He classifies a major division of Agni:


One is deposited in Truth, one kindled in the waters: both
Agnis of Rohita who found the light are set aflame with prayer.
51That decked by Wind, and that prepared by Indra Brāhman-
aspati,
Agnis of Rohita who found light, prayer-enkindled, sacrificed.
52Rohita made the earth to be his altar, heaven his Dakshinā.
Then heat he took for Agni, and with rain for molten butter he
created every living thing.


Looking in here, is it Rohita and/or Paramesthin? Neither is a Rg Vedic deity, although we find in the credits for Creation X.129:


Ṛṣi (sage/seer): prajāpatiḥ parameṣṭhī

Devatā (deity/subject-matter): bhāvavṛttam


Followed by a sequel involving a 101-year Yajna.

This is a case where we are more or less taking this not as an individual human author, but the deva(s) Prajapati Paramesthin speaking. This is the same as with arguments of Indra and Indrani and so on. The Rishi with a following is Prajapati Visvamitra Vacya.

This deity is again Atharvanic.


Here is an interesting Gharma IV.11:


Being produced among mankind as Indra, the Caldron works
heated and brightly glowing.
Let him not, with good sons, pass off in vapour who hath not
eaten of the Ox with knowledge.
4The Ox pours milk out in the world of virtue: in earliest time,
he, Pavamana, swells it.


that is among Manusyas:


(AVŚ_4,11.3a) índro jātó manuṣyèṣv antár gharmás taptáś carati śóśucānaḥ |



going to a type of theophany:


AVŚ_4,11.7a) índro rūpéṇāgnír váhena prajā́patiḥ parameṣṭhī́ virā́ṭ |
(AVŚ_4,11.7c) viśvā́nare akramata vaiśvānaré akramatānadúhy akramata |
(AVŚ_4,11.7e) só 'dr̥ṃhayata só 'dhārayata ||7||


Prajāpati, supreme and sovran ruler, Indra by form and by his
shoulder Agni,
Came to Visvānara, came to all men's Bullock


So, again like the Rg Veda, it appears to be Prajapati Paramesthin or the latter is a title of the former.




However a minor distinction appears at the beginning in a type of mnemonic Visvarupa IX.7:


Prajapati and Parameshthin are the two horns, Indra is the
head, Agni the forehead, Yama the joint of the neck.
2King Soma is the brain, Sky is the upper jaw, Earth is the
lower jaw.
3Lightning is the tongue, the Maruts are the teeth, Revati is the
neck, the Krittikās are the shoulders, the Gharma s the
shoulder-bar.

The All-embracing (Aditi) is the hide, the herbs are her hair,.
and the Lunar Mansions her form.


That has a few, not all, Naksatras placed in it. Revati, Krttikas, Gharma in one line is suggestive.

Although a deity name, it now sounds more like Prajapati, son of Paramesthin. Most of the hymn explains his parts whereas this is his form:


Sitting he is Agni, when he hath stood up he is the Asvins.
20Standing east-wards he is Indra, standing southwards, Yama.
21Standing westwards he is Dhātar, standing northwards Savitar.
22When he hath got his grass he is King Soma.
23He is Mitra when he looks about him, and when he hath turned
round he is joy.
24When he is yoking he belongs to the All-Gods, when yoked he
is Prajāpati, when unyoked he is All.
25This verily is omniform...


Here is another grammatical separation of the two names:


(AVŚ_10,3.24a) yáthā yáśaḥ prajā́patau yáthāsmín parameṣṭhíni |


The caveat is that we well know that in literature there is a Brahma Prajapati in stories with Rohini and Rudra, which seems to be the first coalescing idea that substitutes the primordial Veda, and we are led to think about an arrow shot and decapitation as a certain astrological marker.

This is Axis Mundi Skambha X.7:

Who out of many, tell me, is that Skambha,
On whom Prajāpati set up and firmly stablished all the worlds?


It has twenty or so of these rhetorical questions, but, it is like Rohita, a substrate upon which Prajapati is a particular actor. It doesn't say anything about Paramesthin here but it does later on:


They who in Purusha understand Brahma know Him who is.
Supreme.
He who knows Him who is Supreme, and he who knows the
Lord of Life,
These know the loftiest Power Divine, and thence know Skam-
bha thoroughly.


AVŚ_10,7.17a) yé púruṣe bráhma vidús té viduḥ parameṣṭhínam |
(AVŚ_10,7.17c) yó véda parameṣṭhínaṃ yáś ca véda prajā́patim |
(AVŚ_10,7.17e) jyeṣṭháṃ yé brā́hmaṇaṃ vidús te skambhám anusáṃviduḥ ||17||


Those seem to be an important pair like twins, and this brahma is more like mantra vidya. Purusha is extraordinarily generic, and mantra is the specifically Indic or Vedic way of revealing Paramesthin, Indra is the Gharma of the Manusyas.

They again seem to be individuals in Blank XV.6:


He went away to the regions. Virāj and all the Gods and all the
Deities followed him. He who, etc.
9He went away to all the intermediate spaces. Prajāpati and
Parameshthin and the Father and the Great Father followed
him. He who possesses this knowledge becomes the beloved
home of Prajāpati and Parameshthin and the Father and the
Great Father.



Yajna Prajapatya in the Rg Veda speaks of the Pitrs weaving forward to make Time, while "backwards weaving" worships the creation by Prajapati.

These layers (parent, grandparent) are elsewhere taken as Year and Yuga.


Confusion over the Water astronomical deities is uncoverable from within the surprising Nightmare Usas:


To Trita, and to Dvita, Dawn! bear thou the evil dream away.
As we collect the utmost debt, even the eighth and sixteenth part,

So unto Aptya we transfer together all the evil dream.
Now have we conquered and obtained, and from our trespasses are free.


It is schizophrenic, which is difficult to translate. Sayana puts it awkwardly, but the gist of it is that Trita and the Trtas are people, while the same name, Trita Aptya, means a deity located elsewhere. Several verses are invested in the trait of Duhsvapna or Nightmare. Trita Aptya invokes Usas as the agent to remove and transfer his Nightmare to Trita Aptya.

The sense of it does not seem to be cursing a deity as the *source* of horrors, but, is actually more of a connection to and praise of Usas for the transformative ability.


Again in terms of "who is speaking", Talageri deleted him from I.105:


Ṛṣi (sage/seer): āptyastrita āṅgirasaḥ kutso vā

We went through this before. Sayana's comments on this matter appear consistent with the Samhita. Rishi Trita Aptya is Kutsa, who i. e. begins Book Ten, which would be 7 x 7 Agni hymns.

Trita Aptya form of Agni is in Visvarupa X.8.


Kutsa is the only one to mention Trasadasyu in Book One, so, if Grtsamada is the same time as him, they are simply adopting complementary writing styles that are near exclusive.


Grtsamada says he joined with Rishi Trita.



This Rishi is the same person writing in two legendary names:


Kutsa Angiras -- Trita Aptya


See for example I.105. It is even in the Mantra as well as the Anukramani. Sayana comments this in a few other places.

The nucleus of Book Ten is the Trita Aptya verses followed by Sindhudvipa Ambarisa (Varsagira) on Visvarupa and Waters.


Medhatithi quotes Trita Aptya into Book One.


This is like a Black nucleus compared to the White one that Medhatithi is in, used additionally in Books Eight and Nine. They're literally conjoined.


To be more precise requires later evidence, which requires questioning if this was a minor tradition that had been passed down.

My memory was a bit off on Citra--Spica, which moves about 1/10 of an arcsecond in 10,000 years.



Surya Siddhanta has Citra's position wrong, but uses it to locate "Child of the Waters", Apam Vatsa. The Surya Siddhanta is the only text that mentions a third star, as if repeating that same line, Apas (or Apa), Delta Virginis.

Translator is baffled why such faint stars as Prajapati and Apa would be particularly revered.

The Citra star is used to say the "year begins" at the sign, Asvini, whose cusp is defined as opposite Citra. So, for its epoch, yes, it has the job of re-defining the equinox, and Brahmahrdaya reflects a textual evolution. It may be that Prajapati and the Apas stars reflect an ancient usage. If Prajapati is Capella, this is a different day than that of Rohini, who perhaps has been uttered in a wife-like role to The Shepherd, which would then somewhat resemble Sumerian Mul.Gam.

Dvita and Trita Aptya mean something in the Rg Veda, and this is the most plausible hint.


Again to be more precise, the SS text says:


20. Situated five degrees eastward from Brahmahrdaya is Pra-
jagpati: it is at the end of Taurus, and thirty-eight degrees north.
21. Apamvatsa is five degrees north from Citra: somewhat
greater than it, as also six degrees to the north of it, is Apas.


It's not Capella:


Prajapati is Delta Aurigae.

Apas is Delta Virginis.

Apamvatsa is Eta Virginis.


The Waters are labeled here in relation to Spica, which sits two degrees below the equator:





They would be the elbows of traditional Virgo:





If there might be Bull's Feet in one part of the sky, this system does not allow Taurus yet:

The asterism Rohinl, as has been seen above, is composed of the five
principal stars in the head of Taurus, in the constellation of which is
seen the figure of a wain. The divinity is Prajapati.


This describes a small box of about four degrees from Alpha (Aldebaran -- Rohini) to Gamma:





There are warnings about planets entering directly into it, i. e., passing south of the equator.

This information about Citra and Rohini is spontaneous and interrupts the flow of the work, which is about calculations and sets.


This text does have Mrgavyadha for Sirius. But Rohini is a wagon whose handler is far enough away to be out of this picture. It is almost unusual that you bypass Capella to get to it at the far end of Auriga.

It generally corresponds to the Hyades:





The name for the unfortunate conjunction evidently becomes a standard warning:

rohiṇī-śakaṭa-bheda


A page explores this and makes the suggestion:

the 'cart' (śakaṭa) is itself a projection of the trapezoid vedi


They have difficulty not getting the esoteric Sukla Yajur Veda and the violent episode with Usas. But they can sense something about it.


However, sakata is not a Vedic term, and the VJ equates Rohini to a single star. We can't say the wagon is really the original asterism. What is interesting is again viewing this in a negative image. It was never said those events were observed, and the curious by running software established that the last time Saturn slipped into it as 5,000 B. C. E.; on the other hand, the Moon regularly enters into it, and so there are stories about the Moon's fondness for Rohini.

That makes physical sense, and, there is a trapezoidal shape right there.

This has no context at all in the Rg Veda, while the stars of Waters arguably do. That's by the corresponding names of the Aptyas. We expect it to tell us little about asterisms or constellations.

If it is generally true that rarely anything other than the Moon enters the Hyades, anyone could see this, so it would still be true in IVC.


Linguisticly, the complex equation which may contain Samkhya is expressed by Vasukra Aindra in X.27:

Seven heroes from the nether part ascended, and from the upper part came eight together.
Nine from behind came armed with winnowing-baskets: ten from the front pressed o' er the rock's high ridges.

Part of what?

kayā bhuvā

with what design has the cow offered her udder?

Seven sages sprang from the lower portion; eight were born from the upper portion; nine occupants of stations came from behind, and ten, generated in the front, partaking of food

(They) despatched one of the ten, Kapila, as equal (to the task) for the completion of the sacrifice; the gratified mother cherishes the embryo well-deposited in the waters, and not desirous of an abiding place.

You could render that generically, "the tawny one", but if so this is the only time in Rg Veda it is chosen to represent a color, which is unusual because the color is significant and this is the only time the word appears. That it follows a potential design-by-numbers is suggestive of the legendary founder of Samkhya -- Enumeration, Kapila, from whom we primarily derive the five-fold Tattva system.

The verse is correctly about Viras -- Heroes, not rishis or kavis.

As much as it probably depicts the Angirases, it does not directly say so. That someone from the group of ten does the completion runs parallel.


Nesting under that is a Six-and-Seven symbol which really permeates all subsequent underlying philosophy. It was difficult to recognize because Dirghatamas has an accent where he spells "six" as "sal". More or less the same thing was just said about Rohita in Six Realms -- Gata.

I am going to cite better the note I placed recently, where the stamp begins in I.164.6:

vi yas tastambha ṣaḻ imā rajāṃsy ajasya rūpe kim api svid ekam |

what is that one alone, who has upheld these six spheres in the form of the unborn?

What was that ONE who in the Unborn's image hath stablished and fixed firm these worlds' six regions.
Let him who knoweth presently declare it, this lovely Bird's securely founded station.

The Eka is using an Aja Rupa and nobody said it was a goat.

In this case it is a Calf, gazing at Go Visvarupa when there is a reprise with Eka of Vv. 9-10:

Then the Calf lowed, and looked upon the Mother, the Cow who wears all shapes in three directions.
Bearing three Mothers and three Fathers, single he stood erect: they never make him weary.

or:

the calf bellowed, and beheld the omniform cow in the three combinations.

The one sole, having three mothers and three fathers, stood on high; none ever over-weary him; the (gods) on the summit of the sky take counsel respecting him in language all-comprehending (but) not extending to all.

mantrayante

There on the pitch of heaven they speak together in speech all-knowing but not all-impelling.


For me those are everlasting paradigms. At the core meaning of Aja Rupa is our Swayambhu Jyoti Rupa Adi Buddha, and then three mothers and three fathers is the Hexagram in all its aspects. The hymn isn't any more specific on identities. It then changes to the Five-footed form involved with the complex year-like chariot, which leads to the symbol of Six-spoked Wheel which is similar.

The oldest copper art objects are Wheel and Bull, which have the odd habit of coming together on IVC seals.

The tablets show two at the Temple.

We can be fairly certain that physically, either the solstices or equinoxes could be used to divide the year in half. That is a candidate for their explanation.


I found something that may be pre-eminent for explaining "Sky".

Firstly, there is a modifier glyph which is the Egyptian hieroglyph for "sky".

In one case it has an appearance suggestive of Lightning.

Here, it takes the form of what many people intuitively respond to as rain. This is Sky over Nine, a number, which, of course, has very few uses on its own.

This has additional context. Lothal Bird faces Y, and we have considered bird-in-flight as perhaps represented by Inverted Y, which may mimic the tail of the Drongo.

A Sky Fish is not new since it is a main course on polychrome pottery, but these are mostly horizontal as normal. So far in the script and seals, there are merely two normal fish. The creature for some reason rotates in order to transition from an image to a glyph. It is still a Sky Fish but about to become a target for Gharial.

The Bird does indicate the atmospheric sky, and Fish can only be a mental or intellectual--conceptual one. It remains plausible that IVC script reflects two kinds of sky or heaven, and, therefor, is compatible with Three Worlds metaphysics. I am not sure the Veda originates this; does it craft a value-laden response and application, yes, that is the main point. It has multiple "kinds" of creation, and for example the Rbhus all have valid points on the Most Excellent. It has the well-known mark of Thirty-three deities, but, this is not exclusive or exhaustive.


I don't know why this could not be about the two higher worlds and Parjanya on H-4:




We have been told Fish is a star, taxes, gems, crocodile food, and a few other things I can't keep up with that probably also would not make sense in the above statement.

Whatever the middle word/name/sentence/paragraph/category/recipe may be, it would then have to make sense in further texts.


Inverted Y and One L-48:





Does it mean that Belted Fish has something to do with Vayu?

It's not a technically difficult text and yet the explanation remains daunting.

Similarly, much of the Rg Veda is so arcane yet understandable to an audience, these writings are perhaps almost the same in character.

[shaberon]

Statistical Concordance




After a few posts on Vedic Sanskrit, this may be the IVC Horse:





Now for two cultures in the same area, they are different enough that you could just about call them Tiger and Horse. At the same time, the main article of all IVC script is the Soma Filter, which continues to have its importance through the Vedic era.


Soma is possibly of Afghan or other origin.


Manusyas have Indra as Gharma:


(AVŚ_4,11.3a) índro jātó manuṣyèṣv antár gharmás taptáś carati śóśucānaḥ |



Gharma returns in Visvarupa in a line after asterisms for neck and shoulders:


(AVŚ_9,7.3a) vidyúj jihvā́ marúto dántā revátir grīvā́ḥ kŕ̥ttikā skandhā́ gharmó váhaḥ ||3||


followed by two worlds outside its body:


(AVŚ_9,7.4a) víśvaṃ vāyúḥ svargó lokáḥ



After hide and hair, Naksatras are its total form or shape:


(AVŚ_9,7.15a) viśvávyacās cármáuṣadhayo lómāni nákṣatrāṇi rūpám ||15||


Mitra being in a long strand of deities, Ananda was not personified or deified in translation:


(AVŚ_9,7.23a) mitrá ī́kṣamāṇa ā́vr̥tta ānandáḥ ||23||


It's unclear to me if IVC reflects Gharma in any way. They could have been using ghee without Indra.




I worked with the capability to upload missing imagery, and some of it was used to update a few obvious areas such as the Ivory Rods and Tree Tablets. I had a few more that are an experiment into the threshhold.

Posts limit images, so, we don't want to stress it by using any and every single little individual text that could be mentioned. This handful is selected because it looks at applications of the statistically most powerful groupings of glyphs.


I had the idea to look at the dominant trigram and tetragram for Two Kinds of Fish.

It wasn't an independent idea, but came off the Table of Contents M-314:




We noticed that trio of Fish has *various* attachments to the dominant tetragram. These two particular kinds of modified fish have a tendency to work together. The ones with slashes, belts, or dots, can be difficult to determine.

The seal then goes in another direction with three kinds of U. Here is where I would suggest Doubly Caged A is a finished product. When we look at regional variation, you will see its parts and construction in different ways at different places.

This thing ends with something that has been called squirrel, jackal, armadillo and otherwise, which definitely is not going to guide us on a themed tour. However, I am thinking the A is similar to a diploma or is a finished product from multiple statements issued under the according U and Fish varieties. Something like a way of uniVersalizing Sanskrit, since things like ghee, rice, or a rhinoceros have no Iranian precedent.


Whiskers are such an obvious suggestion you want to call it a Catfish, while a Chevron is not even attached to it and is somewhat implausible. But this kind is on the main Gaur Clash.



They are usually together. Only a couple are filtered out.


Fish with Chevron:







Whiskered Fish:
















in the tetragram:










How are those n-grams portable in the manner displayed.

[shaberon]

Bird-face Goddess Concordance



Part of the curiosity behind the last post was a Chevron. What does a Fish do with it. There are three hundred more of them, but those posted interface with apparently powerful forces. This is as determined by the sheer weight of repetition and presence. Like looking for the most common words in any language, except I am not sure they are words.


This is not going to spin like a record and start making a song correctly. I think it is discernable the way it came out, Scorpion is obviously some kind of a subject or genre, but what is not readily apparent is that Three Mountains pertains to Tree and Striped Mountain to Tiger. This is like a different subject or genre weaving its way along. It just manages to show up in that selection.




The curiosity about Chevron is that sometimes it connects to a person's feet or head. It is a modifier and it stands alone. It is only doubled one time. The Copper Tablets are Pair of Chevrons like the Ivory Rods are Four Branches.

Chevron is also used with Two Wheels in the broadly public manner from signboards to objects, even though Pair of Wheels has its primary origin on the only Temple of Harappa.

Despite being such a basic shape, it is not very common in the script as a whole.


I began to notice it when looking at a person as probably a character.

From posting on this before it is stuffed with pictures, so this is a re-write from its lacunae.


No one asked this before.

If this glyph was "someone" with a coherent story, I think it would be like this.

If you are curious about the Chevron, you will get a certain reply. The conversation delivered does not quite address *all* IVC topics, but it *does* seem to convey adeptship at *some* of it.

We are talking about a distinct appearance that is not the Long-haired Yogini who is more famous in the visuals and has Branch and Four.


Well, that one does not have a whole lot of in-depth text, and this one does.

This concordance may be the most exceptional example of something that runs from simple to complex, with a variety of apparent subjects, and little unnecessary repetition.

Winged Man is perhaps more interesting *here* than he is on his own. The thing to watch for is Person wearing Comb. One of them is the Unicorn Parade scene. This must be one of the most important moments of the entire civilization.


Bird-face Goddess does not have any "U" text.

She is in several basic trigrams. Her fundamental pairings are:


Before "Pinwheel" or after a sort of Fat "H" 186 (as in the trigram Person holding "U" 32, "Mallet", "H") -- this is the triple-barred "H" same as in Contest M-308. Person with Bow also has it, but, largely, this is is her domain. The analysis will ignore the Contest because she is the icon, not the text.

She has another couplet with Fish with Slash, which only re-appears two times in her library (ninety-one texts). This one has an illegible field symbol.










She has a tolerance for "One", Lozenge, Chevron, and Caged "Mallet", while placing Scorpion with two Grids. That usurps the common Person with One that usually has this pair.

Bird-face Goddess's Branch enumeration is "Five". There is also the text "Five" -- Bird-face Goddess -- "Wheel" -- "Two".














She has Bird-in-Parentheses on a Mohenjo daro Buffalo text (as above), a Lothal Unicorn impression, and on Unicorn K-4.

From Ivory Rod at top to Tiger text:









Bird-face Goddess text from Chimera M-1173 with Hourglass is damaged across the creature's face, but is found in an area where Tiger Chimera runs from "smooth" to "striped" looks.

"X" and "Pinch" places her with Tiger M-1165 (last example).




The use of Conjoined Enclosures is up her alley.

Her Tiger Chimera is a use of it. Elephant does as well.





She has the only Rabbit-esque "8" (or "B") with something hanging out of it, as well as "Eyes with lashes".





She has "X" under "Sky", twice, and Three Triangles under "Sky", once. Here, it is behaving very differently from all its other examples, which are as a leading glyph, or subjugated to "Wheel" with Winged Man. She is the total mistress of this glyph in the mega-stripey statement.

Similarly, "X" under "Sky" may be lightly related to Person holding "Quote", but on a character basis is mostly in the hands of Bird-face Goddess.

She has Caged Fish and "Battery" on an Elephant text.

This starts with her sloped Three Mountains:















Her "Sky" glyphs are certainly suggestive. Her first pairing of "X" under "Sky" is with Lozenge. It re-appears in one of the most unusual texts on M-634 with three Wheels.

When subject to "X", she has Stacked "Two"; and she has one text of Bent Branch and "Four". There is also a "Four" text with the two kinds of Winged Man. Her personal strong suit is "One", "Two", and "Five"; Winged Man supplements "Three"; this "Four" is somewhat meager at 3/91 texts.







Her Winged Man is usually accompanied by "Three", except in one case where Eight-rayed Lozenge is present. She also uses the pair Lozenge -- "X" under "Sky", from which, it figures the eight-rayed thing is also simply like a Lozenge covering the main middle part of "X".







Her most effulgent texts land her between two "Wheels", or, before two "Bows with handle" and Spear. This comes in two varieties, with "H" or Square "A" and additional text.






There you have the Unicorn Parade and Neptune.

The original post got loaded because she has a glyph shared with the major iconic scenes. Three Triangles beside something similar to a Crab with fat pincers, or a triangle with sideways legs. Here, it is sign 229 on her Kalibangan Unicorn. This begins on a text with the One Realistic Crab:





That last line puts her in a hypostasis with a group that looks like they are doing Yoga and Soma Offering.

Elsewhere, we find Chevron and One and Wheel, or, most of the components that go into the "motto" or the texts similar to the Dholavira Signboard.

In that sense, I believe the script is tiered. I'm guessing it starts with maybe twenty to forty glyphs, or not very many, such that any person might not be truly literate, but would be able to absorb something that was publicly displayed.

The second tier might be sixty or eighty glyphs, which takes care of most of what we see in this concordance. Being more knowledgeable, this would have to begin the intra-Indian aspect as visual in the tablets and so forth.

Finally you get to the ultra-weird like "Eyes with Lashes", things that use intricate modification in tiny increments, lots of singletons and things of little use. I don't know if those are personal or ad lib statements. I have the sense that they are allowed to say something, like quoting a line out of a Vedic hymn. It may have four parts in Mohenjo daro and two in Lothal, none of which would be a mystery to people who knew the hymn. That works up to the point where the details are so extreme, it becomes a little difficult to accept they convey any meaning.

Bird-face Goddess 17 does not really do that. She does have a few singletons, but, this would not be a difficulty if the bulk of her material is based on something widely known. Something is discussed and "Eyes with Lashes" results.

I don't know what it is, but no one ever asked this.

We haven't asked which humanoid glyphs are "them, the characters", and which is "you, the reader".

This one probably has the more robust story of any of them.

[shaberon]

Comb as likely Iranian



This is not something I am sure has been covered by anyone before.

They may have, and I just don't remember it, but I just noticed it.

I consider myself so far as mostly just trying to arrange the alphabet, that is, any type of coherent order to the progression of script and images.


Almost no glyph has much use on an individual basis, but so far most of them seem to develop in preferred pairs.


The sense I am getting is that the Comb glyph has to do with all things Two.

One of the most significant visual tablets uses the Most Middle Comb, which is completely against its nature.

It pairs with itself and a few other things and likes to come at the end, although influences can make it perform otherwise.


One of its most basic arisings renders it horizontally:




It's the Ibex who glances at the Sun.

What is this? Glyphs aren't written vertically. Except for the few exceptions where they are. Did it lose its glyph-ness by lying flat? Something is going on.

Branch uses Enumeration almost perpetually, except here.



This perhaps is even simpler; it's just with the Ibex, and it just has plain Person:





Those two go together. Person wears Comb. It's been called everything from a harrow to a bird's wing and all I know is that it doesn't resemble anything. The feet are arguably those of Girl-in-air or other icon, but what such an object could be and how you wear it like that suggests nothing to me,

Person wearing Comb appears with Elephant and Donkey, who also has Spear.


One of the simplest things the pair One and Person wearing Comb could do, must be this:




and then:





which may be the way to Three Mountains on H-86:






While that is taking place, contrasted to a large number of samples, the dominant tetragram appears to be taking its place with a baby elephant:





That's an existential question about like are these elephants female. The concordance won't give you any of these details, and the text might seem minor, until you compare this little guy with everyone else on the page. Thinking through everything else, I'm not even sure we could say the Duck is a duckling. There is no sign of youth or childhood until this seal. At least, I would say I don't remember anything like it.

The tetragram is a type of "core information" whereas Comb is a "terminal sign" in most cases.

One more look at its doublings and there are also two Wheels, but, in between, you see "Crab" shapes of the Flat and Elliptical varieties:





I strongly doubt they're wheels and crabs. As a modern person, exposed to millions of pictures, you get a "crab" shape burned into memory and the association becomes automatic. Chances are in ancient India, you didn't see pictures other than the kind represented, in which there are no graphic crabs. You would never even see one unless you go where they live. If I hadn't seen pictures and traveled, it would never occur to me, unlike the Sun or something abundant like maybe goats. The Wheel symbol pre-dates the invention of the spoked wheel by over a thousand years.

The Wheel glyph may be round, or, oblate, like one of those "crab" shapes. As "parts", that one seems to come from a Tree Tablet with Three Mountains. It goes into the Copper Tablets.

The triangular one appears to be the target for multiple comb-like ligatures.




So, I was looking for something else, and wound up getting caught up in noticing some stray blurry detail slipping past. This "object" is a motif from Kulli ware:





The Ibex also has it:






It's not entirely unlike a "quadruped rudiment" either.

There are other examples of it until you reach the point of concern they may have gone a little bit Comb crazy:





The paper's author keeps using the term "temple" for it. The suggestion is that it is the frieze or architectural facade of a temple. If so, this is highly abstract, supposing the design to have come from an idea.

A similar idea has been pitched about the scalloped borders or bands on the pottery. Supposedly they copied the appearance of Mundigak. It may be that Kandahar was an ice age refuge for a population that expanded to Mehrgarh and Balochistan one way and Sistan the other.


This is a similar piece which perhaps has Three Roofs between the horns:




I'm not sure the crenellated design looks like IVC script.

The two cultures are not strictly identical, especially because the Balochi felid is believed to be a leopard or cheetah, something other than a tiger:





Conversely, in IVC, rather than "Pair of Tigers", it is thought something else may be the second cat in the Procession.


Comb along with Branch and W are seen for centuries prior to the complexity of "script". The author uses the term "cypress" but again it looks like the underlying Trees of IVC, Pipal and Khadira, fig and acacia.


I'm not sure I get it as an architectural feature. The border, yes, possibly or even probably. The IVC Comb is too importantly worn by a person, inversely of the one with Branch above.

Gharial is fond of it, and it seems to pertain to that unusually difficult number, Two.

When there are two Quotes in a U-shaped symbol, it is doing something selective but powerful. Quite possibly the same with plain U. Around the spectrum, the number two is found an unusually low number of times, which again suggests it is not any kind of accounting or normal sequence of numbers.





Comb on a UII tablet:




This is probably the only instance of a single rampant Goat, and although the human figure has been conformed to kneeling in the concordance, it looks like what they are actually doing is sitting without the bench.

Add the furniture and there is seated yogini with markhor who looks back.


The figure seems to be kneeling on the Zero or Cobra tablet which encloses a miniature Comb, and on the UIIII Endless Knot.


There are a couple of other notable UII texts. One of them is Horizontal Fish:





Another is an Ivory Rods text with Caged Mallet beginning Modified Bearer Comb:

The sign sequence VII occurs on the reverse sides of
the tablets H-943 and H-944, the obverse sides of which provide exact parallels to the text no. 11 (M-2092)
containing a rare sequence of signs.



That is correct; it is a straight copy of a UII trigram.

In the Ivory Rods, it may modify Text 12 with plain Bearer from UIIII Endless Knot.

[shaberon]

Tiger -- Gharial Goddess and Chanhu daro Unicorn



This is what I get for dredging through Parpola's descriptions with the intent to improve the process.


Actually it was something I ignored in the first few months of examining IVC script, I thought it was a walking pipal leaf. The proposition I am trying to deal with is whether it is legitimate to consider Contest Heroine as the same character found on an Ivory Plaque, which we believe to be rendered as sign 17.

I'm not sure that is necessary for the following chain of events. If it is not the right explanation, in terms of the glyph, the following seems to be major infrastructure to the entire Corpus.


In the Corpus, the following seal is virtually unnoticeable. It appears heavily worn from use, and is not an interesting picture and comes last in a top corner before the larger images of pottery. However, from an iconic standpoint, it is certainly a kind of Trinity. Its members are individually designated on other seals. *If* it is found as a complete whole somewhere else, it is support or mixed into the environment. Here, it is only this.


Bird-face Goddess with Triple Gharial:







A lot of the Chanhu daro seals have an older look, and, it is not known to be an early stone age settlement, but probably is part of the "oldest IVC expansion" as far back as 4,000. It was around for a long time but never grew all that massively. It does not have many finds. However, I think they are strongly weighted into "advanced text", not really in the sense of intricacy of the writing style, but in the importance of message conveyed.

As it turns out, its newer-looking seals are the Tigers and they are all broken. One of them is probably the middle portion of Three Tigers. One of them is Man-in-tree where he is missing, but you can see the Branch doing Hasta or Hand. So we don't know if any of those had unique script.


There is very clearly a Triple Tiger important in the IVC, and it is not very clear which is why we have also pointed out a three-fold Gharial. What does that give you here:





It gives you the idea the Zebu does nothing but change his collar three times.

Obviously, that motif derives from pottery which is older than the IVC script, excepting the "marks". So this Pathani Damb specimen uses three creatures, each of which are in turn triple.

They may have more derivatives and varieties, but it can safely be said there is a triple aspect to each of them.

The Veda did not say it invented the three worlds of metaphysics. It established the Path according to its own practices. We might be looking at three deities, put forward as a postulate, that it may be possible for a person to enter Heaven. That would be roughly comparable to Egyptian Coffin Texts.

It remains entirely possible the Crocodile is Sisumara or Varuna.

There definitely is a weird polarity between it and Tiger.


It is "hidden" on the edges of Tiger M-1923 in a remarkable way. It has the One Frog, a Gharial, and the singleton Caged Two:





This Frog is from pre-script Rehman Dheri, and the base unit of Gharial-or-Scorpion Illusion.

Does the main text have anything to do with Bird-face Goddess, yes it does. Caged Mallet and Eight-rayed Lozenge.


So, when we find the mysterious glyphic character at Chanhu daro with this perhaps sole Gharial Trinity, we might look nearby and see if this is a stray remark, aberrant, even nonsensical.

It of course is not. The character makes one of the most powerful statements on the main featured item from there. This is beloved to proponents of "no unicorns" because it is so primitive, it lets you say, "hey, that's an antelope profile". But again this would be unnatural, because no creature has this kind of forward-sloping horn, which, here, if anything, could be said to be pointing at Four on C-1:





The seal is profound because it is one of the only uses of pair of Winged Man, considering one of him is between "))".

That's from the 1920s finds.

So she's there, she has something to do with the city, particularly in this assertive plain text with Wheel between Two:





So, there might be something weird about Two? Maybe there is. It shows up with a Gaur on what has been called the most intricate feeding trough:





I don't think the glyphs are "spatially constrained". I think they are arranged.

If so, and Chanhu daro has a "simple" Unicorn, it will be found the horn usually does not point at anything:





That's the utterance of a Fish Family I'm not sure we have seen before.

It's not facing anything, and then there is a seal where it does:





It is not very often you can tell something is not "Winged Man" but Person with Buffalo Horns.

We began to wonder if "Mallet" was mashing or "Soma stage one":





Branch is a Soma stalk?

This is the text that gets stuffed inside the tetragram.

Mallet and Branch alter glyph behavior categorically.


In a similar manner, Chanhu daro appends itself to the dominant trigram with Whiskered Fish, Elliptical Crab, and Chanhu daro Pinch:





There are thousands of Unicorn texts, this place has only a few of them but look how structural that is.

It's so tight you can easily find two kinds of Bearer, each obviously related to what we have already posted as sub-genres:




If she has something to do with Mallet, and positioning has a kind of value, Bird-face Goddess rides Chanhu daro Unicorn:





Apparently so. Here are some new and powerful glyphs with a Unicorn of the striped neck, smooth horn variety, and an Expanded Filter:





It is hard to establish any view this might not be about Soma. If that were literally the meaning of Branch, that could make the beverage as early as 3,000 if not before.


Retrieved from the damaged ones, this probably was a Tiger having a Chevron text that does something weird with Two in order to get to Branch:





Contrastingly, the Veda indicates there were still people who did not use Soma in its sphere of interaction.

In both cases there is magnetism or promotion. You obviously have to start from a guild of brick masons such as at Chanhu daro for example. There is the capability to produce settlements that are "large" on the historical archeological scale. Circumstantial evidence such as isotopes would imply that most of the inhabitants moved in from nearby. What would make that attractive?

I get the sense it is based in Soma and Sanskrit offered to people if they want to "come out of the woods".

I almost think Ulug Depe was more powerful than Kandahar. Ancient soma presses were here as well as Gonur Tepe. Again this triangulates the source of Lapis Lazuli, and, rather than having IVC seals, Shortugai is considered an IVC site.


It's mainly descent clustered around the 24,000-year-old Siberian MA-1:

The Mal’ta boy, MA-1, carried distinct yDNA R* and mtDNA U* lineages. While both are clearly related to those dominant in Europe and parts of Asia (West, South) nowadays, they are also distinct from any specific dominant lineage today.
R* (yDNA) is neither R1 nor R2 but another distinct branch of R. This kind of R(xR1, R2) is most rare today and found mostly in and around NW South Asia. Following Wikipedia, this “other R” is found in:

10.3% among the Burusho
6.8% among the Kalash
3.4% among the Gujarati

Physically, the Puranic notions of Manali, Dwarka, Kasi, Ayodhya, and Hastinapura do not seem to be possible. Almost certainly they were begun after the 1300s, which then India also vanishes from Syria.

Maybe Dwarka started in Vedic or even IVC epoch. It probably had three phases, possibly more. Much less is certain about it compared to Shortugai.

The northern Indians came in around 12,000 years ago through the Dorah Pass where the Kalash are located. For ages you have this generally-related genetic bulb swelling across south Asia, and then you are more or less saying, how do we "re-unite" and organize it rather efficiently around 3,000. One would expect a type of cultural self-promotion along with structures and roads. Mountainous outliers like in Badakhshan or the Vindhyas tended to keep borders, to "gate" trading opportunities without really changing whatever their preferred habits were.


Now for one thing, the situation of Chanhu daro is such that if IVC were to call itself "Fertile Crescent", they would be the ones to do it:





Civilization curves broadly around the Thar Desert; the Rann of Kutch is somewhat more passable. There was a complex web of bead and shell work from Makran to Gujarat. Chanhu daro is more or less at the head of a thousand years of development spreading south to Daimabad. Chanhu daro with no citadel was heavily industrialized.

No bones have been found other than a skull in a jar.


Although not labeled, its first expansion would be Kanmer in Kutch. When we think the Donkey is a low-level entry to the IVC script, it comes from this. The more famous Gujarati sites are not older than this.

Chanhu daro would have a bit of a "Wheel" status in that way, as it is a very long distance from perhaps the other Wheel because its writing is synchronized with something as distant as Rakhigarhi.

That appears to mean non-different on Day One.

Consistent everywhere for centuries.

That's easy to do if it delivers on the appeal of collective labor versus hunting and gathering. That it offered a good value. There is no need for any type of conquest if what you are spreading did not exist before.

From how it appears to me, I would say this notion bears out visibly in script development in Lothal.

Parpola's interest with M-450 ended by saying Conjoined Enclosures were relevant to gharials. The same is true for Bird-face Goddess, who makes substantial use of it.


Upon examination, Citra does not seem to have an ancient Indian version of "Ear of grain". It is simply a pearl or bright gem, suggestive of Visvakarman, and of this Chanhu daro industry.

The IVC glyph seems important to the Gaur and Gamma. I'm not sure it's indicated by Naksatras.

[shaberon]

Bird-face Goddess and Kalibangan Unicorn



I am pursuing the unknown script as a matter of intellectual history. I don't think it works like known writings, and its environment does not resemble known history. I do not think we are talking about the rising of an Empire, as in the work from J McIntosh 2008:

...the roots of Indus civilization in farming culture, as well as its far-flung trading network, sophisticated crafts and architecture, and surprisingly war-free way of life.

We're no longer surprised because there is no longer a reason to say it was not voluntary.

Despite having tools, it was still a hardscrabble struggle against the environment for survival. You can take nothing for granted like we do these days. If it was me, then, yes, I absolutely would want to jump in to the productivity rather than facing the wilds. I don't believe I would be a very good survivalist in raw nature unless it was literally a paradise. Again this makes it seem like a drift of Irano-Indic language would be readily feasible if not necessary.

I would almost say India is a repetition of development originated in Iran, and thus incoming via Mehrgarh.


So the map near the end of the last post makes it pretty easy to see Chanhu daro as a kind of southern elbow, most closely connected to:



Amri (3600–3300 BCE), also has non-Harappan phases during 6000 BC to 4000 BC, and later Harappan Phases till 1300 BCE.


Before most of the other settlements were made, the other part of India is as ancient as anything else:

Kunal, Bhirrana and Rakhigarhi were contemporary habitation sites. The hoard containing gold beads and copper rings at Kunal are evidence of developed village farming communities with trade links to far-flung countries for the import of metal and precious stones which are not found in this area.

Kalibangan is the "radiation point" of Kunal culture.


This means quite far to the north:


...the site's culture is an older ancestry of the Pre-Harappan site of Rehman Dheri which was dated to 3300 BC. A button seal was discovered at Kunal during 1998-99 excavations by Archaeological Survey of India. The seal is similar to the Rehman Dheri examples. It contained a picture of two deer on one side, and geometrical pattern on other side.


and south:


Kot Diji (3300 BCE)


In other words, rather than "the Harrapans" and "Kot Diji" as archetypes each requiring a "pre-" phase, IVC as a material culture comes from the Kunal region of Haryana.

Kunal has steatite seals in its oldest layer, ones with geometrical patterns. I am not sure if it is correct to say this is a specifically Indic technology invented here. But it may be. It is from here that a large, early triangle manifests, connected to notable development locally.


Kalibangan is similar to these two distant points, i. e. around 3,300 it becomes noticeable.


The Plough Revolution is in Kalibangan around 2,800.


The time of development of IVC script begins around 2,600, when Mehrgarh and Kalibangan were both abandoned. The difference is Kalibangan was re-built or re-settled relatively quickly. Most of the greatness from Afghanistan or Iran turned into a desert. This branch of influence truly "collapsed" in a way that remains almost entirely desolate to this day.


Oppositely, there is a bit more continuity of IVC than often suggested. It doesn't use the same architecture and script, but it has the sun-and-a-half claimed to be Supernova HB-9 near Capella that we have already argued. Burzahom near Srinagar persisted through the Kushan Empire:

The unearthed Antiquities (of art, architecture, customs and rituals) indicate that the prehistoric people of the Burzahom established contact with Central Asia and South West Asia and also had links to the Gangetic plains and peninsular India. The interaction of local and foreign influences is demonstrated by the art, architecture, customs, rituals and language demonstrated by some engravings on pottery and other artifacts.

Some Megalithic Period Menhirs are next to Neolithic pits, suggesting a gradual transition between the two phases.

It perhaps is Dardic, but must have shared some awareness with IVC.

Probably most important for any of us is Jognakhera in Kurukshetra which lasted through "Painted Grey Ware" or "the Vedic era". Its antiquity is probably not greater than 2,300, or about the age of the Naksatra stamp. That's made as an IVC site which lasts through an "era" which is younger than the Vedic events. That means it may be referred to by the Veda.


There probably was a Dark Age and the beginning of petty kingdoms, so that not just horses but armor (Varma) are Vedic presences.

Jognakhera refutes total annihilation:

Saraswati valley has the earlier phase of the PGW culture, such as excavation at Hat (Hathira) in Kurukshetra. Hathira was protected by a V-shaped moat. Similar moats were found Jognakhera and Kunal on the Saraswati river. The presence of moat shows these were chiefdom-based cultures. These cultures reach a peak in Ganga-Yamuna Doab before the rise of Mahajanapadas in the Northern Black Polished Ware period.

The "Vedic period" is notably "Gangetic". India is going to partially lose some of its territory to desert. Kalibangan would become less connected to anything, and then there are bad and unpredictable conditions, and floods in important places. It appears to be massively important to the life cycle of IVC and that's it.




Conceivably, these are a lot like anchor points. Chanhu daro faces everything going seaward, whereas Kalibangan connects various land routes to the "Crown of India". Again it is noticeable that as soon as there is evidence of anything, there is Badakhshan Lapis Lazuli transported to Bhirrana.

The two sites are similar in age, not early agriculture, but early wave of urbanization. Neither one grows tremendously, though both are loaded with goods. The physical and population growth appears to be restrained, portioned out elsewhere, like by a planning center. They rather are like "two Wheels" in this way. Then from studying the script statistically somewhat extensively, I can assure you that the pseudo-pair of Winged Man on C-1 is lofty, even extreme. And it turns out to be on one of the crudest Unicorns you can find.

The Kalibangan library is slightly larger, and it is notably filled with a lot of crude work. It grows to have some top class work and pure mastery of Tiger Centaur on an Akkadian-style cylinder. Although I am, of course, a fan of artistic technique, the point is that the most inferior scrawls follow the same rules.


It has an even worse Unicorn with nothing, so bad it is barely a smudge, and a Tiger or other felid equally atrocious. Let's just say it makes the idea look really old.


So, following the same logic as in the last post, is there something to a Unicorn and this Goddess going on at Kalibangan. What would it look like. Well, we can take a "probably old" Unicorn that has a bit of text:




Flat Crab.

We see at Chanhu daro a predilection for the Elliptical one, and here it is flat.


Here is a "newer" looking one yet very simple:





Here is another simple, yet rarely seen idea, One and Two:





UII:





Okay. We have been through it with these to show that, iconically, the Unicorn is Chimera-like in the way it accrues Tigrine characteristics, and Kalibangan may have the Most Unicorn at this with a peculiar text as well. But if we come here thinking, this is sort of a "sister city" to Chanhu daro. What is a Wheel. It gets "fortified" in a glyph that some call "The City".

It would not be remiss to think at least part of the script identifies a city, and it may deal with addresses based on the similarity of design. Such as maybe "North Street" anywhere was called "Varuna", and there might be marks and links along it. It may have to do with this and brickwork as pixels.

I'm just trying to be mentally flexible, going from where we can be sure it is not a spoked wheel of any kind of chariot, so it is probably not a wheel. It may pertain to "city", or "six months of the year", maybe both, possibly more or something else, but not a wheel. Six Directions might be possible.


At Kalibangan we notice Round-headed Person and a round Wheel:





Does Wheel say something else here? It does. Gharial with Fish:





In turn, it gets loaded as core information and look what happens:





Kalibangan has a distinct flair on the Hoof-like symbol:





Bird-face Goddess was unusually provocative at Chanhu daro. Here, she imitates the sloping text in order to do something to Branch-tipped U:





The concordance takes this as pair of Three:





It's beguiling. She is scarcely found on two seals and not a featured item and therefor obscure. But then her final one *is* a central planning unit, where she uses Triple Triangles and then Fat Flat Crab 229, shared by Procession and "Pashupati" seals:





It appears to me that Person wearing Comb goes to meet Bird-face Goddess in the Unicorn Parade with the Most Middle Comb, and then that glyph fades away. We are left with a "character" who persists through a variety of texts, until this one is like a transit to Yoga. My guess is the three triangles are the center junction of Three Tigers.

If so you are left with two themes:


Chanhu daro with Triple Gharial and pair of Winged Man

Kalibangan with Triple Tigers and ticket to Assembly



We also found the Zebu is triple, this might be one of them:





Gaur is two Twelves, this is one of them:






Buffalo:






And just for thoroughness, this famous text with things that look like atoms:






So for the idea of "comparing versions", by the time we go through it, Kalibangan hasn't got any Winged Man.

It's "mythic", it has Bearer, Twins, Person with Bow, Person with Buffalo Horns, and a few quite powerful-seeming images, but I don't notice Winged Man in any text. You scroll through these pages of absence and then you hit C-1. Night and day.

I'm not sure that K-7 is a final word so much as an important key. In particular, if it ports to Long-haired Yogini, then Kalibangan is probably showcasing Tiger Centaur. She is comparable to mistress of Ivory Rods because of Branch and Four. The Kalibangan texts similarly appear to be mostly external references whose full story is elsewhere, and then it has a type of cumulative or synthetic lesson at a moderately high level for a purely Indian figure.

[shaberon]

Modified Bearer



The IVC glyph "Bearer" translates to Sanskrit Naksatra "Bharani".

That is, if the glyph really is a bearer. It may be. It may be multi-faceted such that at times, it is a mechanical balance, or, some bird-like activity, but it has forms that look humanoid with a yoke of jugs.


There are ideas about Bharani in the Taittiriya school:


three stars forming an equilateral triangle

It is also called Apabharani; Kathaka Samhita XXXIX. 13; Taittiriya Samhita IV.4.10.


They just called it "water carrier" like Aquarius. This is new or not present in the older lore. A few things possibly are:

The two dogs of Yama Syama (dark) and Sabala (variegated) are said to guard the path of the manes and keep separate the sinners and the saints . Yama together with the Bharanis is implored for protection (1.41.8).

At Taittiriya Brahmana III.1.2.11-12 Yama is described as being coronated by the gods under the Bharani. He is the lord of the world and is greater than the great. He is prayed to for making the path easy and safe. Cf. Atharvaveda, Saunakiya recension VIII.1.9.

Conversely, it has a navigational meaning in the Glossary:

Yamya (1) The south direction which is presided over by Yama. (2) The southern hemisphere (yamyagola). (3) The naksatra Bharani, which is presided over by Yama Yamyottara The local meridian

In India, you can't see any South Pole star. It can only be defined opposite north.


The "protection" role is found where India does not have the Grim Reaper, it has:

pathirákṣī śvā́nau |


Let not the black dog and the brindled seize thee, two warders
of the way sent forth by Yama.
Come hither; do not hesitate: with mind averted stay not there.


Atharva Veda has Dogs of Yama as protectors along the path after death. This is from a prayer commanding a person not to die. It's not that the dogs are killers or to be avoided, the soul is being told not to go in that direction. Several other styles of command are given, but, this one is most directly linked to death itself. You are in a situation where Dogs come automatically, and you *hope* Pusan will be there due to merit. As far as I can tell, it's a very respectful title for these dogs, Raksa or Protector. Evidently, when going to hell, Yama will insure you arrive promptly and safely. This same Atharva Veda also has Prahlada, that hellish devotee of Vishnu, which is a considerably more intricate theology than I believe I have seen in the Rg Veda. Or, Rg Veda is Victorious and really does not mention hell or any other lasting evil circumstances, it has personal parables about overcoming it all.

That, to me, explains the significance of Vrtrahan or Indra keeping a name asserting Victory -- not because he permanently cured the world so none of us have to bother, but because he demonstrates an ability that will have to be renewed by everybody.


Yama has dogs and rules a triangular Naksatra at the end of the year; but Yama is the Veda, whereas Bharani is generic and could have been used by anyone in the dawn of Sanskrit.


The constellation however is plural:


bháraṇya

Revati and the Asvayujas bring me luck, and the Bharanis
abundant riches!


What is unusual is that "bearer" is hardly found in the Veda. The verb, "to bear", is done by nearly everyone in their own appropriate contexts.


Attempts on X.13:


prá vām bharan mā́nuṣā devayántaḥ

religious-hearted votaries brought you forward

devout worshipper brought you forward


This hymn has peculiar information:


Ṛṣi (sage/seer): vivasvānādityaḥ

Devatā (deity/subject-matter): havirdhāne


The "Yama twins" are a pair of wagons used in Yajna, Havirdhana.

This just says "bring the wagons", not "the wagons are bearers".


Most of the usages have more of a connotation "to bring" as in these attempts on X.63:


vṛṣabharān

bringers of rain

the Bull upholds


Again as we found recently in X.181:


te | 'vindan mánasā dī́dhyānā yáju ṣkannám prathamáṃ devayā́nam
dhātúr dyútānāt savitúš ca víṣṇor ā́ sū́ryād abharan gharmám eté

They found with mental eyes the earliest Yajus, a pathway to the Gods, that had descended.
From radiant Dhatar, Savitar, and Visnu, from Surya did these sages bring the Gharma.



The Naksatra is plural because:

Apabharaṇīs, Bharaṇī (अश्विनी), or Bharaṇyas (‘the bearers’) is the name of the small triangle in the northern part of the Ram known as Musca or 35, 39, and 41 Arietis.


Nothing apparent in the Veda says Yama uses water to wash away or "bear off" (bharani) sin.

It may have relevance in the moment "bring across the bridge of death".

It *was* the end of the year in that system.

That would be moderately inconvenient when it suddenly becomes the beginning.

Many Indian astronomers denied precession, believing it to be oscillatory. That if the equinox was "swinging" into Bharani, it would peak out and swing back the other way, with an 1,800-year arc of motion, as in Surya Siddhanta. Therefor making an Aswins-first system would clear up this misunderstanding, in the next epoch. Obviously there is no transmitted memory of an age of Rohini when the equinox transited to Krttika. Belief in permanency of this system is perhaps why mantras remain intact in Vedanga Jyotish and the Brahmanas. Perhaps they even tried to keep Bharani equinox a secret. One can find the North Pole allowed to be changed, perhaps because it is harder to conceal, and has nothing to do with ritual timing. But so far we only know of two kinds of equinox observations, Krttika and Asvayuja with nothing in between.

They called it a Roman idea, evidently lacking sufficient detail to credit Hipparchus.


Bharani as end-of-year would have been relevant for the life cycle of IVC script.

More appropriately, the three stars of this are Three Bearers.

Yama with two wagons would presumably only be meaningful in the Vedic system, whereas Yama with two dogs is harder to place a limit on. That Yama has an Avestan cognate makes it less specific. Perhaps it is a title.

Avestan also has *bar- of similar meaning, without using it as any name. In later works they give this star a different name, which is cognate to Upa Purvya, which is unrelated to this Naksatra or re-names it entirely.


41 Aa Arietis is now designated "Bharani", and the triangle asterism is up and to the right of it:






Some other Naksatras have three stars, but nothing seems to say triangle or triplicity the way this does.

Problematically, the Dog is not used in the Veda or IVC. There is only Sarama and the Sarameyas. I've seen no kind of graphics anywhere in IVC that would remotely suggest they are talking about dogs. Toys are different, there are toy dogs and pigs that remain unfound in the script. A few toys are not enough leverage to say the Bharanis are Yama's Dogs.


Although IVC has multiple Bearers, they are not easy to categorize.

The one with U-shaped symbol for head is sign 15, and, it has more texts (125) than Bird-face Goddess, but, they are highly repetitive, mostly basic pairs and trigrams stuck to this being. It is said to have an odd visual on a Gaur image where a person is pointing at it. The concordance considers this a "solo" Modified Bearer glyph on M-1405:





It has low complexity and a noticeable friendliness with One.

And so it looks a bit triumphal, however, the headgear may be along the lines of "thinking cap" more than "hard-won ceremonial headdress". Something more like "student of U-shaped symbol". I wish I had a better name for it. All I can be sure of is I don't think anyone else besides Bearer gets this for a head.

It has a few discrete uses of other humanoids. It likes Person holding One, there is a plain Person, Bird-face Goddess and Winged Man, Person with Bangles, there is even a Chevron-headed Bearer 11, but no plain Stick Figure Bearer.

Plain Bearer 12 has fewer texts (79), but is much more versatile and eloquent, and is The Legend of Triple U in the way the previous has Four Branches.

These two main kinds of Bearer are having almost completely different conversations. Neither one seems more than an adjunct to the overall Unicorn Speech or Soma Culture. They are never found together.




So far the closest rendering of "Bharani" in the Rg Veda appears to be from X.31:


asyá sánīḷā ásurasya yónau samāná ā́ bháraṇe bíbhramāṇāḥ

By his support they are maintained in common who in the Asura's mansion dwell together.

or:

(may the universal gods), collected together, bearing (future rewards, come) to the commonplace (of sacrifice) of this one who is mighty, which nourishes (them)



It is entirely linguistically feasible for "the Bharanis" to mean "the Bearers" as those three stars in IVC.

Beyond that, it is quite hard to give it a specific meaning. The Bearer glyphs could correspond, to the word anyway, but it could just as easily be "Yuga" or something else.

It may be the clearest aggregate of the Nakshatras. It's "Krttika" not "the Krttikas". There are four feet, of one bull. However it is not "a Bearer" but "the Bearers" and they happen to be in the last spot.



Modified Bearer has only one peculiar solo arising as a human-sized glyph. It has exactly one instance of coming first.

Text 1303:




Human Markhor M-1180:





These seals are the same ones we already noticed for other reasons, but we did not know this about them.

This glyph interfaces with a normal human being who is feeding their gaur, the most common animal. It then has a strong association with One. This seems about as basic as could be asked for.

It has a lot of Comb texts and then it breaks its own rule to appear on something that we discovered as part of the odd assimilation of Five.


We are looking at 125 examples and there is a lot of Enumeration and it is heavily biased to odd numbers, one, three, and five. It has a frightfully limited use of even numbers in three levels:



City Two Modified Bearer

Conjoined Enclosures between Two Modified Bearer







Two Branch Quote Four ) Modified Bearer

Two City Quote U-shaped symbol A India Modified Bearer







A India Modified Bearer Two Pipal Leaf Person Holding One Pair of Checkerboards





There is a reliable partnership with what I am calling "A" and "India".

The first is rather a class of ligatures which probably take customized steps in each geographical region. The second is arguably a solo glyph meaningful in pre- and post- IVC "graffiti" or rock art, etc., extending into south India.


It gives me the impression that Modified Bearer functions as an entry-level collector of Five. Its Human Markhor is like a hood over an engine consisting of many steps to produce Tau with Enclosures. I am not sure this is geographical, but it takes things like Mirrored Three Mountains, to lead to this creature that is required by the Yoginis.

Plain Bearer is almost a subsidiary function of getting further details to the broader topics of Modified Bearer.

Neither concordance seems to have a conclusion such as Compound Bearer and Two Bearers of Striped Mountain appear to be.

Humanoids with big noses or ears do not seem fundamental, but tangential. Having things at your feet may be more significant. The class of mutated Bearers and the gathering of yoke-like parts appears, to me, at least, of great relevance to the script as a whole.


It seems strange to me that most standing reviews impute Modified Bearer with prime qualities, such as a god of Crocodile Sacrifices, Time, or Death, etc., or that it must be a horned headdress or mask or something, all of which portrays this glyph as a major figure.

I would say no, it is actually quite tame, in fact probably closer to an archivist because it *does* seem to have coherence in the realm of Enumeration, and then it does not do much else. Head being a jar might just mean learning the symbols off pottery.


I'm not sure it's a jar. Maybe it is. If U is a "cup" then three kinds of U would be rather like the Rbhus. Although at least one type of U-shaped symbol is at the feet of Bird-face Goddess, there are certain situations where the U glyph becomes a held object.

I posted the minor amount of even Enumerations for Modified Bearer 15 on purpose, and, what that is yet, I don't know. Compared to the rest of its concordance, under this subject you get certain unique statements. These would be more likely to be external references.


On the receiving side of Enumeration, the even series U II and U IIII share the Kneeling Person holding U with the other "even" number, Zero, which is where this figure evokes Winged Man and the Cobra:





In total, there are a lot of U texts, most of which are two-sided tablets in plain script. This is numerically the most common kind of IVC seal, the kind where the largest collection was found in the garbage. Mostly rote texts which is why I consider them sort of permitted statements. Lots of people were repeating copies of them and most of these are common basic glyphs.

The example above is subtractive, that is, a typical association of the kneeling figure with U Enumeration is not seen. My instinct is that implies zero. Conversely, when we look for the other even numbers with U, the same Person is involved.



There is no U Five, but there is Six.

The difference between the Ivory Rods and these visual tablets is the Rods' use of plain Bearer where the latter has Comb in the U IIII Endless Knot. That they make a primordial statement using plain and Modified Bearer each one time attests to their categorical roles.

Subsequently, there is no kind of third Bearer that would make an easy match to a triangular asterism.

You'd be relegated to hypothetical areas of whether they imply the presence of Yama or some third member, "Person holding anything".


Modified Bearer does, however, have a certain use of Three. They make trigrams with:


City, Comb, and Hourglass


and then it does an action to:


subjugate Winged Man and Bird-faced Goddess together.


It's not a terminal glyph or common ending pair, but, part of the prefix. That's the only time it does so.

It leads one statement and works as one prefix.


It has a City of Two, City of Three, and you wind up here:






That seems precise according to its own internal scheme.

The only thing it "does".

My analysis is that Bearers are "you, the reader", whereas those other two are "they, them, the characters".

Statistically, Modified Bearer has a preference for One and, in a general way, all of the low numbers. Most of its basic pairs are with any of them. It says far less about the even series and it has emphatic stamps on Three and Five.

There is not such a catharsis with One. There is an uncommon U I on a Harappa Unicorn. This is more like a liberal application of something constituted elsewhere. So far it still looks like stage one of Soma.


I would say it's a remarkable use of Three. That this "Bharani" is "you, the reader" acquiring two complete sub-genres, one of which is Winged Man and Cobra. The other alludes to Tiger and Gharial.






On several of these "minor" two-sided seals, "quadruped rudiment" has six legs, making it indistinguishable from the identical designs on older pottery.

There are traits that have slipped by un-noticed due to not heeding the multi-faceted nature of these things. Such as they use Asterisk under Sky to induce "rainy" numbers. That almost says "Ardra". But one of the biggest misses is by not showing a common trigram with A and India is a Tree Tablet:





Modified Bearer is how it is recorded. It's distorted. It has the "looped arms" of Bird-Face Goddess rather than any kind of jugs. There are other ambiguous examples:





Of course, all studies are based on "is this 15 or 17" or whatever concordance was used, and it becomes arbitrary. We think the Bearer has several modifications, and the one on the head is the most common.

I wrote "there is such a thing as U Six" as just a note with no idea where it came from. That's because I don't recall it being discussed and never noticed it. Well, being the type of thing that stands out, it is easy to spot, and the first reaction would be yes, for some reason this responds to what we are posting:





Now, Modified Bearer 15 is at least many times perfectly plain; here it is at UIII:





It makes its own glyph, a shaded Bow shape. This common ending pair fuses into a new thing, which goes nowhere and does not have any more text of its own. This is a stopping point and so it seems would be something personally definitive to the meaning of Modified Bearer, only.

At Lothal, this is so very plain he's reminiscent of Tau:




Looking nearby, is there any other crisp, definitive use of Enumeration, yes:






To press this idea one step forward, here are a couple more instructive types of U texts. This first is an instructive authority because it has very unusually prefixed the thing by Fish:




There you again have Fish with two other kinds of U.

This is another UIIII where you find one of the clearest Branch Crown and Yoga Hands to be found. Then in the text you get the ligaturing of a Bent Branch onto a Flat Crab:





I don't get how people who have handled this material for a large number of years have been relatively oblivious to some fairly central elements, particularly the Tree and the Gharial. They both have an unusually ubiquitous role throughout these sets of things that go on to prisms or five or six engraved surfaces.


I still can't connect Modified Bearer to Bharani, a star at the end of the year, but it is hard to avoid Five and Tau with Enclosures,



I get the Naksatra as something that would only be applicable in the "take-away" meaning of a Yama of death because it was the end of the year, because you never knew any other sign had done it.

The antiquity of the Naksatra system precludes knowledge of any other way of timing it.

It says nothing before 2,900. The most generous we could be to it is to suggest it came in with the Plough Revolution. So to speak, it is those who follow Usas who are going to observe the rising star. She is physically meaningful without deification at any point in Irano-Indic heritage, or even towards Greek as Eos in that regard.

That the star map loses its validity before the Vedic events is notable.

It is still honored in writings where the author could have easily proved it wrong.

The Naksatras could not have come in prior to the script, and they must have become important during it.

We found the script has a Triple Triple, and if you triple that again you get twenty-seven or the indicated number.


It's understandable if the Triple Bharani stars could have been associated with death and ending, but, linguistic possibilities of the word will not connect it to these glyphs in that meaning.


The most direct reply would be Nausharo Funeral Jars which seem to take the soul as a Bird or helped by one.

Even so, Bird is versatile and found on one of the finest preserved specimens of Indus painting on a jar for purposes of the living from Chanhu daro:







The Rg Veda ascribes Birds (i. e., Syena) as custodians of Soma in the north (Hindu Kush), and Serpents in the south (Aravalli). This would seem to remain likely as "outliers" or "trading partners" for the IVC.


Well, this is really "Harappa", the "site type", which is one of the later establishments. There, you relatively rapidly find Cemetery H ca. 1,900:


...peacocks with hollow bodies and a small human form inside, which has been interpreted as the souls of the dead, and a hound that can be seen as the hound of Yama, the god of death.

It is regarded as a regional form of the late phase of the Harappan (Indus Valley) civilisation...Painted pottery urns from Harappa (Cemetery H period) might correspond to a period of shift towards Vedic culture.

This may indicate the introduction of new religious beliefs during this period, but the archaeological evidence does not support the hypothesis that the Cemetery H people were the destroyers of the Harappan cities.

No, they were "the Harappans". There is no sign of calamity, displacement, or interruption of continuity and no genetic drift. There's just a timed precedent for the Vedic practice of cremation. It also matches a voluntary surrender of writing. It was inhabited and had Trident and Branch markings around 3,300, becomes a major city only during the intense period of urbanization, and is not abandoned until some undetermined point after its "new culture".



Comparable to D D Kausambi on Cemetery H:






Decarnation is a technological change that does not speak to metaphysical beliefs. Instead, this is more like Veda emerging in a pre-standing Soma culture. The detectable change is perhaps the sign of Mandhata. Or, representative of those he will come to defend.


Nausharo ID has a circular design we find used as a seal shape:





According to Sindhishaan Gallery with two more Cemetery H Peacocks and other examples, continuity reads more like this:

The motif of intersecting circles (shown in an early somewhat disjointed form) on the left pot was refined and continued as a popular motif in the pottery of the Indus Civilization.

Dating to c. 3100 BC, this hand-built pot with polychrome decoration is one of the earliest examples of intersecting circle motif in the Indus valley region. This motif along with others, such as the fish scale and pipal leaf designs, continue to be employed into the later Kot Diji and Harappa Phases.

The transitional phase at Harappa has begun to yield richly diverse material remains suggesting a period of considerable dynamism as socio-cultural traditions became realigned.

They didn't use peacocks on funeral jars because they didn't have funeral jars; the Death Peacock emblem may represent standing ideas.

So far I would guess the IVC script is pretty similar to the Veda, in the sense it may believe in Three Worlds and have an aspiration for Heaven, but any emphasis on the time of death or funeral discussion is very minor.


There seems to me good reason to consider Ardra -- Betelgeuse as possibly "Ploughman" or Ksetrapati, and Rohini -- Aldebaran as Prajapati or Pasupati "Shepherd" or "Gopa" as meaningful in the pre-Vedic context. The Veda perhaps assigns its own Rudra to the very obvious Betelgeuse, that could never have been "new" to anyone's sight, and may have been held as a leader of rains or agriculture, which certainly must have had a "revolution". If you've never tried it, see how much more a hitched plough can do than you with a hand tool.

Deer Head ruled by Soma sits between them.

And so I think there is plenty of reason to consider this early group at least, as having some representation in the IVC script. Upon reflection, this seems fairly explanatory overall. The system of Naksatras must have been critically important. You'd be hard pressed to continue as actual Vedic Rishis if people really started seeing it was the age of Yama. There was ignorance leading to denial. And then I think upon the proof, India went nuts about newer Greek mathematics or Spherical Trigonometry in particular. Hence you get discussions in terms of millions of years. Nothing like that is apparent in any older books.

The time of Krttika should have technically ended around 2,000, so, you could perhaps get away for a while because no star has yet taken the position. I'm not sure when it would get awkward or the season would seem particularly different. And of course our estimate on when the system was "fixed" is only an estimate. However there were probably cruder, older versions based on the varying size of asterisms. It remains true that opposite this "agricultural group" is Scorpio.


Anurādhā (अनुराधा):—[=anu-rādhā] [from anu-rādha > anu-rādh] ([Atharva-veda] etc.) f. the seventeenth of the twenty-eight Nakṣatras or lunar mansions (a constellation described as a line of oblations).

Taittiriya Brahmana 1.8.4.2 mentions that ploughing should be started under this constellation.


This curious batch of synonyms comes from mixed sources:

All the texts generally agree as regards the names of the constellations, except for a few changes or alternatives which perhaps indicate certain characteristics of the constellation. The Mrgasiras is known as Invaka the Ardra is called Bahu, the Pusya is called Tisya the Aslesa is called Asersa the Magha is known as Agha, the Phalguni is known as Arjuni the Svati is called Mistya, the Visakha is called Radha, the Jyestha is known as Jyesthaghni or Rohini the Mula is called Mulabarhani or Vierta and the Sravana is called Srona or Asvatha. The Taittiriya Brahmana gives some sort of mythological explanation for the names of the Yama-Naksatras. from the Anuradha to the Apabharani...

The explanation seems contrived. "Apa" was not present with original Bharani. It simply narrates killing the eldest (jyestha) of the demons and things like this. But this is a common term in the Rg Veda which does not have this context. This one it possibly does:


The Magha is mentioned as Anagha even in the Taittiriya Brahmana (III.1.4.8) and Arjuni is said to be the secret name of the Phalguni in the Satapatha Brahmana (II.1.2.11: yad asya guhyam nama arjunyah).


We find both translations use the Naksatra reference in Surya Savitri X.85:


aghāsu hanyante gāvo 'rjunyoḥ pary uhyate ||

the oxen are whipped along in the Magha (constellations); she is borne (to her husband's house) in the Arjunī (constellations).

In Magha days are oxen slain, in Arjunis they wed the bride.



Jyestha is just Antares, whereas Mula is seven stars corresponding to the "tail of the scorpion". However I was unable to find any reference to what the asterism "Root" is, and the TB sticks on something which fits its own ideas. Not sure that term exists anywhere else.

Asadha is very vague, as a word it is used by Grtsamada as "invincible", and yet this occupies two Naksatras.

We don't know what that even is. A "root" as a long stringy thing in the "southern" part of the belt, is, well, something that sounds like a normal root growing downwards. When a group was called a Deer Head, we didn't presume that might mean Turtle Shell, and since a "root" tangibly names something, I suppose that could be naming the shape here.

The meaning of ‘Moola’ is the root and its symbol is a group of a bunch of roots that are tied together.

Indra is usually counted as the first-born of the Adityas. However, most of the Vedic usage is not "first in order, eldest", but "first in importance, best, strongest, supreme". The main exception is possibly Varuna:


jyeṣṭhaṃ yajñavanasam


or Agni:


jyeṣṭham aṅgirasāṃ


It's tricky, you could argue it either way, but it looks like Varuna is the first ritualist and Agni is the first Angiras.

Lines about Indra have a different tone such as Grtsamada:


indrajyeṣṭhā marudgaṇā devāsaḥ pūṣarātayaḥ |


is copied by Medhatithi.


Indra is the chief of the Marut Gana, of whom Pusan is a benefactor, donor, or something; Sayana actually admits he does not understand this, or does not understand how Pusan is invoked here.

Also used by Rjisvan:

indrajyeṣṭhā


We notice in other applications, it is a normal word, but for some reason, Indra compounds with Jyestha.

Here it is wickedly applied to That by Brhaddiva:


tad id āsa bhuvaneṣu jyeṣṭhaṃ yato jajña ugras tveṣanṛmṇaḥ |


It's just literally the pronoun, that, was first or supreme in all the worlds, the fierce Indra was born from it, and as in other expressions, as soon as he is born, he destroys foes.

That does sound a bit like Gharma.


If that was the explanation, the star is named for Gharma.

Calling Antares "first" would be make-believe, calling it "most powerful" might be a matter of taste or opinion, but would at least make sense.

The Greek name only refers to the color. It is not the brightest star (15th), but it is in the environment of Scorpio and Centaurus. The proximal neighbors certainly have a use of it:

...the name of this star in Mesopotamian astronomy has always been "heart of Scorpion" and it was associated with the goddess Lisin...initially regarded as a goddess and addressed as ama, "mother," who later came to be regarded as a god and developed an association with fire. The name was also applied to a star associated with Nabu, presumed to correspond to Antares. Lisin's spouse was Ninsikila, whose gender also changed between periods.

Heart of Scorpion was Mother Goddess and they erased it? Not too surprising. The Scorpion is the most important thing in Jiroft. But I think that is going to be its own story. Ancient India seems unlikely to support this, since the Scorpion's head would be Anuradha, and the previous sign Vishakha may be called Radha, so that is its own dynamic with parts of Libra.

I'm not quite sure I would say IVC Scorpion is a Mother Goddess who becomes spontaneously usurped by Indra. It probably is as important as the Jiroft one, in a different function.

Another one with a good chance of pre-Vedic context is Svati -- Arcturus ruled by Vayu, who is very much the same in Avestan. The star's name is a close variant on "swastika" or su asti, and certainly this would be one of the most pressing questions for IVC about Sanskrit. Is that what they called it? Why wouldn't it be? It's impossible to translate because we are still using the same word today.

Mula is still "roots", and swastika is still the same.

These current facts could easily be valid in 2,300 or before.