Page:Star Lore Of All Ages, 1911.pdf/407

Rh   Plunket thinks there is some support in Grecian and in Vedic legend to be found for the opinion that the original position of Pegasus was upright, and not reversed. Though the Horse appears reversed on the Grecian astronomic sphere, he does not appear so on any artistic monument, vase, or coin.

In the Rig-Veda we read of a swift horse belonging to the Aswins, who, it is said, filled a hundred vases with sweet liquor, an allusion to the fount of Hippocrene.

Max Müller has pointed out that the Aswins possessed a horse called "Pagas," and they are represented by the stars α and β Arietis. If we look at Pegasus in the sky, and observe how closely following that constellation the bright stars that mark the head of Aries appear, we shall easily understand how these Aswins might have, by Vedic bards, been imagined as possessing and driving in front of them the swift steed Pegasus.

As Pegasus is now represented in the heavens, his hoofs do not appear to touch any stellar representation of a fountain or vase, but if the figure is reversed, we find that the forefoot of the Horse would be close to the water-jar of Aquarius, the source of a great stream of water that flows down the steeps of the southern sky.

In the Aswameda hymns in the Rig-Veda, there is a reference to the sacrifice of a horse, and this is thought to refer to the symbolic sacrifice of the winged Horse of the constellation Pegasus.

Plunket thinks the legend of the fount of Hippocrene 