URSA MAJOR AND MINOR, CALLED THE GREAT AND LESSER BEAR.

p. 29.

URSA MAJOR and MINOR,

CALLED THE GREAT AND LESSER BEAR.

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

     The Scandinavian tribes appear to have retained the name; but that they did not invent it may be inferred from the remark of the North American Indian, that those who first called it so had never seen a bear; for what bear ever had a long tail? It is observable that this Indian tribe called the constellation the bear. "Among the Algonquins of the Atlantic and the Mississippi, the Narragansets, and the Illinois, the north star was called the bear 1." It is called the chariot of Thor in Danish and Icelandic. By the ancient Britons it was given to their hero Arthur, as Talyn Arthur, the harp of Arthur, was their name for Lyra. With the living animal the Scandinavians were well acquainted, as were the Chaldeans, Hebrews, and Syrians, to whom the remark equally applies.

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

     In the name of the nymph Calisto, by Greek fable said to be changed into the constellation, we find the Semitic root which we meet again in the west as Caula, a sheepfold. With the idea of a sheepfold 2 in the mind, it needs but to look at these seven remarkable stars to perceive how well is imaged there the fold, and the sheep proceeding from the corner of it, as if following the bright star Arcturus, always said to be the guardian of these stars, whatever they might be called. Arcturus means He cometh, the guardian or keeper. From the root "to come" was also formed Arcas, by the Greeks said to be the name of Ursa Minor. Arcas, by the Greeks said to be changed into the Lesser Bear, was also called the son of the Supreme Deity: the name of the chief star, Al Gedi, the kid, or Lamb or sacrifice, would carry with it that mysterious tradition. In the Persian sphere there are three maidens walking in Ursa Minor, waiting on Him who was to come, as the name Kochab expresses. As in Ursa Major, the Semitic names show that here also was set forth the fold and the flock: the fold, in Scripture metaphor the Church; the flock, the Lord's people. If from Arcas we derive the names of the arctic and antarctic hemisphere, to those epithets we may annex appropriate meanings: the hemisphere in which He came, who was to come, of whom the polar star was the emblem, being called the arctic, that in which He came; the opposite, the antarctic, that in which He did not come.
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   1 Bancroft's Hist. of U.S.
   2 The Christian Arabs, interpreting Ash as the assembly of mourners at a funeral, called the four stars the bier of Lazarus, and the three of the tail Martha, Mary, and a handmaiden: but the ancient names, cattle, flock, and fold, show that a funeral could never have been the original meaning.