In the Paper already referred to, it was suggested that an astronomic observation of the equinoctial colure passing through the constellations Sagittarius and Taurus was the probable origin of Median and (as derived from Median) Assyrian symbolism concerning Ahura Mazda and Assur. This observation could, as was pointed out, only have been made at the date, in round numbers, of 4,000 B.C. It is a very tempting enterprise to seek in the mythologies of European nations for allusions to this same astronomic observation--an observation made, as we may believe, when the ancestors of the Iranian and Indian Aryans, and possibly the ancestors of the European nations, were still, if not all dwelling together, at least within easy intellectual touch of each other. In Grecian fable we have the Centaur (the Bull-killer) Chiron giving his name to the constellation Sagittarius, and in this fable we may, as it would seem, find a better _astronomic_ explanation of the term Bull-killer than that usually given concerning the well-mounted Thessalian hunters of wild cattle. The constellation Sagittarius, an archer, half man, half horse, is not a figure of Grecian invention. It is to be met with depicted on Babylonian monuments, unmistakably the archer of our celestial sphere; and this constellation, when it rises in the east, always drives below the western horizon--_i.e._, mythically exterminates, the last stars of the constellation Taurus. To Chiron, the chief Centaur, the epithet “wise” is especially given, and “he was renowned for his skill in hunting, medicine, music, gymnastics, and the art of prophecy”; of these not altogether congruous attributes Rudra the Vedic god possessed three of the most important. He was wise, he was an archer, and he was famed as “a chief physician among physicians.”[84] In a verse, part of which has been already quoted,[85] worshippers are exhorted to “Praise him who has the sure arrow, the strong bow, who presides over all sanitary drugs; worship Rudra for a comprehensive and sound understanding, adore the powerful divinity with prostrations.” [84] Wilson, _Rig Veda_, Maṇḍala ii., xxxiii., 4. [85] _Ib._, Maṇḍala v., x. (xlii.), 11. Apollo the far-darter, Artemis the goddess of the silver bow, also shared these same attributes, and Grecian legend would lead us to place them in the same part of the heavens as that allotted to Chiron--_i.e._, Sagittarius. Apollo prompted Artemis to aim a shaft from her bow at a point on the horizon, and this point was the head of the hunter Orion. Now the constellation Orion is exactly in opposition to the bow stars of Sagittarius; that the legend is astronomical is plainly to be inferred from its variant form, in which Artemis is represented as sending a Scorpion to sting Orion to death. The stars marking the Scorpion’s sting are in very close proximity to the bow stars of Sagittarius.