records. True, in one place, Hesiod speaks The 



of 'retreating from the burning heat of the Pkiad- 



ri j ' 4.- i i 5 u Month. 



Pleiades, and mention has already been made 



of the Hindu association of them with 'Flame.' 

 But Hesiod's allusion is a seasonal trope, and 

 natural to one living in a warm country where 

 the coming of the autumnal rains coincides 

 with days of sweltering closeness and heat. 

 Moreover, Hesiod himself uses equally deftly 

 other popular imagery as it occurs to him, 

 speaking of the Pleiades, as Homer speaks, as 

 Atlas-born ; and again (with Pindar, Simonides 

 and others) likening them to rock-pigeons flying 

 from the Hunter Orion, doubtless from earliest 

 mention of them in ancient legend as a flock 

 of doves, or birds ; and again as ' the Seven 

 Virgins ' and ' the Virgin stars ' thus at one 

 with his contemporary, the Hebrew Herdsman- 

 prophet Amos, who called them by a word 

 rendered in the Authorised Version of the 

 Bible as 'the seven stars.' As for the Hindu 

 symbol, it must be remembered that fire was 

 the supreme sacred and primitive element, and 

 that every begetter of life in any form would 

 naturally be thus associate. The Hindus called 

 the Pleiad-Month (October-November) Kartik, 

 and the reason of the great star-festival Dlball, 

 the Feast of Lamps, was to show gratitude and 

 joy, after the close of the wet season, for the 

 269 



