3rd circle. Names and extent of the twelve Indian “Rashis” or divisions of the Solar Zodiac.
4th circle. Proposed three-fold division of the Vedic Lunar Month at Season of Summer Solstice.
Section of 5th circle. Proposed identification of “Maruts” with Moon’s course through seven “Nakshatras” at Season of Summer Solstice.
The Constellations here appear as drawn on the celestial globe; they have not been reversed as in the other illustrations, hence an apparent, though not real, contradiction ensues.
[To face p. 174.
Now let us turn from the Maruts to another, as it seems to me, lunar and solstitial myth, namely, that of Trita Aptya.
Trita Aptya is a friend of the Maruts, and is said to have appeared on the same car with them. He is constantly, in the hymns, associated with Indra, and feats recorded in one passage as performed by Indra, are in another passage of the same hymn attributed to Trita.
Trita is also often spoken of together with Soma; and in the ninth Maṇḍala, again and again we read of the ten “maidens, or fingers,” of Trita preparing the Soma juice for Indra.
All these attributes of Trita, and others to be mentioned later, are easily explainable on the astronomic theory already propounded in the identifications of Indra, of Soma, and of the Maruts.
In the name Trita there is certainly a suggestion of the number three, and Macdonell, in his Vedic Mythology,[90] brings proof to show “that it was felt to have the meaning of the third”—that is, in order of sequence.