lameness

James Wynn · 17 Jan 2011, 18:18 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2011 12:18:10 -0600
Subject: (urth) lameness
In-Reply-To: <SNT123-W38DCAA59332C93240B01CFCFF40 at phx.gbl>
References: <SNT123-W38DCAA59332C93240B01CFCFF40 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <4D3487E2.501 at gmail.com>

>> James Wynn: I've always assumed Fish and Frog referred to the stars Fomalhaut and
>> Rana. But I don't know why those stars are significant in the The Book of the New Sun.
>
>
> Lee-
> I know of Fomalhaut but was a star named Rana (frog genus) mentioned in BotNS?
> [...] Any chance these two could be combined?

Not really. But Rana works nicely for the story. It's located in a 
constellation that was traditionally seen as a stream. And there's a 
"Basket" star in that constellation.

As for Fish....well, the fish is hard. I can imagine that Frog is a 
translation for an alternative word for "raja":  that is, *Rana*. If so 
arguably Frog, in this story, is Ymar. The first Autarch.

But then, for Fish, I would probably be looking for a character with a 
TITLE that has a synonym that could be translated "fish". And if we 
assume, based on the mistranslation of Typhon, that the original story 
the mythographer was working from was in Hindi or Sanskrit, then we 
would want that title he read to have been in one of those languages. 
Well, there aren't any "matsyas" that I know of.

On the other hand, the avatar of Vishnu, named Matsya is associated with 
the combined constellations of Taurus and Cetas. And Cetus 
(fish)/Eridanus (the brightest star being Rana) were a combined 
constellation for the Chinese called "The Celestial Meadow".  Well, this 
gets us nowhere...except...that Matsya of Indian mythology is associated 
with a Noahic Flood story.

But it still does not identify anyone for me in the stories that can be 
directly associated with "Fish".

u+16b9

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