Bangladesh

According to Hindu mythology in Bangladesh, Lord Prajapati is the constellation Orion.  Lord Pajapati was the first supreme god who created the universe and all living organisms.  He helped humankind emerge from the darkness beneath the sea and placed them to live on the surface of the earth.  He ruled the universe for a long time but for some unknown reasons his power started to diminish. Eventually Lord Brahma ousted Lord Prajapati from his power and exalted position, and he became the supreme god.

 

              In the early part of his reign, Lord Prajapati was a very noble, compassionate  and honest god, and he was respected and worshipped by all of his subjects, particularly for his unquestionable purity of moral character.

 

              As time went by, Lord Prajapati’s mind started to fill with sinful motives, and he began to engage in immoral and incestuous acts. His morals had dropped so low that one day he lusted after his own daughter, Usha. Usha was a clever girl and she understood the bad motives of her father. She quickly transformed herself into a doe and ran into the forest to avoid the danger. Prajapati found out that Usha had fled into the forest, so he transformed himself into a stag and entered the forest to chase her. After a few days, Prajapati recognized Usha as a doe hiding deep in the forest, and he planned to seduce her.

 

              In the meantime, the gods and goddesses in Heaven noticed Prajapati’s immoral and sinful behavior, and they were very angry and furious at him. They immediately summoned Rudra to punish Prajapati.  Rudra was an extremely powerful deity as well as a skillful archer with an exceptional ability to accurately target and kill prey with his arrows. Acting on orders from the gods and goddesses in Heaven, Rudra came down to Earth and rushed into that forest where Usha was hiding.  He also located Prajapati, who was planning to satiate his incestuous desires.  Rudra targeted Prajapati and shot arrows from his bow that pierced Prajapati’s abdominal area. The arrows penetrated that three points of Prajapati’s abdomen formed three bright stars named Agni, the god of the Sun (Alnitak), Soma, the god of Ambrosia (Alnilam) and Vishnu, the god of Fire (Mintaka). 

 

These three stars can still be seen blazing prominently in the middle of the constellation Orion, lying next to each other in the same line. 

 

One version of the myth says that Rudhra shot arrows to Prajapati standing on   Lubdhok (Sirius), the brightest star of constellation Canis Major. The pierced abdomen of   Prajapati (Orion) ended up as Rohini (Aldebaran), the brightest star in the constellation Taurus.  One interesting note here is that Sirius lies to the west side, and Aldebaran lies to the east side of Orion, but, the distances of Sirius and Aldebaran are equal from the middle of Orion.