recorded by Hewitt (p. 379) that to this day the
Hindu bride and bridegroom respectively pay reverence to the Pleiades and
Ursa Major, before worshipping the pole-star, "the spotted bull," on
entering their house. It would seem as though the fulfilment of this
ritual might limit the Hindu marriage season to some particular time of
the year, marked by the position of the Pleiades; in which connection it
is interesting to remember that, in Mexico, the culmination of the
Pleiades at midnight marked the New Year festival, when sacred fire was
rekindled and the union of Heaven and Earth took place. On pp. 130-132 of
Hewitt's work, vol. I, the reader will find instructive data regarding
Pleiades festivals.

The preceding details appear to show that whereas a northern patriarchal
race would naturally symbolize axial rotation by the fire-drill, a
southern matriarchal race would adopt the spindle for the same purpose.
Such a ritualistic use of the spindle would undoubtedly afford a very
simple explanation for the presence of cross-symbols and swastikas and
other designs of religious significance upon the terra-cotta spinning
whorls found in such quantities in Troy, for instance, and the cited
allusion on one of these, to the pole-star god, Tur, corroborates this
view.(146)

It is instructive to trace how, amongst primitive agricultural races, the
art of spinning, the employment of beasts of burden, the invention of the
oil-press which "was used in Asia Minor as it has been used for time
immemorial in India to extract the oil of the sesame seeds," and of the
wheel and cart, influenced their respective adoption of symbols of axial
rotation. In turn, these symbols suggested and created divergent forms of
ritual and religious cult. "The Turanians ... when they had evolved the
idea of the god of heaven as the pole turned by the revolving days and
weeks symbolized it as the pole of the threshing floors around which the
oxen were driven." The reader is referred here to the passages from the
Bhagavata-purana quoted in the present work (note 1, p. 448), in which
axial rotation is compared to "oxen turning around their stakes," to which
must be added the Vedic "one-wheeled car to which one horse named seven
was yoked" (see p. 452, note 1), and the revolving wheel and the revolving
measuring pole of the potter and builder castes, which united formed the
Telis caste.

In the Vaya Purana, "the seven Maruts drive the stars which are bound