Tanabata

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July 7, 2019

Today Japan celebrates the Star festival or Tanabata. In all civilizations,  folk stories and legends are a kind of truth shrouded in myth making and fantasy. So it is, with the story of Tanabata. It marks the summer triangle - the time of the year when the stars Vega and Altair are visible close to each other. This day marks the time when they reach the highest point in the sky, at around midnight.  The Star Deneb completes the triangle by connecting Altair and Vega. All three are the brightest stars in their constellations.Now coming  to the story that makes this scientific fact more easy and fun to digest  -

The King of the sky had a beautiful daughter, Princess Orihime who was an accomplished weaver. She worked on her loom without respite and wove beautiful clothes that her father loved, working away in their abode close to the celestial river, the milky way. Sensing her loneliness, the king of the sky arranged for his daughter to meet Hikoboshi, A cowherd who lived on the other side of the celestial river. Orihime and Hikoboshi married and were so engrossed in their love for each other that Orihime stopped weaving, and Hikoboshi allowed his cattle to wander into the heavens. The king of the sky, angered by this, forbade them to be together. After many entreaties, the King relented and allowed them to meet once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, if they performed their duties and worked diligently. On the first day they were to be reunited, the Celestial river was in spate. Orihime lost hope and despaired of meeting her lover. Her despair won the pity of a flock of Magpies, who flew close together to form a bridge so the lovers could be reunited. The Japanese pray for good weather on Tanabata, because the magpies will not be able to fly to the heavens to form a bridge if it rained and the princess and the cowherd would have to wait another year until they can meet again.

So, which do you prefer? It seems to me that the human mind has an infinite capacity to comprehend and understand, if dry facts are nicely wrapped up in some riveting storytelling. Don't you agree?



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