136 The Rev. Dr. Wall on the Nature, Age, and Origin of the 



this mode of dividing the Ecliptic from the Greeks, is not perhaps altogether 

 improbable." — Asiatic Researches, vol. ix, p. 347. 



The septenary division of time is so widely diffused through the East, that it 

 may possibly have descended to diflPerent Asiatic nations independently of each 

 other, by some remains of a tradition handed down from patriarchal times ; but 

 the names of the seven days had beyond all doubt a more western, as well as a 

 more recent origin. Dion Cassius expressly attributes their invention to the 

 Egyptians, and describes the astrological principle on which they were framed ; 

 from which, as well as from his assertion, it appears that their rotation commenced 

 with Saturday.* But the Christians, in adopting them, changed the initial one 

 from Saturday to Sunday, evidently because the latter coincided with their first 

 day of the week. Dion further shows that he could not be mistaken as to the 

 people with whom this invention originated, for he informs us that it was not an 

 old one in his time, giving this as a reason for its having been unknown to the 

 ancient Greeks ;f and the same reason obviously accounts for its not having been 



never having found one mentioned in any older treatise than that of Brahma Gupta, it is, I conceive, 

 much more likely that the ancient sphere in question is only a modern fabrication of the Brahraans, 

 after they had become aware of the precession of the equinoxes; — a fabrication contrived to give 

 colour to the pretended antiquity of their astronomical skill. 



* The inventors of the names under consideration supposed that, 1. Saturn, 2. Jupiter, 3. Mars, 

 4. the Sun, 6. Venus, 6. Mercury, 7. the Moon, presided constantly over the world, each by turns an 

 hour, in the order here stated ; and they called each day after the celestial body which presided 

 over its first hour. In this manner the first day got its name from Saturn ; the second, from the 

 Sun ; the third, from the Moon ; the fourth, from Mars ; the fifth, from Mercury ; the sixth, from 

 Jupiter ; and the seventh, from Venus. That this was the original order of the astrological names 

 of the week is proved, not only by the evidence of Dion, but also by the very nature of the case 

 itself. For the above primary series, upon which the order of the names in the secondary one de- 

 pends, is arranged according to the relative distances from the earth, which are attributed in Ptolemy's 

 system of astronomy to the bodies he supposed to revolve round our globe. But if the rotation in 

 the primary series be made to commence from any other body but Saturn, the order of the terms in 

 that series will come out such as has no intelligible relation to the planetary system or any known 

 theory respecting it. 



■)• To 8e 817 EC TOVQ tirra, tovq irXavyiTat; wvofia(Tfitvovg, rac rifilpaQ avaKuaOai, KaTtarri 

 filv vtt' ^AiyvirTidJv, Traptari St koi trrt iravTag avdpwTTOvg, oi) iraXai ttote, wg \6y(f) eiTruv, 

 ap^ajuEVOV. Ot -yoOv apx.o'^oi "EXXjjvec ovBaixTJ avrb (ova -ys ifii iiSivat) riTrl(TTavTO. — 

 J)ionis. Cassii, 1. xxxvi, p. 37 ; Leunclavii Ed. 



