THE PLANETS. 93 



of San WHS strangely enougli applied to Saturn, tlie cater 

 most of the then known planets, as is proved by several pa& 



which is continuous or constant in intensity, while arDiSeiv refers to an 

 intermittent scintillating light of greater brilliancy. The descriptive 

 names : cpalvuv for the remote Saturn, crl/Xiov for the nearer planet 

 Mercuiy, appear the more appropriate, as I have befoie pointed out 

 (^Cosmos, vol. iii. p. 72), from the circumstance that, as seen by day 

 in the great refractor of Frauenhofer, Saturn and Jupiter appear feebly 

 himinous in comparison with the scintillating Mercury. There is, 

 therefore, as Professor Franz remarks, a succession of increasing brill- 

 iancy indicated from Saturn ((patvuv) to Jupiter, from Jupiter {(baiOuv) 

 to the colored glowing Mars {jzvposi^), to Venus ((pucy(p6pog), and to Mer 

 cury (aTl/i6u)v). 



My acquaintance with the Indian name of Saturn {' sanaistschara), 

 the sloicly meandering, induced me to ask my celebrated friend Bopp 

 whether, upon the whole, a distinction between names of deities and 

 descriptive names was also to be made in the Indian planetary names, 

 as in those of the Greeks, and probably the Chaldeans, I here insert 

 the opinion, for which I am indebted to this great philologist, arrang- 

 ing the planets, however, according to their actual distances from the 

 Sun, as in the above table (commencing w^ith the greatest distance), 

 not as they stand in Amaralwscha (by Colebrooke, p. 17 and 18). There 

 are, in fact, among the five Sanscrit names three descriptive ones : Sat- 

 urn, Mars, and Venus. 



" Saturn: 'sanaistschara, from 'sanais, slow, and tschara, going; also 

 'sauri, a name of Vishnu (derived as a patronymic from '^fi^a, Grand- 

 father of \u) and 'sani. The planet name 'sani-v^rafor, ' dies Saturni,' 

 is radically related to the adverb 'sanais, slow. The names of the week- 

 days derived from planets appears, however, not to have been known 

 to Amarasinha. They are, indeed, of later introduction. 



"Jupiter : Vrihaspati ; or, according to an older Vedic mode of writ- 

 ing which Lassen follows, Brihaspati : the Lord of increase, a Vedic 

 deity: from vrih (brih), to grow, and pati, lord. 



''Mars: angaraka (from angara, burning coal); also lohitdnga, tho 

 red body : from lohita, red, and anga, body. 



" Venus: a male planet, which is called sukra, i. e., the brilliant. An- 

 other name of this planet is daitya-guru: Teacher, guru, the Titans, 

 Daityas. 



"■ Mercui-}' : Budha not to be confounded as a planet name with 

 Buddha, the founder of the religious sect; also Rauhiueya, the son of 

 the nymph Rohini, wife of the iNIoon (soma), on which account the plan- 

 et is sometimes called sanmya, a pati'ouymic of the Sanscrit woi'd mond. 

 The etymological root of budha, the planet name, and buddha, the name 

 of the saint, is budh, to know. It seems to me improbable that Wuotan 

 (VVotan, Odin) are connected with Budha. This conjecture is found- 

 ed, indeed, principally upon the external similarity of form, and upon 

 the correspondence of the name of the day of the week, * dies Mercu- 

 rii,' with the old Saxon Wolanes-dag, and the Indian Budha-v^ra, i. e., 

 Budha's day. The primitive signification of v^ra is repetition, for ex- 

 ample, in bahuv&ran, many times, often ; it subsequently occurs at the 

 end of a compound w*ord with the signification day. Jacob Grimm 

 derives the German Wuotan from the verb watan,vuot (the German 

 waten), which signifies meare, tr^nsraeare, cum impetu ferri, and orlho 

 graphically corresponds to the La tin vadere. {Dentsch>: Mytholog^ie, p 



