THE PLANETS. 93 



of Sun was strangely enough applied to Saturn, the outer- 

 most of the then known planets, as is proved by several pas- 



which is continuous or constant in intensity, while (yTc2.6eiv refers lo an 

 intermittent scintillating light of greater brilliancy. The descriptive 

 names : ^aivuv for the remote Saturn, gtiMov for the nearer planet 

 Mercury, appear the more appropriate, as I have befoi'e 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 

 luminous in comparison with the scintillating Mercury. There is, 

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

 iancy, indicated from Saturn {(paivuv) to Jupiter, from Jupiter {^aeduv) 

 to the colored glowing Mars {jTvpoEig), to Venus (^ua<j>6pog), and to Mer 

 cury (ariMtjv). 



My acquaintance with the Indian name of Saturn ('sanaistsckara), 

 the slowly wandering, 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 with the greatest distance), 

 not as they stand in Amarakoscha (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 'sfira. Grand- 

 father of \\.\) and 'sani. The planet name 'sani-vdrafor, ' dies Saturn!,' 

 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, the 

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



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

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

 Daityas. 



" Mercury : Budha, not to be confounded as a planet name with 

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

 the nymph Rohinl, wife of the Moon (soma), on which account the plan- 

 et is sometimes called saumya, a patronymic of the Sanscrit word 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 

 (Wotan, 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 Wodanes-dag, and the Indian Budha-vfira, i. e., 

 Budha's day. The primitive signification of v6ra is repetition, for ex- 

 ample, in bahuv&rdn, 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, transmeare, cum impetu ferri, and ortho- 

 graphically corresponds to the Li tin vadere. (Deutsche Myihologie, p. 



