ra_ but never _Buddha-vara_; and the fact that the mother
of Mercury was called Maia, and the mother of Buddha Maya, could,
therefore, have had no bearing whatever on the name assigned to the Indian
Wednesday.(56) The very Buddhists, in Ceylon, distinguish between buddha,
the enlightened, and budha, wise, and call Wednesday the day of Budha, not
of Buddha.(57) Whether the names of the planets were formed in India
independently, or after Greek models, is difficult to settle. The name of
Budha, the knowing or the clever, given to the planet Mercury, seems,
however, inexplicable except on the latter hypothesis.

Having traced the origin of the Sanskrit name of the _dies Mercurii_,
Budha-vara, let us now see why the Teutonic nations, though perfectly
ignorant of Buddhism, called the same day the day of Wodan.

That the Teutonic nations received the names of the week-days from their
Greek and Roman neighbors admits of no doubt. For commercial and military
arrangements between Romans and Germans some kind of _lingua franca_ must
soon have sprung up, and in it the names of the week-days must have found
their place. There would have been little difficulty in explaining the
meaning of Sun-day and Mon-day to the Germans, but in order to make them
understand the meaning of the other names, some explanations must have
been given on the nature of the different deities, in order to enable the
Germans to find corresponding names in their own language. A Roman would
tell his German friend that _dies Veneris_ meant the day of a goddess who
represented beauty and love, and on hearing this the German would at once
have thought of his own goddess of love, _Freyja_, and have called the
_dies Veneris_ the day of _Freyja_ or Friday.(58)

If _Jupiter_ was described as the god who wields the thunderbolt, his
natural representative in German would be _Donar_,(59) the Anglo-Saxon
_Thunar_, the Old Norse _Thor_; and hence the _dies Jovis_ would be called
the day of _Thor_, or Thursday. If the fact that Jupiter was the king of
the gods had been mentioned, his proper representative in German would, no
doubt, have been _Wuotan_ or _Odin_.(60) As it was, _Wuotan_ or _Odin_ was
chosen as the nearest approach to _Mercury_, the character which they
share in common, and which led to their identification, being most likely
their love of travelling through the air,(61) also their granting wealth
and fulfilling the wishes of their worshippers, in which capac