ity Wuotan
is known by the name of _Wunsch_(62) or _Wish_. We can thus understand how
it happened that father and son changed places, for while _Mercurius_ is
the son of _Jupiter_, _Wuotan_ is the father of _Donar_. _Mars_, the god
of war, was identified with the German _Tiu_ or _Ziu_, a name which,
though originally the same as _Zeus_ in Greek or _Dyaus_ in Sanskrit, took
a peculiarly national character among the Germans, and became their god of
war.(63)

There remained thus only the _dies Saturni_, the day of Saturn, and
whether this was called so in imitation of the Latin name, or after an old
German deity of a similar name and character, is a point which for the
present we must leave unsettled.

What, however, is not unsettled is this, that if the Germans, in
interpreting these names of Roman deities as well as they could, called
the _dies Mercurii_, the same day which the Hindus had called the day of
_Budha_ (with one _d_), their day of _Wuotan_, this was not because "the
doctrines of the gentle ascetic existed in the bosom of Odin or his
followers, while dwelling near the roots of the Caucasus," but for very
different and much more tangible reasons.

But, apart from all this, by what possible process could Buddha and Odin
have ever been brought together in the flesh? In the history of ancient
religions, Odin belongs to the same stratum of mythological thought as
_Dyaus_ in India, _Zeus_ in Greece, _Jupiter_ in Italy. He was worshipped
as the supreme deity during a period long anterior to the age of the Veda
and of Homer. His travels in Greece, and even in Tyrkland,(64) and his
half-historical character as a mere hero and a leader of his people, are
the result of the latest Euhemerism. Buddha, on the contrary, is not a
mythological, but a personal and historical character, and to think of a
meeting of Buddha and Odin, or even of their respective descendants, at
the roots of Mount Caucasus, would be like imagining an interview between
Cyrus and Odin, between Mohammed and Aphrodite.

A comparative study of ancient religions and mythologies, as will be seen
from these instances, is not a subject to be taken up lightly. It requires
not only an accurate acquaintance with the minutest details of comparative
philology, but a knowledge of the history of religions which can hardly be
gained without a study of original documents. As long, however, as
researches of this kind are carried on for their own sake, and from a me