Budha

Budha is the Hindu deity of the planet Mercury, one of the Navagraha, a mild, learned god of intelligence and commerce, and, as the tradition is careful to note, not to be confused with the Buddha, a different word and figure entirely. His birth is a divine scandal: he is the son of Chandra, the Moon, and Tara, the wife of Brihaspati (Jupiter), the preceptor of the gods, whom Chandra carried off, so that the quick-witted planet is born of the union of the Moon with another god's wife.

Budha marries Ila and fathers Pururavas, the founder of the Lunar dynasty (Chandravamsha) of kings, one of the two great royal lineages of Indian legend. In Jyotisha he governs the intellect, speech, reason, trade and analytical skill, and Wednesday (Budhavar) is his day. He is shown gentle and scholarly, and his benefic or malefic influence in a chart is held to depend heavily on the company he keeps among the other planets.

Budha is shown as a beardless, gentle young man of green or grass colored complexion, dressed in green robes and riding a winged lion or, in some renderings, a chariot pulled by lions or by the wind, holding a scepter, a sword and a shield, attributes that mark him out as calm rather than fierce despite the martial trappings, which tradition treats as inherited furnishings rather than a sign of his temperament. His day is Wednesday (Budhavar, and the English weekday itself preserves a parallel Mercury association through the Germanic Woden), and he is propitiated chiefly through green offerings, green gram, green cloth, and gifts to students and teachers, on the theory that a well disposed Mercury sharpens the mind and eases communication, trade and travel.

Because Jyotisha regards Budha as changeable, taking on the character of whichever planet sits with him in a chart, dedicated temples are few, and worship is generally folded into the wider navagraha shrine found attached to many Shiva and Vishnu temples across South India, where the nine planets are arranged around a central image and honored together rather than singly. The confusion the tradition works so hard to head off, between Budha the planet and the Buddha the awakened teacher, is a matter of similar sounding names in Sanskrit rather than any shared origin, and modern popular writing still needs the reminder as much as ancient commentators evidently did.