Budhaबुध

Budha is Mercury, the fourth of the Navagraha. His name comes from the root budh, to awaken or to know — the same root that gives buddhi, intelligence, and Buddha, the awakened one. He is not, however, connected to the Buddha, and the shared root is a frequent source of confusion.

He governs intelligence, speech, learning, commerce and communication, and in the astrological scheme is the most adaptable of the grahas — taking on the character of whichever planet he associates with, which is read as the mind's tendency to reflect its company.

His colour is green throughout: green cloth, emerald, moong dal, green flowers. Wednesday is his day.

His parentage is among the more scandalous in the Puranas — he is the son of Chandra and Tara, wife of Brihaspati, conceived during an abduction that led to war among the gods — and he is the ancestor, through his son Pururavas, of the Chandravamsha, the lunar dynasty from which the Kauravas and Pandavas descend.

Budha, like the other grahas, takes his settled form during the consolidation of the Navagraha scheme in the early centuries CE, when Indian and Hellenistic astronomical traditions were in contact. The planet Mercury's swiftness and proximity to the sun are reflected in his character: he never strays far from Surya in the sky, and the astrological texts treat that closeness as significant.

His narrative material comes from the Puranas, principally the Vishnu and Bhagavata, and centres on two episodes: his conception, and the strange story of his wife Ila.

The Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra assigns him intellect, speech, education, trade, and the nervous quickness of the mind. He is described as neutral in temperament, taking the qualities of the grahas he sits with — benefic with benefics, malefic with malefics — which is unique among the nine.

His role as founder of the lunar dynasty gives him a place in the epic genealogies that most of the grahas lack. Pururavas, his son by Ila, is the subject of one of the Rigveda's most enigmatic dialogue hymns (RV 10.95) with the apsara Urvashi, and the line runs from there to the Mahabharata.

Budha is shown with a green complexion, four-armed, holding a sword, a shield and a mace, with the fourth hand in the gesture of granting.

He rides a lion, or in other depictions a chariot drawn by eight horses described as the colour of wind.

He is depicted as youthful and is usually the most conventionally handsome of the grahas — a reflection of his association with charm, eloquence and quickness.

As a Navagraha he faces north in the nine-planet shrine.

His gem is the emerald (panna), his metal bronze or brass, his grain moong (green gram), his direction north, and his cloth green — the same colour scheme running through every element of his worship.

Budha has few distinct devotional forms; his identity is technical and stable.

Budha as a Navagraha — the fourth of the nine, his principal presence in worship.

Saumya — son of Soma, the patronymic name.

Rauhineya — son of Rohini, in accounts that give Chandra's favourite wife as his mother rather than Tara.

Budha Graha — the technical astrological identity, significator of intellect and speech.

He is worshipped almost entirely within the Navagraha group and has essentially no independent devotional following.

The abduction and the war. Chandra takes Tara, wife of Brihaspati, preceptor of the gods. Brihaspati demands her return; Chandra refuses. The gods take Brihaspati's side and the asuras, led by Shukra — Brihaspati's rival — take Chandra's, and the Tarakamaya war follows. Brahma intervenes and Tara is returned, pregnant. Both Chandra and Brihaspati claim the child; Tara, pressed, names Chandra. The child is Budha. That the graha of intelligence is born from a dispute neither party handled intelligently is a note the tradition does not draw but is hard to miss.

Ila. Budha's wife has one of the strangest narratives in Puranic literature. Ila, born the son of Manu, enters a grove where Shiva and Parvati are together and where, by Shiva's word, any male who enters becomes female. Ila becomes a woman, meets Budha, and they have a son, Pururavas. In some versions Ila alternates between male and female by the month. The tradition tells the story without embarrassment and it has attracted considerable attention in modern scholarship.

Pururavas and Urvashi. Their son's love for the apsara Urvashi is the subject of Rigveda 10.95, of a Shatapatha Brahmana narrative, and of Kalidasa's play Vikramorvashiyam — one of the oldest continuously retold love stories in Indian literature.

Wednesday — Budhvar — is his day, and the observances are colour-coded green throughout: green cloth, green flowers, moong dal, and emerald where a gem is used.

A Wednesday fast is kept by some, and the offering of moong dal or green vegetables to those in need is the customary act associated with him.

In the Navagraha shrine he is circumambulated in the prescribed order and faces north.

He is approached in the astrological tradition in connection with education, speech and trade, and students and those in commerce are his traditional constituency. As with the other grahas, these are beliefs held within Jyotisha and are described here rather than endorsed.

The Budha Kavacham, the Navagraha Stotra and ॐ बुं बुधाय नमः are the standard recitations. Reciting the Vishnu Sahasranama is also commonly prescribed for him, since he is regarded in the graha scheme as having a Vaishnava affinity.

Thiruvenkadu, Tamil Nadu — his shrine among the nine Navagraha temples around Kumbakonam, and the principal Budha temple in India.

Budha shrines within Navagraha groups — present in most South Indian temples and many northern ones.

Peddapuram and other Andhra Navagraha shrines where the nine are installed as a group.

He has no significant independent temples, which is the norm for the lesser grahas: their worship happens within the nine-planet shrine rather than at dedicated sites.

Budha's most distinctive feature in the astrological scheme is that he is neutral — he has no fixed nature of his own and takes on the character of whatever graha he associates with. Of the nine, he alone is defined by his company. Whatever one makes of the astrology, that is a shrewd characterisation of intellect: a faculty that serves whatever purpose it is put to, and is not itself good or bad.

The root of his name repays attention. Budh — to wake, to notice, to know — gives buddhi, the discriminating intellect, and gives the Buddha his title. The tradition placed the planet closest to the sun, never far from it and hardest to see, under a word meaning to become aware. The astronomy and the etymology fit together better than they had any need to.

His birth narrative is the tradition at its least tidy. A god abducts a preceptor's wife, a war follows, the child's paternity is disputed and settled only by the mother's word — and the child becomes the graha of intelligence and the ancestor of the epic dynasties. Nothing about the story is edifying, and the Puranas keep it anyway.

And through Ila, he is connected to one of the few narratives in classical Sanskrit literature about a person who is by turns male and female, told matter-of-factly and without condemnation. The story sits in the mainstream Puranic corpus, and it is a useful corrective to any assumption that the tradition's imagination was narrower than it was.