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RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS
as Rohiní*, gives extraordinary sanctity, and renders the worship of the sun more than usually efficacious. The specification of the days of the week by the names of the seven planets is, as it is well known, familiar to the Hindus. The origin of this arrangement is not very precisely ascertained**, as it was unknown to the Greeks and not adopted by the Romans until a late period. It is commonly ascribed to the Egyptians and Babylonians, but upon no very sufficient authority, and the Hindus appear to have, at least, as good a title as any other people to the nvention'.
*
[See Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, 1, 227.]
** [See, however, A. Weber, "Indische Studien", II, 167, and Burgess' translation of the Súrya Siddhánta, p. 176-8.]
It has been thought that Herodotus alludes to the custom, when he observes, lib. II, e. 82, that the Egyptians assign their months and days to different deities. Pliny also has an obscure intimation that the sovereignty over each day was attributed to the planets in the order of their revolution. In the time of Dion Cassius, or in the beginning of the third century, the nomenclature had come into general use, and he is the authority for its Egyptian origin. As in the Latin version, quod autem dies ad septem sidera illa, quos planetas appellarunt, referuntur id ab Egyptiis institutum. - Lib. 38, c. 18, Christmannus, a modern Latin writer (de Kalendario Romano), attributes the nomenclature to the Babylonians: Sane apud Romanos nulla tunc erat distinctio temporis in hebdomades dierum; ea tamen apud Babylonios et Ægyptios statim a regno Nabonasari in usu fuit cum septem planetarum nominibus dies septimanæ appellarentur. He does not give his authorities. It was not impossibly of Chaldæan invention, but was very generally diffused throughout the East at a remote date.
