Budha

Budha is Mercury. The Brihat Jataka lists Hemna, Vit, Gna, Bodhana and Induputra, the son of the Moon, as names for it. It is speech in the Kalapurusha, the zodiac taken as one body, and the first prince among the planets. The text pictures it as green like bent grass, fond of jokes and sometimes hesitant in speech, and ties it to earth, the north, brass, a mixed flavor and the autumn months of September and October.

Mithuna and Kanya are its signs. It is exalted in Virgo at the fifteenth degree and falls in Pisces at the same degree, and Virgo is also its mulatrikona sign, a special place of strength. In the typed Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, which names no edition, the mulatrikona follows the exaltation stretch at degrees 16 to 20, with the rest own sign. The friendship table Varahamihira adopts differs from the list he cites for others, in a stanza just before it, which gives Mercury five friends.

The book has Mercury change with its companions, and it counts Mercury as malefic when it joins the waning Moon, the Sun, Mars or Saturn, and the Brihat Jataka's wording groups it with Saturn as a planet of mixed sex. Mercury sees the seventh house fully, with no special aspect, and gains strength in the east or rising sign, and by day and night alike.

Mercury's period in the Vimshottari scheme, the 120-year timetable, is 17 years, and it belongs to the nakshatras Ashlesha, Jyeshtha and Revati. The typed text of the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra reads 19 there, which makes the total 122, so it counts as a fault of the typed layer or the edition. Iyer and the 1912 translator both give 17.