KNOWLEDGE OF PLANETS IN THE 3RD MILLENNIUM BC

Recent advances in archaeology, chronobiology, and the history of scie nce have made it possible to decipher hitherto obscure passages relate d to planets in the Indian books of the third millennium sc. A brief s ummary of this knowledge is presented. It is argued that the period of Mercury was obtained near the end of the Vedic age in India. This was celebrated in terms of the famous myth of Vishnu striding across the heavens in three steps. Once the planetary model was in place, the god s of the planets were transferred into the inner psychological world.