Vishnu Purana recounts how Tara, consort of Brihaspathi (Jupiter) left him to have a tryst with Chandra. Their tryst caused uproar and war with Sun (Rudra) & Jupiter (Brihaspati) on one side, and Venus (Usanas), Tara and Earth (Moon) on the other, with the struggle ending on Brahma’s command. Chandra-Tara union gave birth to a radiant Budhan (Mercury) (see highlights of the text in the pictures that follow).
What do we make of this — a silly myth, or does it encode some wisdom in the metaphor of stories?
In the early 1800s, Bentley maintained that it was a conjunction of Mercury, Rohini & Moon that gave rise to this story, around 1424 BCE. But astronomical phenomena in the Puranas have antiquity far greater than 1400 BCE.
We examine an explanation from the latest theories on Mercury’s formation.
Did the planets accrete and form in their present positions? With the arrival of the NASA spacecraft Messenger in Mercury in 2011 and obtaining new data, old theories of Mercury’s formation have been overturned.
Did you know that Mercury has a tail (like a comet) composed of Sodium ions (see pic). Solar radiation strips the Sodium from the crust forming a 24 (15) million km (miles) long tail.
Messenger additionally picked up several volatile elements such as Sulphur and Potassium in concentrations that should not exist in Mercury’s crust, if it had formed in place about 4.5 billion years ago, 58 (36) million km (miles) from the Sun.
Astrophysicist Anjali Tripathi remarks in a NOVA program (https://www.pbs.org/.../nova/video/the-planets-inner-worlds/) that these volatiles should have evaporated before Mercury’s crust hardened, and the fact that it did not is an indicator that Mercury formed far from the Sun — about 161 (100) million km (miles) away.
This puts Mercury’s accretion-birth between Earth and Mars!
The newest theory is that a proto-planetoid (was this Tara, in the gravitational attraction of Jupiter/Brihaspati and was ejected in early solar system turmoil?) grazed past Mercury (Budhan) stripping away most of its rocky crust, and merged with Venus (Usanas). Mercury was hurled towards the Sun, but settled into an elongated orbit, preventing its fiery death by Rudra, preserving its volatiles in its crust. It must have glowed in radiance, more than any other planet, till it cooled sufficiently.
It is astounding that the sequence described in the Purana story matches this theory:
* The abandonment of Brihaspati by Tara — a proto-planet leaving its gravitational clutches?
* Tryst with Moon could be an embellishment or a lunar occultation of this object.
* Collision with Earth-proximity Mercury and ensuing orbital disturbances would have been gravitational dynamical play of Sun (Rudra) on one side (Brihaspati is ineffective in his pleadings with Chandra & Tara) and Venus, Earth (proxy: Moon), Tara & Mercury on the other.
* Tara merged with Venus, Earth was shaken to the core, and radiant Mercury settled in a new orbit, revealed to the divinities.
* Brahma’s command for cessation of hostilities is the damping of orbital disturbances in the new gravitational relationships.
Of course, healthy skepticism should ask could this be a coincidental reading of the story, or did the Rishis have contemplative insight, embedding wisdom in stories?
As I remark in my talks, when the number of coincidences keep rising, the probability of being coincidences go to zero, while the probability that these are deliberate encoded wisdom goes up.
Finally, it is interesting that the Romans too have a similar story of birth of Mercury via an illegitimate liaison between Jupiter and a minor goddess, showing percolation of ideas across civilizations, from India.