I just read somewhere that in the pre-Buddhist folk religion (the Nat Cult) in Burma, people believed that there were eight planets. Is it possible that they knew of Uranus? I wonder if this has been explored somewhere, but couldn't find any good information.

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As above, so below

They might since Uranus is visible to the naked eye.

According to this website the Moon is the eighth planet in Burmese astrology...?

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That makes sense in a way. But that doesn't solve the problem. Because (in arbitrary order) ancient people tended to recognize the following planets (in the loose sense of objects that move in comparison to the fixed stars, so that the sun and moon end up being planets):

1. sun
2. moon
3. mercury
4. venus
5. mars
6. jupiter
7. saturn

So what is the eighth? The possibilities are (1) that the Burmans saw the earth as a planet. This is something that seems unusual among ancient civilizations. Not necessarily because they didn't understand the earth as being similar, but that since we live on it, the earth doesn't move in the sky. Hence, there is no need to track it as an astronomical object. Then, possibility (2) is that there was something else, other than the 7 listed above, that the Burmans saw as a planet. What could it have been? Uranus is the only obvious candidate.

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As above, so below

Though I think it's definitely possible, for my part I doubt that any ancients would notice a sixth-magnitude object with only a third of the sidereal motion of Saturn. Unfortunately, what we don't know about ancient astronomy is so much greater than what we do that there may never be an answer to such pre-telescopic questions.

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"Call me old-fashioned, but I think fire is magic. And it scares me a lot."

--The State

According to a book about stellar myths by astronomer Peter Nilson*, ancient Indian astronomers considered the lunar nodes (ie. the points where the Moon's path cross the ecliptic) as "planets". While they're of course imaginary and invisible, they do behave planet-like in that they circle the ecliptic in 18 and a bit years. May the Burmese have had the same idea?

(FWIW, the WP article says they're important in Vedic astrology, but doesn't say anything about being considered "planets".)


* Himlavalvets sällsamheter, ISBN 91 29 61697 2. I have no idea wether it was ever translated into English.

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What did they think of the occasional comet? Did the culture last long enough to ever see two comets at once, or, if they did, might they lump them as one because of appearance? Was their math good enough to recoginze two separate comets as being different?

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According to this webpage, the earliest references to Rahu (which became the Burmese invisible 8th planet) were in Indian texts where he is an invisible planet that eclipses the Sun. OK, I can see that--early on, it might not be obvious that the moon was responsible for a solar eclipse. Later, the Indian astronomers borrowed the name for one of the nodes of the moon, after they'd figured things out, but the Burmese apparently stayed with the invisible planet Rahu idea.

I have seen evidence that the pre European Maori had Venus as two objects. When in the west as the evening star and as a completely separate object months later as a morning object. This could be the same for the Burmese... ask them.

When I read the original post I immediately came up with several possibilities,
but one by one you've coverd them all, with Mark bringing up the most likely:
the Morning Star and Evening Star being different planets.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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"The other planets?
Well, they just happen to be there, but the point of rockets is to explore them!"
-- Kai Yeves

Re astromark: I do believe you're right; the Greeks had a similar belief concerning Venus, IIRC.

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"Call me old-fashioned, but I think fire is magic. And it scares me a lot."

--The State

It appears that the Burmese call the eighth planet Rahu. The invisible planet that causes eclipses, borrowed from early Indian astronomical thought.