Surya
சூரியன் सूर्य
Also Aditya, Bhaskara, Savitr, Ravi, Suryanarayana, Mithra.
SmartaSaivaVaishnava
Who this is
Surya is the one deity in daily worship who is visibly present, and the Gayatri, the most said verse in the tradition, is addressed to his light. He is one of the nine grahas and the first of them, and at the same time a god in his own right with his own temples, which few of the grahas are. The Vedic layer worships him as the eye of the world and the giver of health; the puranic layer gives him a chariot of seven horses and a charioteer with no legs; the almanac layer makes him the clock the whole of this app runs on, since every month, year and sankranti here is his movement.
How to recognise them
Standing in a chariot drawn by seven horses, one for each colour, driven by Aruna who has no legs. Two hands, each holding a lotus. Unusually for an Indian image he wears boots, which is held to be a Persian borrowing from the Maga priests. At Konark the whole temple is the chariot, with twelve pairs of stone wheels and seven horses pulling it.
Family and companions
Son of Kasyapa and Aditi. Husband of Samjna and Chhaya. Father of Yama, Yami, the Ashvins, Shani and Karna, and the tradition notes that the god of light fathered both the judge of the dead and the slow planet. Aruna, the dawn, is his charioteer and the brother of Garuda.
How they are worshipped
Sunday; Ratha Saptami in Magha; every sankranti; the three sandhyas of each day.
Arghya, water poured from cupped hands towards the rising sun, is the daily rite, with the Gayatri said at the three junctions of the day. Sunday is his. Ratha Saptami is his birthday and the day the chariot turns north. Chhath in Bihar is the largest single observance given to him anywhere, offered to the setting sun first and the rising sun after.
The stories
As they are told, with the disagreements left in
The wife who could not bear the light
Samjna could not endure her husband’s heat and left her shadow, Chhaya, in her place, going away as a mare. Chhaya bore him children and favoured her own, and Yama, Samjna’s son, discovered the substitution. Surya went after his wife, and her father Vishvakarma put him on a lathe and ground away an eighth of his brilliance so that she could look at him. The parings were made into the discus of Vishnu, the trident of Siva and the spear of Murugan. The story is told to explain why three gods carry weapons made of sunlight.
Karna and the armour
Kunti, given a mantra that would call any god, tried it on the sun before she was married and bore Karna, who came into the world wearing armour and earrings that could not be pierced. She set him on the river. He grew up a charioteer’s son, was refused by teachers for his birth, and died in the war at his brother’s hand after Indra had begged the armour off him. The Mahabharata gives him the sun’s generosity and the sun’s inability to be looked at directly, and the tradition reads his whole life as what it costs to be given away.
Where the regions differ
- Tamil
- Kerala
- Telugu
- Kannada
- North
- Maharashtra
- Bengal
- Punjab
- Assam
- Sri Lanka
- Nepal
- Gujarat
- Odisha
- Mithila
- Kashmir
- Tulu Nadu
- manipur
- rajasthan
- konkani
- sindhi
- jharkhand
- himalayan
- kodava
- Tamil Nadu
- Pongal is the harvest given back to him, cooked in the open as the milk boils over at the sankramana hour, and Suryanar Koil is the one navagraha temple with him as the presiding deity.
- North India
- Chhath in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh is four days of fasting and standing in water, offered to the setting sun and then the rising one, and is kept chiefly by women.
- Odisha
- Konark is the chariot built in stone, and though worship ceased there centuries ago the Magha Saptami bathing at Chandrabhaga goes on.
- Andhra and Telangana
- Arasavalli is among the few Surya temples still in daily worship, built so the first rays reach the image twice a year, and Ratha Saptami is its great day.
- Gujarat
- Modhera keeps the stepwell and the hall aligned to the equinox sunrise, and Uttarayan is flown rather than fasted.
Their days
Every one of these has a page of its own
Where to see them
From the temple directory
- Suryanar Koil Aduthurai, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu
- Sri Suryanarayana Swamy Temple, Arasavalli Arasavalli, Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh
- Konark Sun Temple Konark, Puri, Odisha
- Sun Temple, Modhera Modhera, Mehsana, Gujarat
What is said
From the mantra library
In the almanac
Their graha