Surya

Surya (Sanskrit: सूर्य, Sūrya) is the Sun and the visible god of Hinduism, the one deity whom every worshipper can see with their own eyes rising each morning. He is the source of light, life, warmth, health and time itself, called the eye of the gods, and he is the chief of the Navagraha, the nine celestial powers. As the foremost of the Adityas, the solar children of the goddess Aditi, he is worshipped as Aditya, and the ancient sun-worshipping stream of Hindu devotion that grew around him is called Saura.

Surya crosses the heavens in a blazing chariot drawn by seven horses and driven by his charioteer Aruna, the red glow of dawn. To him is addressed the Gayatri mantra, the most sacred verse of the Vedas; by his course the day and the year are measured; and to him warriors turned for strength, as Rama did before his final battle in Lanka, when the sage Agastya taught him the hymn Aditya Hridayam recorded in the Ramayana.

The many names of Surya

Surya is praised under a wealth of names, each catching a different face of the Sun:

• Aditya, son of Adity, the chief of the twelve solar Adityas, one for each month.
• Ravi and Bhaskara, the light-maker, from whom Sunday takes its name (Ravivar).
• Savitr, the impeller, the Sun as the power that rouses all life, to whom the Gayatri is addressed.
• Mitra, the friend, the kindly Sun who sustains all beings.
• Divakara and Dinkar, the maker of the day.
• Martanda, the one born of a lifeless egg, a Vedic name for the Sun.
• Vivasvan, the shining one, father of Manu and Yama; Pushan, the nourisher; and Arka, the ray.

Surya in the Vedas

Surya is one of the oldest gods of the Rigveda, where whole hymns (such as 1.50 and 1.115) greet the Sun as he rises, scattering darkness, disease and evil dreams. He is called the eye of Mitra, Varuna and Agni, the one who sees all that living beings do. The most famous of all Vedic verses, the Gayatri mantra (Rigveda 3.62.10), is a prayer to the radiance of Savitr, the Sun, asking that he inspire the mind. The Sun is at once a visible disc and the inner light of consciousness, and later texts such as the Surya Upanishad make this identity explicit.

The chariot of the Sun

The defining image of Surya is his chariot. It is drawn by seven horses, understood as the seven colours of light, the seven notes, the seven metres of Vedic verse or the seven days of the week, and it rolls on a single wheel, the samvatsara or year, with its spokes as the seasons and months. The reins are held by Aruna, the dawn, an elder brother of Vishnu’s eagle Garuda, born without legs and seated before Surya to shield the worlds from the full force of his heat. The great wheel of the law of time, the Kalachakra, is carved most gloriously at the Sun temple of Konark, which is built in the shape of Surya’s chariot.

The family of Surya

Surya is the son of the sage Kashyapa and the goddess Aditi. His first wife is Sanjna (also called Saranyu), the daughter of the divine architect Vishwakarma. Their children are Vaivasvata Manu, the ancestor of the present human race; Yama, the lord of death; and the river goddess Yamuna. Surya is also the father of the twin physicians of the gods, the Ashvini Kumaras. By his shadow-wife Chhaya he is father of Shani (the planet Saturn), of Tapati and of Savarni Manu. In the epics he gives two more famous sons to the world: Karna, born to Kunti and the great tragic hero of the Mahabharata, and Sugriva, the vanara king who helped Rama.

Why the Sun’s brilliance was trimmed

A beloved Puranic story explains the Sun’s family and even the weapons of the gods. Unable to bear Surya’s unending heat and glare, Sanjna leaves in her place her shadow, Chhaya, and goes away to perform penance in the form of a mare. When Surya discovers the exchange, he follows her as a horse, and from that meeting the Ashvini twins are born. To make Surya bearable, his father-in-law Vishwakarma mounts the Sun on a lathe and trims away an eighth of his blazing radiance. From those shining filings, tradition says, were forged the discus Sudarshana of Vishnu, the trident of Shiva, the lance of Kartikeya and the weapons of the other gods.

What does Surya look like?

Surya is shown as a radiant, red-gold figure, young and crowned, usually with two hands each holding a full-blown lotus, standing or seated on his chariot of seven horses with a great halo of rays behind him. Uniquely among Hindu deities he is often depicted wearing high boots, a feature scholars trace to the Central Asian and Iranian sun-worship that enriched his cult; the Brihat Samhita even instructs that his lower legs should not be shown bare. The colossal images of the Konark temple, carved in the thirteenth century, remain the grandest depiction of the Sun god in stone.

Surya and the nine planets

In Hindu astrology Surya is the king and chief of the Navagraha, the nine grahas, and the father of one of them, the stern Shani. He governs the soul, the self, vitality, the father, authority and health; his day is Sunday, his gem the ruby (manikya), his direction the east, and his metal gold. Those who feel his influence is weak worship him for confidence, recovery from illness and the blessing of a strong constitution.

How is Surya worshipped?

Surya is the most directly worshipped of all gods, because he is always visible. His worship includes the Arghya, the offering of water to the rising Sun from cupped hands; the twelve postures of Surya Namaskar, the salutation to the Sun; the daily recitation of the Gayatri and the mantra Om Suryaya Namah; and the Aditya Hridayam, the hymn to the Sun’s heart from the Ramayana. His great festivals, gathered on the dedicated Chhath Puja and Surya worship page, include Chhath, Ratha Saptami, Makar Sankranti and Samba Dashami. Sunday is kept as his fast, when devotees take one meal, wear red and offer red flowers, wheat and jaggery.

Temples of the Sun

The Sun has been honoured with some of India’s most magnificent temples: the Konark Sun Temple in Odisha, a UNESCO World Heritage site shaped as his chariot; the Modhera Sun Temple in Gujarat; the ruined Martand temple in Kashmir; the Dakshinaarka at Gaya; Suryanar Koil in Tamil Nadu, the only temple to all nine grahas led by Surya; Katarmal in Uttarakhand; and Arasavalli in Andhra Pradesh, where worship is said to be unbroken for over a thousand years.

Surya across the world

Because the Sun shines on everyone, Surya is among the most universal of gods. The Vedic Mitra is kin to the Persian Mithra and the later Roman Mithras; the sun-disc is honoured from Egypt to Japan. Within India the Saura sect once rivalled the worship of Vishnu and Shiva, and though it has faded as a separate path, the Sun remains present in every household that greets the dawn with folded hands, and in the Gayatri repeated by millions each morning.