Surya

Deity

Surya · सूर्य

Surya is one of the few deities worshipped without an image in most households: the offering is arghya, water poured from cupped hands toward the disc at sunrise, and the sun itself is the object of it.

Chhath, kept over four days in Kartik, is the largest rite addressed to him and the only major Indian festival offered to a setting sun before a rising one. Devotees stand in water at dusk to give arghya to the sun going down, return before dawn for the sun coming up, and keep a fast without water between the two. Chhathi Maiya, his sister in the folk tradition, is invoked alongside him.

Makar Sankranti marks his turn north, the only major festival fixed to the solar calendar rather than the lunar one, which is why it falls on roughly the same date each January while everything else moves. Ratha Saptami, in Magha, marks his chariot turning; the chariot has one wheel and seven horses, for the days and the colours.

The Konark temple in Odisha is built as that chariot — twenty-four carved wheels and seven horses at the front — and is the best known Surya shrine in India, though the sanctum has been empty for centuries.

The Gayatri, the verse recited at dawn by anyone who keeps the sandhya, is addressed to Savitr, the sun as the one who impels. It is the oldest continuous daily observance in the tradition and is said facing east, which is why a house is often planned with that direction free.

Surya Namaskar takes the same address into the body: twelve positions in sequence, one for each name of the sun and each solar month, done facing the sunrise. The Aditya Hridayam, the hymn Agastya is said to have taught Rama before the last day of the war in Lanka, is the other text kept for him.