Surya temples
Every Surya temple in the directory, grouped by state.
A guide is written where we have one, and the temple is named where we do not. Bookable pujas appear where we have verified pandits in the temple's city.
Few sun temples survive, and almost none is in daily use as a sun temple. Konark in Odisha, built in the thirteenth century as a chariot with twenty-four wheels and seven horses, lost its sanctum image centuries ago. Modhera in Gujarat, with its stepped tank, holds no worship at all and is maintained as a monument.
Martand in Kashmir has stood ruined since the fifteenth century. What remains of the eighth-century plan — a colonnaded courtyard around a central shrine — is still the clearest surviving example of the type.
The exception is Bihar. The Dev Surya Mandir near Aurangabad and the sun shrines along the Ganga are in continuous use, and fill at Chhath, when the offering is made standing in water rather than inside a building. For Chhath the river is the temple, which is why the tradition survived where the architecture did not.
Every surviving sun temple is built to be struck by first light. Konark, Modhera and Martand are all aligned so that the sunrise reaches the sanctum on particular days, and at Modhera the equinox sun falls directly on the plinth where the image stood. Surya also appears where he is not the presiding deity: he holds a corner in the panchayatana arrangement of five, and a navagraha shrine in almost any large temple places him at the centre with the eight others around him.
Temple collections
Surya
