Deities
Surya
SOOR-yah
Also Known As Vivasvat (Sanskrit)
Hindu Deities
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
As the solar face of the Hindu pantheon, Surya embodies vitality, health, and the light of the soul. Surya is the chief solar deity of Hinduism, the visible god who rides across the sky in a chariot drawn by seven horses, the colors of light, driven by his charioteer Aruna, the dawn. He is counted among the Navagraha, the nine planetary deities, and is known by many names, among them Aditya, Ravi, Bhanu, and Mitra. Father of Yama the lord of death, of the twin Ashvins, of Manu, and, in the epic, of the hero Karna, he is greeted at sunrise with the Gayatri mantra and the sequence of salutations called Surya Namaskar. His great temple stands at Konark. Sacred to him are the lotus and the chariot, and he embodies the soul, vitality, and the will to shine.
Facts
Cult
Principal Cult CentreThe Sun Temple at Konark, and Modhera 1 Attributes and IconographyA lotus in each hand, wreathed in rays 1 Attributes and IconographyIn a chariot drawn by seven horses driven by Aruna 1 Worship and PracticeChhath Puja, observed largely in Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh and Nepal, centers on offerings made to the setting and rising sun over consecutive days, one of the few major Hindu festivals directed at a solar deity rather than at Vishnu, Shiva or the Goddess. 1 Practice
LineagePuranic genealogy names Surya a son of the sage Kashyapa and his wife Aditi, making him one of the twelve Adityas, and husband to Sanjna, the daughter of the divine craftsman Vishvakarma. 1 Function
Domain / Function Domain / Function Life
Associated RelicThe Sun Temple at Konark is built in the form of a colossal stone chariot, its many carved stone wheels doubling as sundials whose shadows can be read to tell the time of day, making the temple itself a monumental architectural rendering of Surya's chariot. 1 Position Profile
Key TextPuranic tradition holds that Surya's wife Sanjna, unable to bear his full brilliance, fled and left her shadow, Chhaya, to take her place, and that Surya's father in law Vishvakarma eventually shaved away one eighth of the sun god's radiance on a lathe to make him bearable, the shavings used to fashion the discus of Vishnu and the trident of Shiva. 3 Attributions
Mythic AssociationSurya crosses the sky in a chariot drawn by seven horses, driven by the charioteer Aruna, an image shared across Vedic and later Puranic depiction. 2 Attestation
Era of Attestation Veneration TodayActively venerated in a living tradition 1 HistoricityLegendary: known from narrative tradition, not the historical record 2 Origins
Origin of the NameSurya's name derives from a Sanskrit root meaning to shine, the same root underlying the language's general word for the sun, and Vedic hymns already address him under the closely related epithet Savitr when praising his role as the one who impels the world into motion at daybreak. 2 Learn More
The Visible God, Greeted Each Morning
Surya is the chief solar deity of Hinduism, the visible god, unlike deities known only through image and story, who rides across the sky in a chariot drawn by seven horses, the colours of light, driven by his charioteer Aruna, the dawn. He is one of the Navagraha, the nine planetary powers, and is known by many names, among them Aditya, Ravi, Bhanu and Mitra. His worship is a daily practice that continues in ordinary Hindu life: the Gayatri mantra, one of the most sacred of all Vedic verses, is a meditation on the light of the sun-god recited at dawn, and the sequence of postures called Surya Namaskar, the sun-salutation, greets him at sunrise.
Surya's other great surviving temple, at Modhera in Gujarat, was built in the eleventh century under the Chaulukya king Bhima I and combines a shrine hall with a vast rectangular stepped tank, the Surya Kund, lined with over a hundred small subsidiary shrines descending to the water; the main sanctuary is oriented so that, at the equinoxes, the rising sun's light was designed to fall directly on the central image of the god, an alignment that has drawn comparison with similar solar orientations built into temples and monuments in other sun-worshipping cultures worldwide, from Egypt to the Americas, as independent solutions to the same architectural ambition of making sunlight itself part of the ritual.
Konark, the Saura Tradition, and the Sun's Family
Surya was once the centre of a distinct devotional movement, the Saura tradition, one of the classical sects of Hinduism alongside the worshippers of Vishnu, Shiva, the Goddess and Ganesha; though the Sauras have largely faded as an independent sect, their greatest monument survives in the thirteenth-century Sun Temple at Konark in Odisha, built as a colossal stone chariot with twelve pairs of carved wheels and a team of horses, a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the masterpieces of Indian architecture. Surya's family threads through Hindu myth: he is the father of Yama, the lord of death, of the twin physician-gods the Ashvins, of Manu the ancestor of humankind, and, in the Mahabharata, of the tragic hero Karna. Sacred to him are the lotus and the chariot. This atlas sets him as the solar face of the Hindu pantheon, vitality, health and the light of the soul.
Puranic and inscriptional sources describe a distinct priestly lineage, the Maga Brahmins, said to have been invited from Sakadvipa, generally identified with Iranian lands touched by Zoroastrian sun-veneration, specifically to conduct Surya's worship in a manner different from ordinary Vedic ritual, wearing a sacred cord in a distinctive style and performing rites some scholars read as showing genuine Iranian influence on Indian solar cult. Whatever the full historical truth behind the tradition, it stands as a documented case of ancient Indian religion consciously acknowledging a foreign, Iranian contribution to the worship of its own sun-god.
In the Texts
Rig Veda 3.62.10 (the Gayatri)The Hymns of the Rigvedaprayer
May we attain that excellent glory of Savitar the God: So May he stimulate our prayers.
Savitar, the impeller, a solar deity identified with Surya.
The Hymns of the Rigveda. translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith.
About This Passage
Correspondences & Relations
Archetypes
Pantheons
Planetary Faces
Surya is the first of the nine grahas of Indian astrology and holds the rank the sun holds in the Hellenistic scheme. The weekday name Ravivara matches Latin dies Solis exactly, a trace of transmission in the early centuries CE.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Addressed By
Associated With
This source names Surya directly: "colossal stone chariot for the sun god Surya, its 24 wheels reading as the hours of the day and its seven horses as the days of the week."
The offerings are made standing in water to the rising and the setting sun.
This source names Surya directly: "as a colossal stone chariot for Surya, its 24 wheels symbolizing the hours and months, and the sculptural cycles on its jagamohana including figures read as the twelve Adityas."
This source names Surya directly: "group (a Saptami), presided over by Surya, the Sun."
The first day of the festival is a thanksgiving to the sun.
Fellow Aditya and solar deity in the Rigveda, though Pushan's pastoral, way-finding character is narrower than Surya's.
This source names Surya directly: "activity, and its presiding deity is Surya, the Sun; the day is linked to solar worship, as in Ratha Saptami."
This source names Surya directly: "Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant concluded sixteen days of hearings in the Sabarimala Reference and reserved its verdict on 14 May 2026, with no judgment delivered and no delivery..."
This source names Surya directly: "Wikipedia's article on Surya, describing his standard iconography of a chariot drawn by seven horses representing the colors of light and the days of the week, Aruna as his charioteer and Chhaya..."
This source names Surya directly: "Arts and Culture record for a standing Surya from the Konark Sun Temple, Eastern Ganga dynasty, Orissa, dated 1200 to 1300 CE, khondolite stone, held by the National Museum, New Delhi, accession..."
This source names Surya directly: "A documentation project on Surya iconography, including the Konark Sun Temple's sculptural programme, published by dsource.in under the National Institute of Design's digital learning environment..."
This source names Surya directly: "Eight figures survive, left to right: Surya the sun wearing a jeweled headdress and holding lotuses, Chandra the moon, Budha (Mercury), Shukra (Venus), Mangala (Mars), Brihaspati (Jupiter), Shani..."
This source names Surya directly: "present from left to right: the Sun (Surya), the Moon (Chandra or Soma), Mercury (Budha), Venus (Shukra), Mars (Mangala or Bhauma), Jupiter (Brihaspati), Saturn (Shani), and the demon Rahu, the..."
Child Of
Children
Karna, Figures Born to Kunti by Surya before her marriage.
Lord Yama's own description: "He is the son of Surya the Sun." Source already cited on the entity.
Shani, Deities Shani is the son of Surya, the Sun, and his shadow wife Chhaya, and his slow, testing transit is read as the working out of that solar inheritance.
Yamuna's own description: "daughter of the sun Surya." Source already cited on the entity.
Depicted In
Member Of
Surya is counted among the twelve in the later literature.
Passages on This
Savitar, the impeller, a solar deity identified with Surya.
Related To
Martanda, Deities Why this is disputed. The tenth book of the Rigveda names Martanda as the eighth child Aditi bore and then cast aside, and the hymn does not say plainly what became of him afterward. Later interpreters split on the reading: some take the account of his being brought forth for both birth and death to mean he is the ancestor of mortal humanity, the one being through whom death entered the human line, rather than a solar figure at all; others read the same passage as an early, oblique identification of Martanda with the sun, making him effectively an epithet or aspect of Surya rather than a separate deity standing beside him. Nothing in the hymn itself settles which reading its riddling language was meant to support.
Savitr, Deities Why this is disputed. Savitr and Surya are both solar figures in the Rigveda, and the two overlap closely enough that they are sometimes read as two aspects of one sun, Savitr as the impelling force that sets the sun moving and Surya as the shining orb itself. The Rigveda nonetheless hymns them in separate hymns with separate epithets, and Vedic scholarship has not settled whether this reflects two names for a single deity, two distinct deities that later blurred together, or two originally separate solar figures the tradition never fully reconciled.
Same Figure As
The graha Surya and the deity Surya are the same figure held in two registers, the Sun as a point in the chart and the Sun as an object of worship.
Worshipped In
Sources
1. Encyclopedia of Hinduism
Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.), Routledge, 2008Surya, KonarkView the Source 2. Vedic Mythology
Arthur Anthony Macdonell, Karl J. Trubner, Strassburg, 1897Vedic Mythology, p. 19, A.A. MacdonellQuote, Vedic Mythology, p. 19, A.A. Macdonell
The arms of the sun are simply his rays, and his eye is intended to represent his physical aspect
3. Vishnu Purana
Anonymous, Trubner & Co., 1864The Vishnu Purana, a System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition, tr. H.H. Wilson, on Vedic ritualQuote, The Vishnu Purana, a System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition, tr. H.H. Wilson, on Vedic ritual
The prevailing character of the ritual of the Vedas is the worship of the personified elements; of Agni or fire; Indra, the firmament; Vayu, the air; Varuna, the water; of Aditya, the sun; Soma, the moon.
The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India
Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton, Oxford University Press, 2014the hymns to SuryaView the Source Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. SuryaView the Source Essays About This Entity (1 essay)
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.