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| SURYA RIDING HIS CHARIOT |
CHHANDOGYA Upanishad says that at the time of creation the world's egg
divided itself into two parts, the one of silver and the other of gold. The silver
part became the earth, the golden part the sky .The outer cover of the egg became
the mountains; the inner cover the clouds and snow; the inside veins became the
rivers and the liquid in the egg became the ocean. When the sun appeared there
was a great cry from which all the beings and all their pleasures were born.
Hence at his rising and setting, cries and songs are heard; all beings and desires
rise toward it. Those who worship the sun as the Absolute ever hear beautiful
sounds and are filled with joy.
The well-known horses of SURYA are mentioned in Rig Veda, which says, "May
SURYA with its seven horses arrive". The sun sits on a lotus in his chariot
of seven golden mares. Sometimes the chariot has only one horse with seven heads
surrounded with rays. Surya's charioteer is ARUNA (the red one), who is the wise
elder brother of GARUDAA, the vehicle of VISHNU, and is also the deity of dawn.
He stands on the chariot in front of the Sun, and his strong and vast body shelters
the world from Surya's fury.
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| SURYA WITH ARUNA -
THE CHARIOTEER |
Procreator (SAVITAR), Lord-of-the-Day (AHARPATI), Eye-of-the-World (JAGAT CHAKSHU),
Witness-of Deeds (KARMA SAKSHIN) or Lord-of-Seven Horses (SAPTASHVA) is the various
names by which SURYA is worshipped.
Though small images or visual representations of this god can be seen in bit
temples of other gods, SURYA has only one full-fledged temple dedicated to it.
It is the famous temple of Sun god at KONARK in Orissa. The structural peculiarity
of this shrine is that it is built mainly of blocks of laterite without the use
of mortar. The blocks are all held together by a system of poise and balance
- a masterpiece of the science of architecture. In this temple the weight of
one stone acts against the pressure of another, much of the stability being a
matter of balance and equilibrium. The temple was built in the thirteenth century
A.D. but seems to have been later abandoned for some unknown reasons. |
