A source of amazement, bewilderment and power, the Sun has always been a part of our conscious and subconscious mind. From science and astronomy, religion to art and dance, it has played an important role in human civilisation.
EUROPE
The Greeks honoured Helios, who was similar to Ra, the Egyptian Sun God, in many aspects. Homer describes Helios as “giving light both to gods and men.” The cult of Helios celebrated each year with an impressive ritual that involved a giant chariot pulled by horses off the end of a cliff and into the sea.
The Stonehenge (in picture) in the UK, which is an ancient stone circle with a spiritual history, reflects the same. The stones at Stonehenge show an alignment to the appearance of the Sun on the horizon at the summer and winter solstices when looking from the centre of the site over the tip of the Heel stone with its top just at the height of the horizon. At that time, five to six thousand years ago, the knowledge of the solar cycle and calendar would have been used by social leaders as a source of power and wealth, particularly if they could direct the masses on when to sow and when to harvest.
THE AMERICAS
In many Native American cultures, such as the Iroquois and Plains, the Sun was recognised as a life-giving force. Many tribes still perform a Sun dance (in picture) every year. In Meso-American cultures, the Sun was associated with kingship. Tribes with Sun clans include the Mohave, Caddo, Navajo, Hopi, Zuni and other Pueblo tribes. The Sun is an important clan crest on the Northwest Coast and can often be found carved on totem poles.
The ancient cultures of the Aztecs and Mayas also relied heavily on the worship of celestial bodies, and developed quite complex calendars. Their temples such as the famous Machu Picchu site in Peru were also associated with an Incan religious cult dedicated to the Sun. The site has several stones used as guide posts known as Intihuatana (hitching post of the Sun) which were used by the Incans to mark the winter solstice, the Incan festival of Inti Raymi. Some commentators describe this ancient festival as one observed to tie the Sun to prevent it swinging further north resulting in even shorter days.
PERSIA, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA
The Egyptians honoured Ra (in picture left), the Sun God. It was power and energy, light and warmth. It was what made the crops grow each season. The cult of Ra had immense power. He was the God of the Sun, the bringer of light, and patron to the pharaohs. According to legend, the Sun travels the skies as Ra drives his chariot through the heavens. As part of the cult of Mithra, early Persian societies celebrated the rising of the Sun each day. The legend of Mithra may well have given birth to the Christian resurrection story. Honouring the Sun was an integral part of ritual and ceremony in Mithraism, at least as far as scholars have been able to determine. One of the highest ranks one could achieve in a Mithraic temple was that of Heliodromus, or Sun-carrier. Sun worship has also been found in Babylonian texts and in a number of Asian religious cults. Today, many Pagans honour the Sun at Midsummer, and it continues to shine its fiery energy upon us.
INDIA AND ASIA
Surya is glorified in the Vedas of ancient India as an all-seeing god who observes both good and evil actions. In eastern India’s Odisha, there is the Konark Sun Temple (in picture), a 13th-century Hindu temple dedicated to the Sun God. The name Konark derives from the combination of the Sanskrit words kona (corner or angle) and ark (the Sun). Sun heroes and Sun kings also occupy a central position in Indian mythology, where Vivasvant, the father of Yama, corresponds to the Iranian Vivahvant, the father of Yima. In medieval Iran, Sun festivals were celebrated as a heritage from pre-Islamic times. The Indo-European character of Sun worship is also seen in the conception of the solar deity, drawn in his carriage, generally by four white horses, common to many Indo-European peoples, and recurring in Indo-Iranian, Greco-Roman, and Scandinavian mythology.
The Sun God occupied a central position in both Sumerian and Akkadian religion, but neither the Sumerian Utu nor the Semitic Shamash was included among the three highest gods of the pantheon. The Sun was one of the most popular deities, however, among the Indo-European peoples and was a symbol of divine power to them.
If I had to choose a religion, the Sun as the universal giver of life would be my god
Napoleon Bonaparte
Sunshine is my quest
Winston Churchill
WONDERS!!
The Sun is one of about 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's 70 sextillion) stars in the universe. Even though most are too faint to see, there are more stars out there in space than there are grains of sand on the Earth.
The Sun is in fact a star, and the stars in the night sky are all Suns in their own right. Each of these billions of stars could in fact have their own planetary systems.
The Sun is a gigantic ball of hot gas — so large that about one million Earths could fit inside it.
The super hot centre of the Sun blazes at 18 million degrees Fahrenheit (15.7 million degrees Celsius) — more than 40 thousand times as hot as boiling water. The surface of the Sun — the part we can see — is a relatively cool 9,900 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 degrees Celsius) — more than 15 times as hot as boiling water.
The Sun seems small when we look at it because it is 150 million km (93 million miles) from Earth. If you could somehow fly an airplane to the Sun, it would take 26 years. Even superfast particles of light take eight minutes and 19 seconds to get from the Sun to the Earth.
You’d need to explode 100 billion tonnes of dynamite every second to match the energy produced by the Sun.
Nicolaus Copernicus published his Sun-centred (heliocentric) model of the solar system in 1543. However, it was not until the 1700s that the idea of a Sun-centred system became widely accepted.
SUN FACTS
• Each day, the Sun causes about one trillion tonnes of water to evaporate.
• The Earth radiates back into space as much heat as it receives from the Sun.
• Astronomers once believed a planet named Vulcan existed between Mercury and the Sun.
• If you were standing on Mercury, the Sun would appear 2.5 times larger than it appears from Earth.
• By weight, the Sun is 70% hydrogen, 28% helium, 1.5% carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, and 0.5% all other elements.
• In 1890, there was no sunshine for the whole month of December in Westminster in London.
• Panama, because of a bend in the isthmus, is the only place in the world where one can see the Sun rise on the Pacific Ocean and set on the Atlantic.
• The surface of Venus is actually hotter than Mercury’s, despite being nearly twice as far from the Sun.
• It takes approximately 12 years for Jupiter to orbit the sun.
• oneybees navigate using the Sun as a compass, even when it is hidden behind clouds.
• Only 5% of the stars in our galaxy are larger than the Sun.
• The Sun contains 99.8% of the total mass of the solar system.
• The Sun is approximately 149 million kilometres from the Earth.
• The Sun is flattened at the top and the bottom.
• A galaxy of typical size of about 100 billion Suns produces less energy than
a single quasar.
• A white dwarf has mass equal to that of the Sun, but diameter only about that of Earth.
• All the coal, oil, gas, and wood on Earth would only keep the Sun burning for a few days.
CELEBRATION OF VALUES
The Telegraph spoke to prominent Patna residents on their connection with Chhath and what the state’s biggest festival means to them
