Most people today know the sun salutation from āsana practice. It is a set of postures, a way of greeting the sun with the body.
In the Veda the salutation to the sun takes another form. It is mantric. It is offered in sound. Here the ṛṣis recognise the sun and acknowledge its importance. They name it the highest light and the highest truth. The visible sun is the face of a light that holds up everything.
This salutation is ancient. It was spoken aloud and carried from voice to voice long before it was written down.
A mantra always works on two levels. There is the outer sun, the solar orb that rises each morning and gives light, warmth and life. There is also the inner sun, the light of awareness within us. The ṛṣis address both at once. When they greet the rising sun, they also call to the light inside, the one that wakes us from darkness and turns us toward truth. The outer salutation and the inner one are the same act.
Here are some of the prayers that are verbal sun salutations.
The Gāyatrī
The best known of them is the Gāyatrī. It is addressed to Savitṛ, the sun as the power that sets all things in motion.
tat savitur vareṇyaṃ bhargo devasya dhīmahi dhiyo yo naḥ pracodayāt
We meditate on the radiant light of Savitṛ. We ask that light to move our thoughts. On the outer level it is the sun that drives the day. On the inner level it is the light that drives the mind. The prayer asks the sun to think in us.
The Gāyatrī is not separate from the larger sun-worship. It sits inside the Aruṇa praśnaḥ, the text we turn to next.
The Aruṇa praśnaḥ
In our tradition the sun salutation has a text of its own. It is the Aruṇa praśnaḥ. It opens the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka, and the tradition names it plainly: the Sūryopāsana, the mantras of Sūrya namaskāra.
It is long, running to a hundred and thirty-two anuvākas. Aruṇa is the sun at first light, the red of dawn. The verses are called roganivāraṇa mantras, the mantras that remove disease. They ask the sun and the waters to carry sickness away and to protect every creature.
The praśnaḥ speaks of the Ādityas, the sons of Aditi.
It holds one image worth keeping. The night carries Āditya in her womb. Night is the womb, and the rays of the sun lie hidden in her until dawn.
The praśnaḥ gathers older prayers into itself. The Gāyatrī sits within it, as we have seen. So does the verse that opens the Soura Sūktam, the prayer we turn to next.
The Soura Sūktam
Before the hymn, one more prayer belongs here. The Soura Sūktam is a prayer for sight. It asks that our eyes be healed, so that we can see clearly. It asks that we see the world whole and in all its detail.
It greets the rising sun as the face of the gods. That sun is the eye of Mitra, Varuṇa and Agni. This verse sits within the Aruṇa praśnaḥ too. On the outer level it is a prayer for healthy eyes. On the inner level it is a prayer for true vision, for the sight that sees things as they are.
Ṛgveda 1.50
Apart from the Aruṇa praśnaḥ, the Ṛgveda has its own hymn to Sūrya. It is the fiftieth hymn of the first maṇḍala. Its seer is Praskaṇva. It begins with the rising sun and moves, verse by verse, from the outer light to the inner one.
One verse looks past the physical orb of the sun to the light behind it.
ud vayaṃ tamasas pari jyotiṣ paśyanta uttaram |
devaṃ devatrā sūryam aganma jyotir uttamam
The seer sees a light above the darkness. He comes to the highest light of all. This verse matters. It appears again in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad. It is still chanted in the daily sandhyā, in every branch of the Veda. The light here is not the morning sun after the night. It is the light of the supreme.
The hymn is also a prayer for health. Sūrya is asked to take away the malady of the heart and the pallor it leaves on the body.
hṛdrogaṃ mama sūrya harimāṇaṃ ca nāśaya
On the outer level this is a prayer against bodily sickness, against the yellow pallor of illness. The seer even asks that the yellowness be carried off into the bright birds and the yellow trees, where the colour belongs. On the inner level it is a prayer for the heart. The word is hṛd-roga, the disease of the heart. The hymn we study, the Āditya Hṛdayam, is the heart, hṛdaya, of the sun. To ask the sun to heal the heart is the same prayer, made a thousand years apart.
The hymn ends with surrender.
udagād ayam ādityaḥ viśvena sahasā saha dviṣantaṃ mama randhayan mo ahaṃ dviṣato radham
Āditya rises with all his might and undoes what stands against the seer. The seer himself does not strike. The whole struggle is handed to the sun. Commentators see in this the seed of complete surrender, śaraṇāgati, and a deep understanding of the sun.
The Āditya Hṛdayam
The Āditya Hṛdayam brings the whole tradition to a single moment. It is given in the Yuddha Kāṇḍa of the Rāmāyaṇa. Rāma stands on the battlefield, worn out, facing Rāvaṇa. The sage Agastya comes to him and gives him this hymn to the sun.
The remedy is not a new weapon. It is a turning toward the sun. Rāma greets the light that holds up everything. His fear lifts. His sorrow lifts. The karmic burdens pressing on his mind are loosened. Clarity returns, and with it strength.
This is the same salutation the Veda began. The outer sun gives Rāma the strength of the day. The inner sun clears his heart and his sight. He bows to the light, and the light answers.
This hymn stands in the ṛṣi tradition of sun salutation. Even though we do not stand where Rāma stood, we understand what our own difficulties and obstacles can do to our spirit. The tradition gives us an anchor for those times, to regain our steadiness. This is the hymn we study together, verse by verse, in the Āditya Hṛdayam course.