Sun-worship still prevails ever7where through out Orissa. The sun-temple at hanarak, nineteen miles N.W. of Jaganath or Juggurnath, looks down upon the sea. Sculptures in high relief, but of an indecent character, cover the exterior walls, and bear witness to an age when Hindu artists worked from nature. The nymphs are beautifully-shaped women in voluptuous attitudes. Each architrave has as usual the Nava-Gralia, or nine Bmhinanical planets, very finely sculptured in alto-relievo. Five of them are well-proportioned men with mild and pleasing countenances, crowned with high-pointed caps, and seated cross-legged on the lotus, engaged in religious meditation. The forin of the planet which presides over Thursday (Vrihaspati or Jupiter) is distinguished from the others by a flowing majestic beard. Friday or Venus is a youthful woman, with a plump, well rounded figure. Ketu, the descending node, is a Triton, whose body ends in the tail of a fish or dragon ; and Rahn, or tho ascending node, a monster, all head and shoulders, with a grinning, grotesque countenance, frizzly hair, dressed like a full-blown wig, and one immense canine tooth projecting from the upper jaw. In one hand he holds a hatchet, and in the other a fragment of the moon. At Jeypore, also in °Hasa, is a figure on the wall of a temple of the sun-god, with his seven-horse chariot, and a colony of sun-worship pers continues to keep alive the sacred fire in a neighbouring grove. Throughout India, the
stricter Vaishnava sectarians refrain from animal food on the first day of the week, which bears the nanie of Sunday, Rabi-var or Ravi-var. South of Orissa, sun-worshippers are a class of Brahmans. The highlanders on the N.W. of Orissa will not break their fast till they catch a clear view of the sun, and sun-worship still continues amongst wild races of the central plateau of India. The earn estness with which Surya is worshipped well shown in the Suriyanamaskara Patikam, a Tamil song, which, after an invocation of Ganesa, begins with, 0 thou god, Suriya Namyana, thou art Siva, thou appearest in the vast expanse of the sky with brilliant light ; thou art the li,ght of true wisdom ; thou art tho only deity that filleth the whole universe • thou art the true teacher, that teacheth the five-lettered mantra (namasivaya), the myster ious doctrines • thou assumest bodily shape, thou art the soul of' the whole universe, thou hast from the beginning appeared in the shape of this world and the thousand and eight worlds beyond the mundane sphere ; and thou ridest every day in a most brilliant single-wheeled chariot.' — Tod's Rajasthan; Tennent's Christianity in Ceylon, p. 20G ;" Cole. Ilind.; Moor p. 253 ; Hindu Infanticide, p. 175 ; Cal. Rev. 1868 ; Central India, p. 193. See'Sun-Worship.