Vāsudeva’s Praise of Sūrya

Vāsudeva Kṛta Sūrya Stuti, “the praise of Sūrya by Vāsudeva”

Vāsudeva’s Praise of Sūrya is the teaching in which Śrī Kṛshṇa tells his son Sāmba that Bhagavān Sūrya, the eye of the world, is the pratyaksha devatā, the devatā seen directly, and praises him with a string of epithets. It is prose, not a verse stotra. Sumantu Muni tells it to King Śatānīka in the Brahma Parva of the Bhavishya Purāṇa.

The setting

Sāmba bowed to Vāsudeva, the Jagadguru, and asked how a living being is born, how it may be free of sorrow, how desires bear fruit, how svarga is attained, and how moksha from which there is no return is reached. Seeing the sorrow of the world, he said, he felt nirveda, and asked for the way out of pain of mind and body. Śrī Kṛshṇa answered that the grace of the devatā is the best of all means. Not all devatās are seen directly; thousands are known only through anumāna (inference) and āgama (scripture). Sāmba asked: “First tell me of the devatās visible to sight.”

The praise

Vāsudeva taught that Sūrya is the pratyaksha devatā, and there is no devatā greater or more eternal. He named him, in order:

  • Jagaccakshu, the eye of the world
  • Divākara, maker of the day; from him this world is born and in him it dissolves, and time itself, with the yugas, is Divākara in person
  • the cause of the grahas, nakshatras, yogas, karaṇas and rāśis, of the Ādityas, Vasus, Rudras, Aśvins, Vāyus, Agni, Indra and Brahmā, of all the lokas, mountains, trees, rivers and oceans, and of all living beings; by his will the world was born, stands and moves, and with his rising it rises
  • Paramātmā, as all the Vedas sing him
  • Antarātmā, as the itihāsas and purāṇas praise him
  • Bāhyātmā, abiding in the sushumṇā and in waking, dream and deep sleep
  • Guṇākara, mine of virtues, for not even the Vedas could tell him in full in hundreds of years
  • Sarveśvara, Īśvara of all
  • Sarvakartā, maker of all
  • Sarvabhartā, sustainer of all
  • Avyaya, the undecaying

Twice he said: “Do you know why I tell you this? There is no one greater than he. There has not been; there will not be.”

The teaching and the phala

One who makes Sūrya in the form of a maṇḍala and worships him at the three times attains the highest state; what then of one who worships the Deva present as the disc in the sky? He who sees that the Paramātmā in the Sūrya-maṇḍala is also established in the body is the one who truly sees. Vāsudeva told Sāmba to worship the Sūrya within with mantras, or a Sūrya mūrti, or by the kavaca, to end the sorrows of this world and gain bhukti and mukti.

For those who take refuge in Bhagavān Sūrya, sorrows of body, of beings and of the devas never arise; they have no fear of any kind, and the joys of this world and the next come to them without break.

Source: Bhavishya Purāṇa, Brahma Parva, Chapter 48

Sources

  • Bhavishya Purāṇa, Brahma Parva, Chapter 48