a glimpse of Kr:s:n:a playing his flute Mural ̄ı and shares her
vision with a friend, likening her mind and eyes to two birds:
the cha ̄tak, which survives on raindrops, and the chakor,
which lives on moonbeams:
Look, friend: look what a mass of delight—
For my cha ̄tak-bird mind, a cloud dark with love;
a moon for my chakor-bird eyes.
His earrings coil in the hollows of his neck,
gladdening his tender cheeks,
As crocodiles might play on a nectar pond
and make the moonlight shudder in their wake.
A wealth of elixir, his mouth and lips,
and little Mural ̄ı perched in his hands
Seems to be filling that pair of lotus vessels
with still more of that immortal liquid.
His deep-toned body, sheathed in brilliant silk,
glitters with a garland of basil leaves
As if a coalition of lightning and cloud
had been ringed by parrots in flight.
Thick locks of hair; a lovely, easy laugh;
eyebrows arched to a curve—
To gaze upon the splendor of the Lord of Su ̄r
is to make one’s wishes lame.
(Hawley and Bryant), Su ̄r’s Ocean, §41
The Su ̄rsa ̄gar is a work of remarkable range, yet it is im-
portant to keep in mind that, at least until the eighteenth
century, it was composed entirely of independent lyrics such
as the one above, most of them quite short and all of them
intended to be sung. The poet’s task was not to retell a sus-
tained narrative but to allow his audiences to experience fa-
miliar episodes in a fresh way, either by introducing some
novel vignette or perspective, by phrasing his poems as puz-
zles, by assembling metaphors and allusions in new ways, or
by seducing his listeners into a langorous lethargy from
which he could then awake them. The hagiographer
Na ̄bha ̄da ̄s, writing early in the seventeenth century, summed
up the views of many subsequent listeners, performers, and
critics when he observed that what set Su ̄ rda ̄s apart was his
status as a poet’s poet: “What poet, hearing the poems Su ̄r
has made, will not nod his head?”
SEE ALSO Bhakti; Hindi Religious Traditions; Kr:s:n:a; Poet-
ry, article on Indian Religious Poetry; Vais:n:avism, article on
Bha ̄gavatas.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
For a brief overview of the traditional understandings of Su ̄ rda ̄s
and his relationship to the Vallabhite sect, see S. M. Pandey
and Norman Zide’s “Su ̄ rda ̄s and His Krishna-Bhakti,” in
Krishna: Myths, Rites, and Attitudes, edited by Milton Singer
(Chicago, 1966), pp. 173–199. Vraje ́svara Varma ̄’s Su ̄rda ̄s,
2d ed. (Allahabad, India, 1979), is a balanced and thorough
study of Su ̄ rda ̄s’s life and poetry. Pastorales par Soûr-Dâs,
translated and edited by Charlotte Vaudeville (Paris, 1971),
contains representative padas and a critical introduction.
Kenneth E. Bryant’s Poems to the Child-God (Berkeley,
Calif., 1978) is a rhetorical study of Su ̄ rda ̄s’s poetic strategies
and breaks new ground in the analysis of Indian devotional
poetry. In “The Early Su ̄r Sa ̄gar and Growth of the Su ̄ r Tra-
dition,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 99, no. 1
(January–March 1979): 64–72, John Hawley presents for
the first time the manuscript evidence that challenges the tra-
ditional view of the Su ̄rsa ̄gar. Other essays by Hawley on var-
ious aspects of Su ̄ rda ̄s’s life and works are collected in his Su ̄r
Da ̄s: Poet, Singer, Saint (Seattle, Wash., 1984); these are sup-
plemented by a further set that appear in Three Bhakti Voices
(Delhi, 2005). The most extensive translations of poems at-
tributed to Su ̄ rda ̄s are by Jaikishandas Sadani (Rosary of
Hymns, New Delhi, 1991), A. J. Alston (The Divine Sports
of Krishna, London, 1993), Krishna P. Bahadur (The Poems
of Su ̄rada ̄sa, Delhi, 1999), and J. P. Srivatsava (in Medieval
Indian Literature: An Anthology, vol. 2, edited by K. Ayyappa
Paniker, New Delhi, 1999). The most ambitious critical as-
sessment by Indian authors writing in English is K. C. Shar-
ma, K. C. Yadav, and Pushpendra Sharma’s Su ̄rada ̄sa: A
Critical Study of His Life and Work (Delhi, 1997).
The standard edition of the Su ̄rsa ̄gar, upon which many authors
rely, is the Nagari Pracharini Sabha’s Su ̄rsa ̄gar, 2 vols. (Vara-
nasi, India, 1948, with subsequent reprints). Partial editions
have also been produced by Java ̄harla ̄l Chaturved ̄ı (Calcutta,
1965) and Ma ̄ta ̄prasa ̄d Gupta (Agra, India, 1979). A full-
scale critical edition of Su ̄ rda ̄s poems that can be traced to
the sixteenth century has recently been completed by Ken-
neth Bryant and will be published as volume two of Su ̄r’s
Ocean (forthcoming). In the first volume of that work, John
Hawley provides a translation and poem-by-poem analysis of
compositions included in the Bryant edition, with extensive
introduction. Bryant and Gopal Narayan Bahura have per-
formed a valuable service by publishing a facsimile edition
(Pad Su ̄rada ̄saj ̄ı ka ̄, Jaipur, India, 1982) of the earliest extant
manuscript containing poems attributed to Su ̄ rda ̄s. Written
at Fatehpur in 1582, it contains 239 Su ̄ rda ̄s padas.
KARINE SCHOMER (1987)
JOHN STRATTON HAWLEY (2005)SU ̄RYA SEE SAURA HINDUISM
SUSANO-O NO MIKOTO, one of the major deities
in Japanese mythology, offspring of Izanagi and Izanami,
and brother of Amaterasu. The meaning of the word susano-o
is interpreted as either “a terrible man,” or “the man of Susa,”
with susa read as a place-name. (Mikoto is a suffix used for
a respected person or deity.) The character of Susano-o is ex-
tremely complex because he is an amalgam of several local
and national deities. Although this deity personifies evil, sev-
eral of his acts have an unmistakably beneficent character.
Susano-o caused the most dramatic event in Japanese
mythology when he angered Amaterasu. He first aroused her
wrath by emptying his bowels in the palace. But when Ama-
terasu was injured as a result of Susano-o’s misbehavior she
forthwith entered the Rock Cave of Heaven, and having fas-
tened the Rock Door, dwelt there in seclusion. Eight hun-
dred myriad deities then gathered to consider how to lure her8882 SU ̄RYA