(janampatrika). The sun presides over
Sunday, a dayof the weekthat is not
strongly marked as either auspicious or
inauspicious. See also Surya.
Sundaramurtti
(8th c.) The last of the Nayanars, a
group of sixty-three southern Indian
poet-saints who were devotees (bhak-
ta) of the god Shiva. Along with their
contemporaries the Alvars, who were
devotees of Vishnu, the Nayanars
spearheaded the revitalization of
Hindu religion through their passion-
ate devotion (bhakti) to a personal god,
conveyed through hymns sung in the
Tamil language. Along with his prede-
cessors, Appar and Sambandar,
Sundaramurtti actively opposed the
heterodox sects of the times, particu-
larly the Jains, whom he reviles in his
poems. The collected hymns of the
three most important Nayanars—Appar,
Sambandar, and Sundaramurtti—com-
prise the Devaram, the most sacred of
the Tamil Shaivite texts. Sundaramurtti
is also important for his catalog of the
sixty-three Nayanars, which forms
the first literary source for Tamil
Shaivite hagiography.Sundareshvara
(The “Handsome Lord”) Epithet of the
god Shivain his manifestation as the
husband of the goddess Minakshi.
Minakshi is the presiding deityof the
Minakshi temple in the city of Madurai
in the state of Tamil Nadu. See Shiva.Sunday
(Ravivar) First dayof the Hindu week,
whose presiding planet(and deity) is
the sun(ravi). As a day, Sunday is con-
sidered generally auspicious but not
particularly powerful, probably because
the sun is acknowledged as a deity but is
not widely worshiped as a primary one.Sundaramurtti
The Sun Temple at Konarak, Orissa. It was built in the thirteenth century
to resemble the chariot that was believed to carry the sun.