Facing the Rising Sun Without a Single Murti

Chhath is unusual among major festivals of the tradition in one clear way. It involves no murti. There is no clay image of a deity built and later immersed. There is no statue placed in a temple for the occasion. Instead, devotees gather at riverbanks or other bodies of water at dawn and at dusk. They stand in the water itself. They offer prayers and arghya, a ritual offering of water, directly to the sun.

This directness is the clearest thread connecting Chhath back to its oldest roots. The Rigveda, the earliest of the four Vedas, contains hymns known as the Surya Suktas. They are for Surya, the sun, and no one else. These hymns describe the sun as the source of life, of light, and of order in the world. They treat the sun as deserving of the plainest, most direct worship a person can offer. Chhath's insistence on standing in open water, facing the sun with nothing between the worshipper and the sky, reflects exactly this old Vedic instinct. Some things are worshipped best without an image standing in for them.