Tapta camee karabhaya haraye Visvakar mane |
Namastamo bhinighnaya rucaye lokasakshine ||
Salutations to you, possessor of the lustre of refined gold, destroyer of ignorance, the architect of the universe. Salutations to the destroyer of darkness, Splendor incarnate; the witness of the world.
A shloka from Aditya Stotram
Among the pantheon of Hindu gods – close to 30 million, according to claims – Surya has an unique and exalted position. The sun god is worshipped as one, ‘who knoweth all that lives’, and regarded as sustainer of life on our planet. In the Rig Veda there are quite a few hymns that elucidate the role played by Surya and implore him to continue his benign mercy. According to scriptures, Aditya Stotram (from which the above shloka has been quoted) was a prayer performed by Lord Rama, asking for power and energy to annihilate the evil hordes of Ravana and slay the demon king himself.
Not only for element worshipping Hindus; the sun was an important deity for the ancient Egyptians who worshipped him as Ra. It is said that the Greek city states were also in
some ways tapping the solar energy for their daily use and even for warfare. Remember the story on how Archimedes was able to burn ships with a very powerful convex lens that magnified the solar ray. Even during the medieval times, according to some researchers, as far back as 1447, Leonardo Da Vinci had predicted and prescribed the use of solar energy on a major scale for the sake of industrialization.
Thus, since time immemorial we have been looking up at the sun to give us power and energy to sustain our selves. The fact is true even today, in the age of supersonic jets and inter-planetary probes, we still look at sun to power our home appliances, office equipments, cars and what not. Much like Lord Rama did thousands of years ago, we are still looking at the sun, albeit instead of bowing our heads and cupping our hands, we have photovoltaic solar cells that do the same for us. The difference being now the worship is termed as clean energy or solar energy. And there are very pertinent reasons – more so for a developing nation like India – why quite like the ancients before us, we are again looking at the sun to save us.
Need for Solar
The past few years have been quite astonishing in terms of economic growth in India. With the economy growing at close to 9% y-o-y, everywhere around us are visible and tell-tale signs of this growth. But even as the those big expressways and massive glass buildings come up, there are serious questions that are being raised and need to be addressed; do we have the means to power this growth? Read more…
