Sudarshanaसुदर्शन

Sudarshana is a weapon that became a god.

He is Vishnu's discus — the spinning, flame-edged wheel on the raised right index finger in almost every image of Vishnu, from Narayana to Venkateshwara to Jagannath. The name means fair to see, or good vision: su-darśana.

What makes him a page in this encyclopedia rather than a line on Vishnu's is that in South India he was personified, enshrined, married and given a festival. In the Tamil Srivaishnava temples he is Chakrathazhwar — the azhwar, the lord, who is the discus — with his own shrine, his own consort Vijayavalli, his own processional image and his own days in the temple calendar. Two of the tradition's most important teachers, Kuresha and Vedanta Desika, wrote hymns to him.

And he is carved in a way nothing else in Hinduism is carved: a single slab with two gods on it, back to back. Sudarshana on the front, inside a flaming wheel and a hexagram; Narasimha on the reverse, facing the other way. One stone, two faces, two directions.

His third life is diagrammatic. The Sudarshana yantra — a hexagram inside a wheel of spokes inside a ring of flame — is the most widely used protective diagram in South India, printed on doorway plaques, house entrances, lockets and the covers of books.

The theological point underneath all of it is a compact one: the weapon is not separate from the will that throws it. Sudarshana is Vishnu's own resolve, moving.

In the epics, an object. The Mahabharata and the earlier Puranas treat the discus as an extremely dangerous weapon and nothing more. It is given to Krishna by Agni at the burning of the Khandava forest in one account; it is forged from solar material in another; it returns to the hand after it is thrown. In the Vishnu Purana it is one of the standard four attributes.

The Ayudhapurushas. The move from object to person is a general one in Indian art. Vishnu's attributes are depicted in the sculpture of the Gupta period onwards as ayudha-purushas — weapon-persons — small figures standing beside the deity: the discus as a male figure, the mace (Kaumodaki) as a female one, the conch as another. Sudarshana is the one of them that kept going.

The Pancharatra. The decisive text is the Ahirbudhnya Samhita, a Pancharatra Agama, which develops Sudarshana into a full theological principle: the divine will or saṅkalpa of Vishnu, the operative energy by which the universe is made, held and dissolved. From this comes his sixteen-armed Chakra-Purusha form, his yantra, his mantras and his ritual use. Sudarshana is not a weapon that Vishnu owns in this account; he is what Vishnu does.

The Srivaishnava temples. From roughly the tenth century the Tamil Vaishnava temples install him as Chakrathazhwar in a subsidiary shrine — with, unusually for a subsidiary, his own festival days and processional bronze. Kuresha, Ramanuja's close disciple, wrote the Sudarshana Shatakam; Vedanta Desika in the fourteenth century wrote the Sudarshana Ashtakam, which is still recited.

The back-to-back slab. The characteristic Srivaishnava image pairs Sudarshana on the obverse with Narasimha on the reverse. The pairing is deliberate: both are the deity in his aspect of immediate and overwhelming intervention, and the two faces look in opposite directions so that nothing approaches unseen.

In the north, no comparable cult developed. The discus stayed on the finger.

As an object. A wheel with spokes — six, eight, twelve or sixteen depending on the tradition — with a serrated or flaming rim, held spinning on the tip of Vishnu's raised right index finger. The spin is important and sculptors show it: the discus is almost never shown flat.

As Chakra-Purusha. A standing male figure inside the wheel, most often with sixteen arms — eight on each side — holding the conch, bow, arrow, sword, shield, noose, goad, mace, plough, pestle, trident, thunderbolt and the rest. The face is fierce; the eyes are wide; the hair is flame. Behind and around him the flaming discus forms the aureole.

The hexagram. At the centre of the Sudarshana yantra, and often carved behind the figure, is a six-pointed star — two interlocked triangles — sometimes called the shatkona. It is a Hindu ritual diagram of long standing and its use here predates and is unrelated to its use as a modern national or religious emblem elsewhere; the encyclopedia notes this because the resemblance regularly causes confusion.

The back-to-back slab. The characteristic Srivaishnava image: Sudarshana on the obverse, standing in his wheel; Narasimha on the reverse, usually seated in the yogic posture with the yoga-patta band. One stone, two deities, opposite directions. To see both you must walk round it — and the shrine is built so that you can.

Colour. Red, or flame-coloured.

Distinguishing him. A wheel on a finger is Vishnu's. A wheel with a person inside it is Sudarshana. A wheel with a person inside it and another god on the back of the stone is Chakrathazhwar.

Sudarshana Chakra. The object — the attribute in Vishnu's hand, and the name most people know.

Chakra-Purusha. The personified form, sixteen-armed, inside the wheel.

Chakrathazhwar. The Tamil Srivaishnava deity, with a shrine, a consort (Vijayavalli), processional bronzes and festival days. The name treats the discus as an azhwar, a lord — the same word used for the twelve Tamil Vaishnava poet-saints, in a different sense.

Sudarshana Narasimha. The back-to-back pairing considered as a single icon.

Sudarshana Homa. The fire rite, widely performed in South Indian temples.

The yantra. The diagram — hexagram, spokes, flame ring, mantra syllables — used on doorways and lockets.

Kaumodaki, Panchajanya, Nandaka, Sharnga. Vishnu's other personified attributes: the mace (female), the conch, the sword and the bow. All are depicted as ayudha-purushas; none of them got a temple. Sudarshana is the exception, and that is the fact worth carrying away.

Not Vishnu's discus alone. Durga, and several other deities, carry a chakra — given to them, in the texts, by Vishnu. This page is about Vishnu's, personified.

Khandava. In the Mahabharata, Agni — needing to consume the Khandava forest and blocked by Indra's rain — gives Krishna the discus and Arjuna the Gandiva bow. It is the discus's most famous acquisition story and the Agni page carries the other side of it.

Shishupala. Krishna's cousin is permitted a hundred insults; at the hundred and first, at Yudhishthira's rajasuya sacrifice, the discus leaves Krishna's hand and takes his head. It is the single most cited use of the weapon and the one that fixes its character: no warning, no combat, and it is over.

Cutting Sati's body. In the Shakti Peetha account, it is Vishnu's discus that follows the grieving Shiva and severs the body he is carrying, piece by piece, until there is nothing left to carry. Fifty-one places are made holy by where the pieces fall. The Sati page carries the story; the weapon acting in it is this one, and the act is an intervention to end a grief that would otherwise not have ended.

Durvasa and Ambarisha. The sage Durvasa, enraged with the devotee-king Ambarisha, sends a demon against him; the discus destroys it and then pursues Durvasa. He runs through the three worlds; Brahma cannot help, Shiva cannot help, and Vishnu will not call it off, saying he is bound by his devotee. Only Ambarisha's own prayer stops it. It is the bhakti text par excellence — and note what it makes the discus: unstoppable by any god including, in effect, the one who owns it.

Cutting the sun. In the Puranic account of Vishwakarma grinding down Surya's excess brilliance on a lathe, the scraps become the weapons of the gods — Vishnu's discus among them. The Surya and Vishwakarma pages carry it.

Why Narasimha is on the back. The Srivaishnava explanation for the paired slab is that both faces are the same disposition: the deity arriving without delay for someone who has called. Narasimha came out of the pillar; the discus does not need to be thrown twice.

Sudarshana Homa. The best-known rite associated with him — a fire offering performed in South Indian Vaishnava temples and, for a fee, at household request. It is conducted for protection and for the removal of obstruction. DharmSetu describes it as observed practice and makes no claim about what it accomplishes.

In the Srivaishnava temples. Chakrathazhwar has a shrine, a processional bronze and festival days at Srirangam, Kanchipuram, Melukote, Nagalapuram and a large number of other Vaishnava temples. This is the substantial living cult and it is regionally specific: a devotee in Tamil Nadu or Karnataka will know the name; one in Bihar generally will not.

The yantra at the doorway. The single most widespread use. A Sudarshana yantra plaque at the entrance of a house or a shop is common across South India, and the diagram appears on lockets, on the covers of recitation books and on vehicle dashboards.

The hymns. The Sudarshana Ashtakam of Vedanta Desika, eight verses, is recited in Srivaishnava households and temples; the Sudarshana Shatakam of Kuresha is longer and less commonly heard.

Sunday, and the Sudarshana Gayatri, in regular use.

In the Pancharatra rite. The Ahirbudhnya Samhita's material is initiatory and technical, and this encyclopedia does not reproduce it.

A note. Protective rites and diagrams are recorded here as religious practice. They are not a substitute for locks, for legal remedy, or for medical care, and nothing on this page should be read as claiming that they are.

Chakrathazhwar shrines are found in most major Srivaishnava temples. The notable ones:

Nagalapuram Veda Narayana Swamy Temple (Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh) — associated with Krishnadevaraya, and known for the Chakrathazhwar image.

Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple, Srirangam (Tamil Nadu) — the largest functioning temple complex in India, with a Chakrathazhwar shrine and festival days; the Ranganatha and Andal pages carry the site.

Varadaraja Perumal Temple, Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu) — a celebrated back-to-back Sudarshana-Narasimha slab.

Cheluvanarayana Swamy Temple, Melukote (Karnataka) — Ramanuja's own foundation.

Thiruvanparisaram and the Nanguneri and Tirunelveli temples (Tamil Nadu) — several fine Chakra-Purusha images.

Tirumala (Andhra Pradesh) — the discus on Venkateshwara's hand is among the most seen objects in India; his page carries the temple.

Puri (Odisha) — the Nilachakra, the wheel on top of the Jagannath temple, is a public and enormous version of the same emblem, visible from the town.

What is difficult to find anywhere is a temple where Sudarshana is the principal deity. He is, almost everywhere, the deity of a shrine inside someone else's house — which is theologically exact, since he is what that deity does.

A weapon that became a person, and then a god. Hinduism personifies attributes routinely — the conch, the mace, the bow all appear as figures in sculpture — but only one of them acquired a shrine, a consort, a festival calendar and hymns by first-rank theologians. Sudarshana is the limit case of a habit of mind the tradition has: that anything an attribute can do, someone is doing.

Will, not hardware. The Pancharatra reading is the serious one and is worth stating plainly: Sudarshana is Vishnu's *sankalpa, the resolve by which the universe is made and unmade. That is why he is not a thing Vishnu picks up but a thing Vishnu is*, and why the Ambarisha story can make him unstoppable even by Vishnu — a resolve, once formed, is not a tool.

Two gods, one stone. The back-to-back slab is a piece of theology done in rock: the same disposition — immediate intervention on behalf of someone who has called — shown twice, facing opposite ways, so that no direction is unattended. There is nothing else quite like it in Indian sculpture, and it repays walking round.

A cult with a map. Sudarshana is one of the clearest regional cases in this encyclopedia. The discus is on Vishnu's finger in every part of India; the deity is South Indian, Srivaishnava and specific. That a single attribute of a pan-Indian god should become a full deity in one region and nowhere else is a useful corrective to any account of Hinduism as uniform.

And the diagram at the door. For most of the people who use it, Sudarshana is not a story or a theology but a six-pointed star inside a wheel on a plaque by the entrance — the point at which a Pancharatra doctrine of divine will arrives, twelve centuries later, as something you put up when you move house.