Multan is in the extreme west Of India, but sun temples are found in many other parts, such as Gujarat, Gwalior and the district of Gaya, where an inscription has been discovered at Govindapur referring to the legend of Samba.  This same legend is also related in the Kapila Samhita, a religious guide-book for Orissa, in connection with the great Sun temple of Konarak.[1161]

In these temples the sun was represented by images, Hindu convention thus getting the better of Zoroastrian prejudices, but the costume of the images shows their origin, for the Brihatsamhita[1162] directs that Surya is to be represented in the dress of the northerners, covered from the feet upwards and wearing the girdle called avyanga or viyanga.  In Rajputana I have seen several statues of him in high boots and they are probably to be found elsewhere.

Fortuitously or otherwise, the cult of the sun was often associated with Buddhism, as is indicated by these temples in Gaya and Orissa and by the fact that the Emperor Harsha styles his father, grandfather and great-grandfather paramadityabhakta, great devotees of the sun.[1163] He himself, though a devout Buddhist, also showed honour to the image of Surya, as we hear from Hsuang Chuang.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1144:  They are forbidden by strict theology, but in practice there are exceptions, for instance, the winged figure believed to represent Ahura Mazda, found on Achaemenian reliefs.]

[Footnote 1145:  Though the principles of Zoroastrianism sound excellent to Europeans, I cannot discover that ancient Persia was socially or politically superior to India.]

[Footnote 1146:  See Strabo, XV. 62.  So, too, the Pitakas seem to regard cemeteries as places where ordinary corpses are thrown away rather than buried or burnt.  In Dig.  Nik.  III, the Buddha says that the ancient Sakyas married their sisters.  Such marriages are said to have been permitted in Persia.]

[Footnote 1147:  “He who returns victorious from discussions with Gaotama the heretic,” Farvadin Yasht in S.B.E. XXIII. p. 184.  The reference of this passage to Buddhism has been much disputed and I am quite incompetent to express any opinion about it.  But who is Gaotama if not the Buddha?  It is true that there were many other Gautamas of moderate eminence in India, but would any of them have been known in Persia?]

[Footnote 1148:  The inscriptions near the tomb of Darius at Nakshi-Rustam appear to be hortatory like those of Asoka.  See Williams Jackson, Persia, p. 298 and references.  The use of the Kharoshtri script and of the word dipi has also been noted as indicating connection with Persia.]

[Footnote 1149:  Perhaps the marked absence of figures representing the Buddha in the oldest Indian sculptures, which seems to imply that the holiest things must not be represented, is due to Persian sentiment.]