Can jains give water to sun ?
Short answer: Not as a Jain worship practice. Jains may offer water in the Jain ritual called ashta Dravya (or ashta Prakari Puja) to a Tirthankar, but this is not a practice of offering water to the Sun as a deity in Jain tradition.
Explanation in simple terms:
- In Jain puja, the common external offerings (Jala, Chandana, Pushpa, Dhupa, Deepa, Akshata, Naivedya, Phala) are part of a symbolic, inner purification and reverence for the Tirthankaras. Water (Jala Puja) is one of these offerings, but it is offered to the Tirthankar during worship, not to the Sun as a god. You can read about this standard practice here.
- The Sun itself is not worshiped as a personal deity within Jainism in the way it is in some other Indian traditions. Jain sources describe cosmology that includes the Sun and Moon as luminaries within the loka, but Navagraha worship or sun-specific arghya is not a core Jain practice. This distinction is explained in Jain Knowledge discussions on how Navagrah and related concepts fit (or don’t fit) Jain soteriology.
Tradition notes:
- Digambar and Śvetāmbara schools have slight differences in ritual wording and sequence, but both emphasize inner purification and do not prescribe Sun-worship as a central Jain practice. For a basic overview of how Jain puja focuses on bhava (attitude) and the role of the eight dravya, see the general ashta Dravya/arghya explanations. ( jainknowledge.com)
If you want, I can point to a specific tradition’s wording (Digambara vs Śvetāmbara) from Jain scriptures, but the core idea remains: water is offered as part of inner purification to the Tirthankar, not as a ritual of offering water to the Sun god.