At Kandaha, a village in the Mahishi block of Saharsa, stands one of eastern Mithila’s rare surviving Sun temples — an Archaeological Survey of India–protected shrine to Surya (Suryanarayana). Its sanctum holds a black-stone image of the Sun god riding a seven-horse chariot, flanked by his consorts Sanjna and Chhaya, a sculptural type that links it to the wider tradition of Surya worship along the rivers of north Bihar.
A copper-plate inscription is read as dating the temple to 1357 CE (some accounts give 1435 CE); it is attributed to a King Narasimha Deva, with the founding dynasty given variously as Karnat or Oiniwar. Local tradition pushes its origins much further back, crediting Samba, son of Krishna, and counting it among twelve Suryanarayana shrines. Damaged in later centuries, it was renovated by the saint-poet Lakshminath Gosain, and is sometimes called the Markandeyark temple.
Because the temple sits in the Chhath heartland of the Kosi region, it draws Surya devotees especially around Chhath and in the month of Magh, when the Sun is most venerated in Mithila.
