Temples across South India set the nine in a single shrine within the compound, usually on a raised platform in the first enclosure. The standard arrangement puts Surya at the centre on a lotus plinth with the other eight around him in fixed positions, and it is a rule of the arrangement that no two of them face each other, each looking outward or in a prescribed direction so that their glances do not meet. The architectural and iconographic manuals prescribe the placement, the mounts and the attributes, and the arrangement is stable enough that a visitor can read it in an unfamiliar temple without asking.
The purpose is remedial. A worshipper who has been told that a particular graha is unfavourably placed circumambulates the platform and offers to that one, with a specified grain, cloth colour, flower, oil lamp and number of circuits attached to each. The nine grains offered together, navadhanya, and the nine coloured cloths give the practice its distinctive look.
The Kumbakonam region of Tamil Nadu takes this further by distributing the nine across nine separate temples in the surrounding countryside, one for each graha, so that the remedial visit becomes a circuit of villages rather than a walk around a platform. Suryanar Kovil, the temple of the sun, is the anchor of that circuit and one of the very few major South Indian temples where a graha is the principal deity rather than an attendant on one.