It is as something more than the sun that the god later receives more fulsome devotion.

And, in fact, paradoxical as it seems, it is a decline in sun-worship proper that is here registered.

The altar-fire becomes more important, and is revered in the sun, whose hymns, at most, are few, and in part mechanical.
Bergaigne in his great work, _La Religion Vedique_, has laid much stress on sexual antithesis as an element in Vedic worship.

It seems to us that this has been much exaggerated.

The sun is masculine; the dawn, feminine.