The period represented by it is a sort of bridge between the Rik and the Br[=a]hmanas.

The Yajus is later than Rik or Atharvan, belonging in its entirety more to the age of the liturgy than to the older Vedic era.

With the Br[=a]hmanas not only is the tone changed from that of the Rig Veda; the whole moral atmosphere is now surcharged with hocus-pocus, mysticism, religiosity, instead of the cheerful, real religion which, however formal, is the soul of the Rik.

In the Br[=a]hmanas there is no freshness, no poetry.

There is in some regards a more scrupulous outward morality, but for the rest there is only cynicism, bigotry, and dullness.