In Canaan there were only two prominent god desses, viz. Ashtoreth of the Northern Canaanites, and Ashera of the Southern Canaanites. Ash era is an Assyrian word, denoting the rich fecundity of nature. Ashtoreth is Istar, goddess of love and war, patroness of the moon and the planet Venus.
The temple of Astarte or Ashtoreth, the Plum nician Aphrodite, was at Paphos, on the Galgai or Galgal Hill. A stone column of cone-likc shape was`the only symbol inside the shrine, and they believed that it bad fallen from heaven, as had the aerolite before which sacrifices were offered in the great temple of the Asiatic Artemis at Ephesus. The Egyptians called them Kefa or Kepliene, the palm - land people. Keft was Pticenicia, and Keftur was the Caphtor of the Old Testmnent, but Canaan was the title they gave to their own country.
The Natchez of N. America worshipped the sun with singular honours, and preserved with the same reverence the sacred fires.
In Northern Asia the Samoyedes are said to have worshipped the s.un and moon.
Apollonius, in his visit to Upper India, describes the magnificent temple of the sun at Taxila.
The great Getm of Central Asia deemed it right to offer the horse to the sun, as the swiftest of created to the swiftest of uncreated beings. Colonel Tod tells US that Bal-nath was the sun-god of ancient India, and the 13111-clan was the gift of the bull to the sun. The white elephant and the white horse in the ancient sun-worship are emblems of the sun. in a legend as to Sakya's birth, a white elephant entered the womb of his mother, Maya Devi.
In the Vedas the sun is called the eye of Valium ; with the Persians the .sun was the eye of Ormuzd ; it was the Demiurge of the Egyptians, the Baal of the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Plice nicians, the Zeus of the Greeks, aud the Wuotin or Odin of the Teutonic races. All Hindus still worship the SUB, and the Parsee race turn to the sun as an emblem of light.
In Central India, at the present day, the worship of the sun as the supreme deity is the foundation of the religion of the Ho and Oraon, as well as of the Munda. By the former he is invoked as Dharmi, the Holy One. He is the Creator and the Preserver, and with reference to his purity, white animals are offered to him by I his votaries. The sun awl moon are both regarded as deities by the Khond, though no ceremonial worship is addressed to them.
The sun is worshipped by the Kharria of Chutia Nagpur, under the name of Bero. Every head of a family should during his lifetime make five sacrifices to it in succession,—fowls, a pig, a white goat, a ram, and a buffalo. The Muuda worship the sun as Sing Bonga, to whom they pray and offer sacrifices as to a beneficent creator.
The Bura-Deo of the Gonds is also a sun-god. There is a sun temple at Baroda, dedicated to Surya Naraiana.
At Sutrapada, in Kattyawar, between the town and beach, is a singularly fashioned temple of the sun, with an image of Rina-Devi ; near it is a Surya-Kunda, and another dedicated to a rishi ;• also a castle on the way to Pattan.
The earliest objects of adoration in Rajputana were the sun and moon, whose names designate the two grand races, Surya or Solar dynasty, and Chandra or Indu or Lunar race. Budha, son
of Indu, married Ella, a grandchild of Surya, front which union sprang the Indu race. They deified their ancestor Budha, who continued to be the chief object -of adoration until Krishna, hence the worship of Bal-nath and Budha were coeval. That the pomade tribes of Arabia, as well as those of Tartary and India, adored the same objects, we learn froin the earliest -writers ; and Job, the probable contemporary of Hasti, the founder of the first capital of the Yadu on the Ganges, boasts in the midst of his griefs that he had always remained uncorrupted by the Sabeism which surrounded him : ' If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness, and my mouth has kissed my hand, this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge, for I should have denied the God that is above.' That there were many Hindus who, professing a pure monotheism like Job, never kissed the hand either to Surya or his herald Budha, inay easily credit from the sublimity of the notions of the One God,' expressed both by the ancents and moderns, by poets and by • , princes of both races, but more especially- by the sons of Buclha, who for ages bowed not before graven images, and deemed it impious to raise a temple to them.
At Utlaipur the sun has universal precedence ; his portal (Surya-pol) is at the chief entrance to the city ; his name gives dignity to the chief apartment or hall (Surya-malial) of the palace ; and from the balcony of the sun (Surya-gokra) the descendant of Rama shows himself in the 1 dark monsoon as the sun's representative. A huge painted sun of gypsum in high relief, with gilded rays, adorns the hall of audience, and in front of it is the throne. In addition to these, the sacred standard bears his image, as does that Scytliic part of the regalia called the ehangi, a disc of black felt or ostrich feathers, with a plate of gold to represent the suu in its centre, borne upon a pole. The royal parasol is termed kirnia, in allusion to its shape, like a 'ray (carna) of the orb. The most revered text of the Vedas of the Hindus, the Gayatri, is imparted to a Brahman youth on his initiation, and is an invocation to the sun. By the Aryan Hindus the sun was also styled Savitar, the progenitor.
The ancient Aryans worshipped the sun as Mitra, or the living, which the modern Parsees still do as Mihr, and name their children after it, a Mihr Bi being in almost every household. The turning towards the sun is noticed in Ezekiel viii. 16. The Parsec looks towards the sun in prayer ; the Buddhist and the Hindu, when per ambulating their temples, circle from right to left as the sun's circuit. The Ansariah race in Syria are sun-worshippers.—Bunsen, iii. pp. 525, 581, iv. pp. 269, 318, 325, 687, v. p. 127 ; Sharpe's Egypt, i. p. 98 ; Chatfield's Hindustan, p. 191 ; Lethbock's civilisation, p. 215 ; Md.