Bak', the personified sun, ranks among the oldest deities of the Avars and their kindred, worship of the luminaries being reckoned the most archaic stratum of the tradition. Among the Andalal Avars the sun and moon are opposed by gender, the sun figured as a maiden and the moon as a youth, and folk narrative pairs them as sister and brother. Bak' governs daylight, warmth and the ripening of crops; oaths and blessings were sworn 'by the sun', and the drought-rite plea for rain was addressed to a burning sun that only an orphan's plight could soften.