The sacrificial world understood time as a kind of simple cycle in which the year, the months, and the day are products of the work of the sacrifice. The passing of time is also homologized with death, and in later periods both death and the year were created by Prajāpati, the "Lord of Creatures," who also gave instructions about the correct procedures of the sacrifice. If one sacrificed well and long enough, one attained status oneself as an ancestor deity to be propitiated by other living sacrificers on earth. Therefore once one attained this status, the Vedic texts express a wish to avoid a "re-death." In addition Vedic texts show a high awareness of the motion and rhythm of the sun, moon, and stars and imagine them in a variety of colorful ways: the sun as a horse crossing the sky in a chariot, night and the dawn as rivalrous sisters, and so on. There is evidence that astronomical knowledge, such as the marking of the lunar asterisms, might well have been fairly advanced, even at this early stage of known religious history.