in an earthly paradise which he rules,[1] and though this trait is not preserved in the Ṛgveda, it is hinted at in the epic. His real importance, however, is that he is the first man who died and showed to others the way of death. Death is his path, and he is once identified with death. As death the owl or the pigeon is his messenger, but he has two dogs, four-eyed, broad-nosed, one brindle (śabala) and one brown, sons of Saramā, who watch men and wander about as his envoys. They also guard the path, perhaps like the four-eyed, yellow-eared dog of the Avesta, who stands at the Cinvat Bridge to prevent evil spirits from seizing hold of the righteous. Yet it may be that, as is suggested by Aufrecht,[2] the object of the dogs' watch is to keep sinful men from the world of Yama. It does not seem that the souls of the dead have (as in the epic) a stream Vaitaraṇī to cross, though it has been suggested that in X. xvii. 7 ff. Sarasvatī is none other than this river.
Though Yama is associated with gods, especially Agni and Varuṇa, and though there is an obvious reference to his connexion with the sun in the phrase "the heavenly courser given by Yama," still he is never called a god, and this fact lends the greatest probability to the view that he is what he seems to be, the first of men, the first also to die, and so the king of the dead, but not a judge of the departed. Nevertheless, his connexion with the sun and with Agni has suggested that he is the sun, especially conceived as setting, or that he is the parting day, in which case his sister is the night. The only other theory which would seem to have any plausibility is that he is the moon, for the connexion of the moon with the souls of the dead is deeply rooted in the Upaniṣads. Moreover, the moon actually dies and is the child of the sun. This identification, however, rests in large measure on the unproved hypothesis that the few references in the Ṛgveda to Soma as associated with the fathers are allusions to their abode in the moon.
It is in keeping with the belief in the heaven of Yama that the burning of the body of the dead is the normal, though not
