Page:A Comprehensive History of India Vol 2.djvu/76

 40

HISTORY OF INDIA.

[Book IV,

A.D. —

Kama.

Yama.

Inferior (leititis.

strange metamorphosis, proved to be no other than Reti, or affection, the wife of Kama clm-ing his first life. After a time a mutual recognition took place, and the demon was destroyed. Kama is usually personified as a beautiful youth riding or kneeling on a parrot, and holding in his hands a bow ready bent and strung with bees, while a quiver of arrows, tipped with flowers, hangs behind his shoulder. His standard, adopted probably as a memorial of his marine adventure, is a fish. He is described as accompanied by Reti, and at- tended by the humming bee, the cuckoo, and gentle breezes. As he is con- stantly wandering over the world, no permanent locality can be assigned him, though his favourite haunt is with Krishna and his milkmaids, on the banks of the Yamima or Jumna.

From the god of love we pass to one of a very different description, Yama, the god of the infernal regions and judge of the dead. He has two distinct per-

,sonifications. In the one called Dhermarajah he appears with a mild and benevolent countenance, seen only by those to whom a place of happiness is to be awarded. In the other, as Yama, he is seated on a buffalo with a crown on his head and a club and a rope or pashu in his hands. His inflamed eyes, dreadful teeth, and grim aspect are well fitted to inspii'e terror. The road to his palace is long and painful, over burning sand and red-hot or sharp -pointed stones, amidst showers of burning cinders, scalding water, and molten metal, and through dark passages beset with snakes, tigers, enormous giants, and all other imaginable horrors. Tlie road is 668,000 miles long, and at the end of it, after crossing the Vaitarini, or Indian Styx, Yama himself is seen. His stature is 2-iO miles, his eyes of a purple colour expand like lakes, his voice resembles thunder, and his breathing the roaring of a tempest, a flame proceeds from his mouth, and every hair on his body is as long as a palm-tree. Attended by Chitra Gupta, a monster little less terrible than himself, he judges the trembling sinners as they come into his presence, and dooms them to their dif- ferent hells. Though Yama has no temple dedicated to him, the terror which he inspires will not allow him to be forgotten. Oblations of water are made to him every day, and two annual festivals devoted to him are carefully observed.

In the above enumeration of gods, ah those occupying the first rank have been more or less fully described. The subject, however, is of boundless extent, and to give anything like a complete ew of Hindoo theogony and mj^thology, it would be necessary to take some notice of numerous subordinate deities, many of them recognized only in particular localities, in which they are regarded either as a kind of patron saints to be courted for tlie blessings which

Yaua. — Coleman's Hindoo Mythologj'.