Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/240

208 BOOK

his wonderful steed the victories of Indra, Herakles, and Bellerophon, is told that he must produce its match or die, complains to the horse that the task is not easy, " for your match is not to be found in the wide world," the steed replies that he has a match, although it is hard to get at him, for he abides in Hell.

The Twins. In Indra and in Agni, Mitra and Varuna, and in the Asvins we have three sets of twins, Yaman, Gemini, each being spoken of as Yama or Yami, the twin brother or the twin sister. These Yaman are the children of Vivasvat, who is wedded both to the morning and to the evening ; and their sister, the night, prays her brother to become her husband. In this Yama we have probably the Hindu god of the dead, whose two dogs with four eyes and wide nostrils go about among men as his messengers. As both are children of Vivasvat, Professor Max INIiiller thinks it unnecessary to assume that two Vivasvats were each the father of Yama. The twin who represented the evening would naturally become the lord or judge or guide of the departed. As from the East came all life, so in the West lay the land of the dead, the Elysian fields, the region of Sutala; and thither the sun hastens as he sinks down from the heights of heaven. Thus " Yama is said to have crossed the rapid waters, to have shown the way to many, to have first known the path on which our fathers crossed over " ; ^ and the gulf is not wide which separates the functions of the Psychopompos from those of Hades. Like Varuna, Yama has his nooses, and he sends a bird as a token to those who are about to die. But although a darker side is not wanting to his character, Yama remains in the Veda chiefly the god of the blessed in the paradise where he dwells with Varuna. This Yama reappears in the Yima of the Avesta, his father Vivasvat being reproduced as Vivanghvat ; ^ and in Yima we have an embodiment of the Hesiodic golden age free from heat and cold, from sickness and death, an image of the happy region to which Krishna consigns his conquered enemy. In a grotesque myth of the later Yamen, the death of men in youth as well as in old age is accounted for by a mistake made by the herald of Yamen after the latter had been restored to life by Siva who had put him to death. "WTiile Yamen lay dead, mankind multiplied so that the earth could scarcely contain them. Yamen on returning to life sent his herald to summon at once all the old men, for none others had ever been called away before. The herald, getting drunk, proclaimed instead that hence-

' Max Miiller, Lectures, second * 3Iax Miiller, Lectures, second series, 515 ; Muir, Principal Deities of series, 522. A V. 575.