Yama the king, with sacrifices worship. (x. 14, 1).
Though death is the path of Yama, and he must consequently have been regarded with a certain amount of fear, he is not yet in the Rigveda, as in the Atharvaveda and the later mythology, a god of death. The owl and pigeon are occasionally mentioned as emissaries of Yama, but his regular messengers are two dogs which guard the path trodden by the dead proceeding to the other world.
With reference to them the deceased man is thus addressed in one of the funeral hymns (x. 14):—
Run on thy path straight forward past the two dogs,
The sons of Saramā, four-eyed and brindled,
Draw near thereafter to the bounteous fathers,
Who revel on in company with Yama.
Broad-nosed and brown, the messengers of Yama,
Greedy of lives, wander among the people:
May they give back to us a life auspicious