That men are the children of Yama is seen in X. 13. 4, where it is said, 'Yama averted death for the gods; he did not avert death for (his) posterity.' In the Brahmanic tradition men derive from the sun (T[=a]itt. S. VI. 5. 6. 2[7]) So, in the Iranian belief, Yima is looked upon, according to some scholars, as the first man. The funeral hymn to Yama is as follows:
Him who once went over the great mountains[8] and spied out a path for many, the son of Vivasvant, who collects men, King Yama, revere ye with oblations. Yama the first found us a way … There where our old fathers are departed…. Yama is magnified with the Angirasas…. Sit here, O Yama, with the Angirasas and with the fathers…. Rejoice, O king, in this oblation. Come, O Yama, with the venerable Angirasas. I call thy father, Vivasvant, sit down at this sacrifice.
And then, turning to the departed soul:
Go forth, go forth on the old paths where are gone our old fathers; thou shalt see both joyous kings, Yama and God Varuna. Unite with the fathers, with Yama, with the satisfaction of desires, in highest heaven…. Yama will give a resting place to this spirit. Run past, on a good path, the two dogs of Saram[=a], the four-eyed, spotted ones; go unto the fathers who rejoice with Yama.
Several things are here noteworthy. In the first place, the Atharva Veda reads, "who first of mortals died[9]," and this is the meaning of the Rig Veda version, although, as was said above, the mere fact that Varuna is called a god and Yama a king proves nothing[10]. But it is clearly implied here that he who crossed the mountains and 'collected men,' as does Yima in the Iranian legend, is an ancient king, as it is also implied that he led the way to heaven. The dogs of Yama are described in such a way as to remind one of the dogs that guard the path the dead have to pass in the Iranian legend, and of Kerberus, with whose very name the adjective 'spotted' has been compared[11]. The dogs are elsewhere described as white and brown and as barking (VII. 55. 2), and in further verses of the hymn just quoted (X. 14) they are called "thy guardian dogs, O Yama, the four-eyed ones who guard the path, who look on men … broad-nosed, dark messengers of Yama, who run among the people."
These dogs are due to the same fantasy that creates a Kerberus, the Iranian dogs[12], or other guardians of the road that leads to heaven. The description is too minute to make it probable that the Vedic poet understood them to be 'sun and moon,' as the later Brahmanical ingenuity explains them, and as they have been explained by modern scholarship. It is not possible that the poet, had he had in mind any connection between the dogs and the sun and moon (or 'night and day'), would have described them as 'barking' or as 'broad-nosed and dark'; and all interpretation of Yama's dogs must rest on the interpretation of Yama himself[13].
Yama is not mentioned elsewhere[14] in the Rig Veda, except in the statement that 'metres rest on Yama,' and in the closing verses of the burial hymn: "For Yama press the soma, for Yama pour oblation; the sacrifice goes to Yama; he shall extend for us a long life among the gods," where the pun on Yama (yamad á), in the sense of 'stretch out,' shows that as yet no thought of 'restrainer' was in the poet's mind, although the sense of 'twin' is lost from the name.
In recent years Hillebrandt argues that because the Manes are connected with Soma (as the moon), and because Yama was the first to die, therefore Yama was the moon. Ehni, on the other hand, together with Bergaigne and some other scholars, takes Yama to be the sun. Müller calls him the 'setting-sun[15].' The argument from the Manes applies better to the sun than to the moon, but it is not conclusive. The Hindus in the Vedic age, as later, thought of the Manes living in stars, moon, sun, and air; and, if they were not good Manes but dead sinners, in the outer edge of the universe or under ground. In short, they are located in every conceivable place[17].
The Yama, 'who collects people,' has been rightly compared with the Yima, who 'made a gathering of the people,' but it is doubtful whether one should see in this an Aryan trait; for [Greek: Aidaes Agaesilaos] is not early and popular, but late (Aeschylean), and the expression may easily have arisen independently in the mind of the Greek poet. From a comparative point of view, in the reconstruction of Yama there is no conclusive evidence which will permit one to identify his original character either with sun or moon. Much rather he appears to be as he is in the Rig Veda, a primitive king, not historically so, but poetically, the first man, fathered of the sun, to whom he returns, and in whose abode he collects his offspring after their inevitable death on earth. In fact, in Yama there is the ideal side of ancestor-worship. He is a poetic image, the first of all fathers, and hence their type and king. Yama's name is unknown outside of the Indo-Iranian circle, and though Ehni seeks to find traces of him in Greece and elsewhere,[18] this scholar's identifications fail, because he fails to note that similar ideas in myths are no proof of their common origin.
It has been suggested that in the paradise of Yama over the mountains there is a companion-piece to the hyperboreans, whose felicity is described by Pindar. The nations that came from the north still kept in legend a recollection of the land from whence they came. This suggestion cannot, of course, be proved, but it is the most probable explanation yet given of the first paradise to which the dead revert. In the late Vedic period, when the souls of the dead were not supposed to linger on earth with such pleasure as in the sky, Yama's abode is raised to heaven. Later still, when to the Hindu the south was the land of death, Yama's hall of judgment is again brought down to earth and transferred to the 'southern district.'