The stream waters and the rain waters?
When will the springs with a flow run to the beautiful places and fields?[[139]]
And to the roots of the plants that they may grow with a powerful growth?”
YIMA.
The Persian god of death is scarcely changed from the Hindū Yama, who is “the king of death and the judge of the dead.” Among the Hindūs, however, he appears as the first of men who died, while among the Persians he has many ancestors. He offered sacrifices upon the summit of “the beautiful mountain,” and prayed the gods to grant him power and dominion. Thus he became a king over men and even over the Devas. As the regions of Pluto were guarded by the three-headed dog Cerberus, and the path of Yama was watched by two terrible dogs of the “four-eyed tawny breed of Sarama,” so also the souls of good men are defended from the howling and pursuing demons, by the dogs that guard
THE CHINVAT BRIDGE.
The Chinvat[[140]] or Kinvaḍ bridge reaches to Mount Alborz, and it is also called the “Bridge of the Gatherer,” over which the souls of the righteous pass easily into the abodes of bliss, while the wicked fall from it into the den of falsehood and iniquity.
The Mohammedans call it the Al-Sirat, and it is represented in the Korān as being finer than the thread of a famished spider and sharper than a two-edged sword.
More beautiful by far is the Bi-frost, or rainbow arch of the Norseman—the bridge between heaven and earth, which was also borrowed from Chaldea:
“A link that binds us to the skies