Evidently, therefore, even the inanimate things, the weapons and treasures which are burnt with the dead, survive in a land of essences for the use of the liberated soul. To the question, Where does man’s essence go to when it rises from the funeral fire? the answer, if the wish alone urged the thought, would be “To the gods.” But with the majority of burying people the belief in future union with the gods was not strongly insisted upon. The islands of the blest are certainly not to be confounded with Olympus; although the Phæaceans claim to live very near the gods.[31] Yet with the use of burning, and among the Aryan people, the hope gains a measure of strength. The gods of the Aryan were, before everything, gods of the air. As the soul and the smoke mounted upwards, “curled to the clouds,” the belief of its having gone to join the gods—chief god, Dyâus, the air—was impressed more vividly upon his mind. And as the notion of the western journey to the home of the sun was not abandoned, a natural compromise would be to send the soul upwards to the path of the sun, and make its voyage a voyage in heaven, led by the sun or by the wind. But his path still lay westward; the home of the dead ancestors lay beyond the western boundary; there was still an Oceanus to be crossed, and a dark Cimmerian land to be passed through.
The heavenly path taken by the soul becomes, in the eye of mortals, a bridge spanning the celestial arch, and carrying them over the river of death; and men would soon begin asking themselves where lay this heavenly road. Night is necessarily associated with thoughts of death—“Death, and his brother Sleep”—and of the other world. The heavens wear a more awful aspect than by day. The sun has forsaken us, and is himself buried beneath the earth; and a million dwellers in the upper regions, who were before unseen, now appear to sight—the stars, who in so many mythologies are associated with souls. Among the stars we see a bright, yet misty, bow bent overhead: can this be other than the destined bridge of souls? The ancient Indians called this road gods’-path, because besides that it was the way for souls to God, it was also the way from gods to men. They also called it the cow-path—gôpatha, meaning possibly cloud-path—from which it is likely we derive our name for it, “the Milky-way.” The Low-German name for the Milky-way is kau-pat—i.e., kuh-pfad, cow-path. But in their hymns the Indians oftenest speak of it as the path of Yama, the way to the house of Yama, the god of the dead:—
“A narrow path, an ancient one, stretches there, a path untrodden by men, a path I know of:
“On it the wise who have known Brahma ascend to the world Svarga, when they have received their dismissal,” sings a Sanskrit poet.[32]
Another (R. V. i. 38. 5) prays the Maruts, the gods of the wind, not to let him wander on the path of Yama, or, when he does so—that is, when his time shall come—to keep him that he fall not into the hands of Nirrtis, the Queen of Naraka (Tartarus). In another place we find as guardians of the bridge two dogs, the dogs of Yama, and the dead man is committed to their care:—
“Give him, O king Yama, to the two dogs, the watchers, the four-eyed guardians of the path, guardians of men: grant him safety and freedom from pain.”
Thus stands out in its complete development the myth of the Bridge of Souls: a narrow path spanning the arch of heaven, passing over the dwelling of Nirrtis, the Queen of Tartarus (perhaps not clearly distinguishable from the river of death), and reaching at last the country of the wise Pitris, the “fathers” of the tribe, who have gone to heaven before, and who since their death have not ceased to keep watch over the descendants of their race. This road is guarded by two dogs, the dogs of Yama, both wardens of the bridge and likewise psychopomps, or leaders of the soul up the strait road.
This was essentially an Indian myth—or perhaps an Indian and Iranian—and took the place of the myth of the sea journey, as it was conceived by Greeks and Germans. The Indians and Iranians had never a sea of death, so they could not have such ferrymen as the Phæaceans, or legends such as the voyages of Odysseus and the burning of Baldur. In the place of them, and with their mortal river, they adopted this Bridge of Souls. The guardians are manifold in their nature; for their names show them related both to Cerberus, who guards Hades, and to Hermes, who leads the souls of the dead below; and, so far as we can gather from the Vedas, these dogs of Yama discharged both offices, sometimes keeping the bridge and sometimes conducting souls along it. “Give him,” says the prayer, “O Yama, to the two dogs.” No doubt their terrors were for the wicked only, and they are thus apt images of death:—
“Death comes to set thee free;
Oh, meet him cheerily
As thy true friend.”[33]
Still, as we see from their appearance, the dreadful aspect of death predominates. In like forms, as dogs or wolves, they return time out of mind in Norse mythology and in Middle-Age legend.