. Indian myth and legend. 14. i. Yama and his sister Yami, the first human pair, areidentical with the Persian Yima and Yimeh of Avestanliterature; they are the primeval twins, the children ofVivasvat, or Vivasvant, in the Rigveda and of Vivahvantin the Avesta. Tama signifies twin, and Dr. Rendel Harris,in his researches on the Greek Dioscuri cult, shows thatamong early peoples the belief obtained widely that oneof each pair of twins was believed to be a child of thesky. This conjecture is borne out by the name ofYamas father (Vivasvant), which may well be a cult-epithet of the bright sky, * s
. Indian myth and legend. 14. i. Yama and his sister Yami, the first human pair, areidentical with the Persian Yima and Yimeh of Avestanliterature; they are the primeval twins, the children ofVivasvat, or Vivasvant, in the Rigveda and of Vivahvantin the Avesta. Tama signifies twin, and Dr. Rendel Harris,in his researches on the Greek Dioscuri cult, shows thatamong early peoples the belief obtained widely that oneof each pair of twins was believed to be a child of thesky. This conjecture is borne out by the name ofYamas father (Vivasvant), which may well be a cult-epithet of the bright sky, * shining abroad (from the rootvas, *to shine). . In the Avesta *Yima, the brightis referred to : he is the Jamshid of Fitzgeralds Omar. Yima, the Iranian ruler of Paradise, is also identicalwith Mitra (Mithra), whose cult obtained from 200-400 a world-wide diffusion in the Roman Empire, * From Indian TVisdom. * A History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 117. Early Religious Poetry of Persia, Professor J. H. Moulton, p. 42,. Ow s wH <: 1/3< -J H YAMA, THE KING OF THE DEAD 41 and came nearer to monotheism than the cult of anyother god in paganism .^ Professor Moulton wonders if the Yama myth owedanything to Babylon? It is possible that the wor-shippers of Agni represented early Iranian beliefs, andthat the worshippers of Mitra, Varuna, and the twins(Yama and Yima and the twin Aswins) were influencedby Babylonian mythology as a result of contact, and thatthese opposing sects were rivals in India in early Vedictimes. In one of the hymns Yami is the wooer of herbrother Yama. She declares that they were at the be-ginning intended by the gods to be husband and wife,but Yama replies: Who has sure knowledge of that earliest day? Who hasseen it with his eyes and can tell of it? Lofty is the law ofMitra and Varuna; how canst thou dare to speak as a temptress? Arnolds translation. In the Vedic land of the fathers , the shining Para-dise, the two kings Varuna and Yama sit below a
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