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Yama in Hindu mythology is usually known as the God of Death. He is also supposed
to conduct a Last Tribunal where the good are rewarded and the evildoers get their
lumps. This does not in any way increase his stature in the popular imagination
where he has, frankly, no place at all. At best it is resignedly accepted that that
is better the process of death and punishment for sins be regulated. His realm is
supposed to be dank and gloomy, filled with assistants who are visual variants on
his own form, colossal, green skinned, red-robed and of terrible appearance, accentuated
by the fact that he rides on a buffalo and carries a fearsome mace and the deadly
noose with which the soul is snared and removed from the body. None of this does
any justice to Yama as he used to be, a great moral and ethical exemplar of the Vedic
and Upanishadic times. He was also the first great Hero amongst Men, ascending
to divine status because he was not afraid to learn the riddle of death by dying.
All the Vedic gods have lost stature, but Yama is a really sad example of decline
in a culture. The name Yama itself means 'The Restrainer' and further refining it
we get 'The Restrained One'. Yama is in full control of his sense organs; he is
the first man to have triumphed over them. This is not surprising considering his
origin. In a magnificent dramatic irony, Yama is supposed to be the son of Surya,
the Sun God and Giver of Life. Life cannot proceed without intimate acquaintance
with death. Indeed death clears the old out of the way of Life. The Veda is clear
that Yama's great achievement on behalf of the race of men was to find "the way
home which cannot be taken away." It is by dying that man achieves immortality and
Yama was the first to discover this secret.
Not without trouble, however. For Yama and Yami were the first humans to be born,
the Primordial Twins so beloved of mythic structure. Yami was in no hurry to learn
the Eternal Secret, she would much rather that Yama learnt with her what it was
to be fruitful and multiply. This was acceptable by the standards of myth and all
Genesis tales - the first couple usually populated the earth through incest. Yama
is having none of it and rejects Yami's specious argument that even in the womb,
which they shared, they were designed to be husband and wife. She also urges
upon him his duty to the world, if they are all that live, they owe it to life to
procreate and trust that posterity will be indulgent with the moral implications
of what they had to do. The verses where she urges him on in this expedient course
of action are some of the most erotic and blatantly sexual ever written in any human
language.
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