and king of the dead in the nether world.[1] This may be true in the limited sense that the idea of Yama reigning over the dead in the nether world finds no explicit expression in the Rig-Veda; but to convince a student of Aryan mythology as a whole, that such an idea only grew up in India posterior to the Vedic times, would, it seems to me, be out of the question; nor, in fact, did the authors of the Rig succeed in keeping it wholly out of their hymns. Thus one of them, speaking of inhumation, says that the tomb should drip with butter, in other words, that it should be well supplied with the proper food for the dead; and another breathes a prayer to Yama that he and the Pitaras or ancestors might be pleased to make the dwelling of the dead in the tomb steadfast.[2] These are traces of a belief which probably obtained among the people at the time when the Vedic priests looked forward to an Elysium on high, whither the smoke of the funeral pile wafted the deceased, with the aid of the fire-god Agni, who was the natural ψυχοπομπός of this system. Hence it followed that the sun was considered one of the principal abodes of the dead, and that Agni, supposed to descend from heaven and to take mankind away, came to be regarded as intimately connected with the origin of the human race.[3] The incompatibility of the two views is placed in very clear light in connection with the question, whither those Pitaras had
