Varuṇa with one another. This implies locating both Yama and Varuṇa in the skies, and it involves at least two distinct questions. One is that of the use in Sanskrit literature of the name Varuṇa as that of a great god, instead of letting it sink into comparative disrepute like Uranus. This has been touched upon before (p. 181), and the case was put from a Western Aryan's point of view, as though Varuṇa had exchanged places with Dyaus, the counterpart, etymologically speaking, of Zeus and Týr. Neither Dyaus, however, nor Varuṇa is out of place in the skies; but how comes Yama to be there? how comes the ruler of the dead and his subjects to be aloft, and not in some region below? That is the other question I had in view; but I have no answer except that cremation would seem naturally to point upwards, and especially the idea that the dead vanished aloft with the flames of the funeral pile.[1] Possibly one ought not to leave altogether out of the reckoning the sultriness of Indian climate, which makes the dweller on the plain sigh for the hills, and the English official migrate, if he can, to their breezier heights every year as the hot season sets in. Perhaps it was also partly an idea derived from some non-Aryan race with which the Aryan conqueror of India came into close contact. But whatever the reason may have been, there is no denying the fact that the aristocratic authors of the hymns of the Rig-Veda set their faces against the idea of going below after death. Sanskrit scholars tell us that, some time or other after the Vedic period, Yama came to be regarded as lord
- ↑ This would seem to be M. Bergaigne's view, i. 78-9.
