he river, spying out a
path for many.' In spying the path Yama corresponds to Tangaro the Fool,
in the myth of the Solomon Islands. But Yama is not regarded as a
maleficent being, like Tangaro. The Rig Veda (x. 14) speaks of him as
'King Yama, who departed to the mighty streams and sought out a road for
many;' and again, the Atharva Veda names him 'the first of men who died,
and the first who departed to the celestial world.' With him the Blessed
Fathers dwell for ever in happiness. Mr. Max Muller, as we said, takes
Yama to be 'a character suggested by the setting sun'--a claim which is
also put forward, as we have seen, for the Maori hero Maui. It is Yama,
according to the Rig Veda, who sends the birds--a pigeon is one of his
messengers (compare the White Bird of the Oxenhams)--as warnings of
approaching death. Among the Iranian race, Yima appears to have been the
counterpart of the Vedic Yama. He is now King of the Blessed; originally
he was the first of men over whom Death won his earliest victory.

Inferences

That Yama is mixed up with the sun, in the Rig Veda, seems certain
enough. Most phenomena, most gods, shade into each other in the Vedic
hymns. But it is plain that the conception of a 'first man who died' is
as common to many races as it is natural. Death was regarded as
unnatural, yet here it is among us. How did it come? By somebody dying
first, and establishing a bad precedent. But need that somebody have
been originally the sun, as Mr. Max Muller and Dr. Tylor think in the
cases of Yama and Maui? This is a point on which we may remain in doubt,
for death in itself was certain to challenge inquiry among savage
philosophers, and to be explained by a human rather than by a solar myth.
Human, too, rather than a result of 'disease of language' is, probably,
the myth of the Fire-stealer.

The Stealing of Fire

The world-wide myth explaining how man first became possessed of
fire--namely, by _stealing_ it--might well serve as a touchstone of the
philological and anthropological methods. To Mr. Max Muller the interest
of the story will certainly consist in discovering connections between
Greek and Sanskrit names of fire-gods and of fire bringing heroes. He
will not compare the fire-myths of other races all over the world, nor
will he even try to explain why--in almost all of these myths we find a
thief of fire, a Fire-stealer. This does not seem satisfactory to the
anthropologist