Mitra
(Mithra); Varuna, the twin brother of Mitra, in fact, carries the
noose associated with the god of death.[238]

The Indian Yama, who was also called Pitripati, "lord of the fathers",
takes Mitra's place in the Paradise of Ancestors beside Varuna, god of
the sky and the deep. He sits below a tree, playing on a flute and
drinking the Soma drink which gives immortality. When the descendants
of Yama reached Paradise they assumed shining forms "refined and from
all taint set free".[239]

In Persian mythology "Yima", says Professor Moulton, "reigns over a
community which may well have been composed of his own descendants,
for he lived yet longer than Adam. To render them immortal, he gives
them to eat forbidden food, being deceived by the Daevas (demons).
What was this forbidden food? May we connect it with another legend
whereby, at the Regeneration, Mithra is to make men immortal by giving
them to eat the fat of the _Ur-Kuh_, the primeval cow from whose slain
body, according to the Aryan legends adopted by Mithraism, mankind was
first created?"

Yima is punished for "presumptuously grasping at immortality for
himself and mankind, on the suggestion of an evil power, instead of
waiting Ahura's good time". Professor Moulton wonders if this story,
which he endeavours to reconstruct, "owed anything to Babylon?"

Yima, like the Babylonian Pir-napishtim, is also a revealer of the
secrets of creation. He was appointed to be "Guardian, Overseer,
Watcher over my Creation" by Ahura, the supreme god. Three hundred
years went past--

Then the earth became abounding,
Full of flocks and full of cattle,
Full of men, of birds, dogs likewise,
Full of fires all bright and blazing,
Nor did men, flocks, herds of cattle,
Longer find them places in it.

_Jackson's Translation_.

The earth was thereafter cloven with a golden arrow. Yima then built a
refuge in which mankind and the domesticated animals might find
shelter during a terrible winter. "The picture", says Professor
Moulton, "strongly tempts us to recognize the influence of the
Babylonian Flood-Legend."[240] The "Fimbul winter" of Germanic
mythology is also recalled. Odin asks in one of the Icelandic Eddie
poems:

What beings shall live when the long dread winter
Comes o'er the people of earth?[241]

In another Eddie poem, the Voluspa, the Vala tells of a Sword Age, an
Axe Age, a Wind Age, and a Wolf Age which is to come