BABYLON AND PERSIA

ARYAN MYTHS. 53setting sun, in the particularly sad and solemn as¬pect of the departing, dying god, which, however,contained the consoling suggestion of resurrectionand immortality.*He was the first to go the waythat all must go " to show the way to many,"in the language of the Rig-hymn.ually transformed into the first manHe was grad¬the first wholived, and, consequently, the first who died. Be¬ing the first to arrive in " the vasty halls of death," fhe becomes master and host there, receiving thosewho join him in succession, and, by a natural transi¬tion. King of the Dead.Then popular fancy goesto work to complete the transformation by pictureesque touches of appropriate detail, unconsciouslyborrowed from the same inexhaustible treasury ofmyth.So Yama is given two dogs, " brown, broadsnouted,four-eyed," whose business it is to go forthinto the world each day, to scent out those whosehour has come, and drive them like sheep to thedread king's presence.Yet King Yama is by nomeans an image of terror, but rather an auspi¬cious and gracious presence, as he sits with thegods in the highest heaven under the wide-spreadingtree the Cosmic Tree of Life, drinking the Somathat drops from its foliage, and surrounded by thePitris P"athers" e., the glorified souls of therighteous dead.22. For the Aryas held their departed relatives ingreat love and reverence, and did not believe thatthe mere fact of dying, going from the midst of his'* See " Story of Chaldea," pp. 337-339-f Matthew Arnold, in " Requiescat."