Yama
Yama South and Central AsiaThe Hindu god of death. He is the ‘restrainer’, and was originally conceived as the king of the departed spirits who lived in the upper sky.
He and his sister Yami, the first mortals, were the children of Surya, the sun god. Yama's role as friend of the dead gradually altered to that of a less beneficent deity; he became the terrible judge and punisher of human misdeeds, in appearance green, armed with a noose as well as a club, and seated on a buffalo. Two insatiable dogs with four eyes and broad nostrils guard the road to his abode. A soul when it quits the body hastens past these fierce beasts to the palace of death, where the recorder, Chitragupta, reads out its account so that Yama may reach a judgement. The sentence will dispatch the soul to either a heavenly dwelling-place, one of the twenty-one hells, or back to the world for rebirth. Reminiscent of the Greek underworld are Vaitarani, the river bordering the land...
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