oteworthy. In the first place, the Atharva
Veda reads, "who first of mortals died[9]," and this is the meaning of
the Rig Veda version, although, as was said above, the mere fact that
Varuna is called a god and Yama a king proves nothing[10]. But it is
clearly implied here that he who crossed the mountains and 'collected
men,' as does Yima in the Iranian legend, is an ancient king, as it is
also implied that he led the way to heaven. The dogs of Yama are
described in such a way as to remind one of the dogs that guard the
path the dead have to pass in the Iranian legend, and of Kerberus,
with whose very name the adjective 'spotted' has been compared[11].
The dogs are elsewhere described as white and brown and as barking
(VII. 55. 2), and in further verses of the hymn just quoted (X. 14)
they are called "thy guardian dogs, O Yama, the four-eyed ones who
guard the path, who look on men ... broad-nosed, dark messengers of
Yama, who run among the people."

These dogs are due to the same fantasy that creates a Kerberus, the
Iranian dogs[12], or other guardians of the road that leads to heaven.
The description is too minute to make it probable that the Vedic poet
understood them to be 'sun and moon,' as the later Brahmanical
ingenuity explains them, and as they have been explained by modern
scholarship. It is not possible that the poet, had he had in mind any
connection between the dogs and the sun and moon (or 'night and day'),
would have described them as 'barking' or as 'broad-nosed and dark';
and all interpretation of Yama's dogs must rest on the interpretation
of Yama himself[13].

Yama is not mentioned elsewhere[14] in the Rig Veda, except in the
statement that 'metres rest on Yama,' and in the closing verses of the
burial hymn: "For Yama press the _soma_, for Yama pour oblation; the
sacrifice goes to Yama; he shall extend for us a long life among the
gods," where the pun on Yama (_yamad a_), in the sense of 'stretch
out,' shows that as yet no thought of 'restrainer' was in the poet's
mind, although the sense of 'twin' is lost from the name.

In recent years Hillebrandt argues that because the Manes are
connected with Soma (as the moon), and because Yama was the first to
die, therefore Yama was the moon. Ehni, on the other hand, together
with Bergaigne and some other scholars, takes Yama to be the sun.
Mueller calls him the 'setting-sun[15].' The argument from the Manes
applies better to the sun than to the moon, but