it is not conclusive.
The Hindus in the Vedic age, as later, thought of the Manes living in
stars, moon, sun, and air; and, if they were not good Manes but dead
sinners, in the outer edge of the universe or under ground. In short,
they are located in every conceivable place[17].

The Yama, 'who collects people,' has been rightly compared with the
Yima, who 'made a gathering of the people,' but it is doubtful whether
one should see in this an Aryan trait; for [Greek: Aidaes Agaesilaos]
is not early and popular, but late (Aeschylean), and the expression
may easily have arisen independently in the mind of the Greek poet.
From a comparative point of view, in the reconstruction of Yama there
is no conclusive evidence which will permit one to identify his
original character either with sun or moon. Much rather he appears to
be as he is in the Rig Veda, a primitive king, not historically so,
but poetically, the first man, fathered of the sun, to whom he
returns, and in whose abode he collects his offspring after their
inevitable death on earth. In fact, in Yama there is the ideal side of
ancestor-worship. He is a poetic image, the first of all fathers, and
hence their type and king. Yama's name is unknown outside of the
Indo-Iranian circle, and though Ehni seeks to find traces of him in
Greece and elsewhere,[18] this scholar's identifications fail, because
he fails to note that similar ideas in myths are no proof of their
common origin.

It has been suggested that in the paradise of Yama over the mountains
there is a companion-piece to the hyperboreans, whose felicity is
described by Pindar. The nations that came from the north still kept
in legend a recollection of the land from whence they came. This
suggestion cannot, of course, be proved, but it is the most probable
explanation yet given of the first paradise to which the dead revert.
In the late Vedic period, when the souls of the dead were not supposed
to linger on earth with such pleasure as in the sky, Yama's abode is
raised to heaven. Later still, when to the Hindu the south was the
land of death, Yama's hall of judgment is again brought down to earth
and transferred to the 'southern district.'

The careful investigation of Scherman[19] leads essentially to the
same conception of Yama as that we have advocated. Scherman believes
that Yama was first a human figure, and was then elevated to, if not
identified with, the sun. Scherman's only error is in disputing the