Yama, the Hindu god of death, started out as the first man to die
Before he was a buffalo-riding judge with a noose for catching souls, Yama in the oldest Vedic hymns was simply the first mortal who died. Having found the road to the other world, he became king of those who followed him there, and only slowly turned into death itself.
His name means twin: his sister is the goddess Yami. The word later took on senses such as binder, moral duty and self-restraint, and he gathered other titles including Kala, meaning time, and Dharmaraja, lord of dharma. In the Rigveda his parents are the solar god Vivasvat and Saranyu, and he is related to the Avestan figure Yima. Three hymns in the tenth book are addressed to him. He is close to the fire god Agni, who serves as his friend and priest, and he rules the highest of three heavens, a place filled with music, where worshippers offered him soma and ghee and asked for long life.
One famous Rigvedic dialogue, hymn 10.10, casts Yama and Yami as the first two humans. She urges him to father children with her; he refuses, citing their ancestors and the strict laws of Mitra-Varuna, whose spies see everything. As Vedic literature developed, Yama drifted towards the grim side of dying and became linked with figures such as Mrityu, death, and Antaka, the Ender.
Later texts, from the epics to the Puranas, make him the judge who sends each soul to the realm of the forefathers, to the hell called Naraka, or back to earth for rebirth according to its deeds. Puranic images give him four arms, fangs, a storm-cloud complexion and a wreath of flames, and he guards the southern direction as one of the Lokapalas.
He is often merged with Dharmadeva, the personification of dharma, but the writer Vettam Mani argues they are distinct gods confused by shared names. In his account Yama is the son of Surya and married to Dhumorna, while Dharmadeva springs from Brahma's chest and fathers Yudhishthira, eldest of the Pandavas. Buddhist, Chinese, Tibetan, Korean and Japanese traditions later adopted Yama as king of hell, and modern India has used him in road safety campaigns.
Source: Yama
