Yama- Hindu GodDeity"Lord of Death"

The First Mortal

Yama was the first being to die. In Vedic tradition, he was the son of the sun god Vivasvat and his wife Saranyu. His twin sister Yami, later identified with the river Yamuna, mourned his passing. The Rigveda preserves a dialogue between them (10.10) in which Yami proposes a union to perpetuate the human race and Yama refuses on moral grounds, setting a boundary in a world with only two people. When the gods created night to help Yami forget her grief, the passage of time itself became a consequence of the first death.

Because Yama was first to die, he found the path that all mortals must eventually walk. He is not death itself; that is Mrityu. Yama is the king of the dead, the judge who receives souls and weighs their lives.

The Road to Yamaloka

Yama rules from Yamapuri, where souls arrive after death. His scribe Chitragupta records every deed of every being in the ledger called Agra-Sandhani. When souls arrive, their records are read aloud, and Yama assigns them to the heavens, the hells, or rebirth according to their karma.

The Yamadutas, his fearsome messengers, fetch souls at the moment of death, binding them with Yama's noose. The journey is long. The soul crosses the Vaitarni, a river of blood and filth that only the righteous can ford safely, aided by the merit of having donated a cow. Two four-eyed dogs named Shyama and Shabala, sons of the divine hound Sarama, guard the gates of Yamaloka and patrol the road. Their four eyes watch in all directions so that no soul escapes.

Yama and Nachiketa

The Katha Upanishad tells how the young brahmin Nachiketa, given to death by his father Vajashravas in a moment of anger during a sacrifice, arrived at Yama's gate and found him absent. The boy waited three days without food or drink. Yama, returning and ashamed at his failure of hospitality, offered three boons.

Nachiketa first asked for reconciliation with his father. Granted. Second, he asked for the knowledge of the sacred fire ritual that leads to heaven. Granted. Third, he asked: what happens to the soul after death?

Yama tried to dissuade him. He offered kingdoms and celestial women, anything to change the boy's mind. Nachiketa refused everything. Yama, satisfied the boy was a worthy student, revealed the nature of the Atman: it does not die when the body dies, it was never born and will never perish, subtler than the subtle, seated in the heart of every creature.

Savitri and Satyavan

Princess Savitri chose Satyavan as her husband despite the sage Narada's warning that the young man would die exactly one year after their marriage. She married him anyway. When the fated day arrived, she followed Satyavan into the forest and watched as he collapsed.

Yama appeared: dark-skinned, mounted on his buffalo, noose in hand. He drew Satyavan's soul from his body and began walking south toward Yamaloka. Savitri followed. Yama told her to turn back. She argued that wherever her husband's soul went, she was bound to follow. Impressed, Yama offered boons: anything except her husband's life. Savitri asked for sight for her blind father-in-law. Granted. She asked for the restoration of his lost kingdom. Granted. Then she asked for a hundred sons by Satyavan. Yama had already promised she would have sons by Satyavan; to fulfill his own word, he had to restore Satyavan to life.

Death, outwitted by a woman's logic, returned the soul to its body.

The Yaksha's Questions

During the Pandavas' exile, Yama tested his son Yudhishthira while disguised as a Yaksha guarding a lake. When Yudhishthira's brothers drank without answering the Yaksha's questions, they fell dead. Yudhishthira alone paused. "What is heavier than earth?" A mother. "What is higher than heaven?" A father. "What is faster than wind?" The mind. Satisfied, the Yaksha revealed himself as Yama and restored the fallen brothers.

Yama tested Yudhishthira once more at the end of all things. When Yudhishthira alone survived the great journey to heaven, he found his enemies the Kauravas enjoying celestial pleasures while his brothers and Draupadi suffered in hell. He chose to stay in hell with his family rather than enjoy heaven without them. Yama revealed it was the final test.

Death Defeated

Markandeya, son of the sage Mrikandu, was destined to die at sixteen. His parents had chosen a brilliant but short-lived son over a long-lived but ordinary one. As the boy grew, his devotion to Shiva deepened beyond anything the sages had witnessed. On the appointed day, Markandeya clung to a Shiva lingam in prayer. Yama's messengers could not approach; the boy's devotion held them back.

Yama himself rode forth on his buffalo and cast his noose. The loop caught both Markandeya and the lingam. Shiva erupted from the stone in his form as Kalantaka, the Ender of Death, and struck Yama with a kick that killed the god of death. The assembled gods pleaded: without Yama, souls would have no judge and the order of the cosmos would collapse. Shiva relented and revived him, but decreed that his devotees would be forever beyond death's reach. Markandeya received eternal youth. Death learned that even he had a master.