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the holy soul to the abode of the righteous.* * * § He is pre- 
eminently tlie god of golden lustre, and as a matter of course 
is sometimes distinguished from Surya, and sometimes identi- 
fied with liim ; Surya, speaking generally, being the body, and 
Savitri, the spirit, of the sun. Altogether, Savitri in position 
and general concept very closely resembles the Iranian 
Mitkra • and hence we are not surprised to find him identified 
with. Mitra.f Vishnu, “ the Penetrater,” is the sun from 
whose heat nothing is hid ; who, forcing his way up from the 
under world, crosses heaven in three strides and penetrates 
again into the hidden region.;]; Vivasvat, “the brilliant,” is 
a minor solar phrase. 
24. Yama. 
Savitri, who can free from sin and wbo conveys the soul 
after death to bliss, glides into Yama and becomes identical 
with him. In India, as in Egypt, the sun received different 
names during the different portions of his career; and Yama, 
as connected with the death of man, and of the sun, and with 
the unseen world, is associated with the setting sun, and hence 
with the west. His name, “ Twin,” is mysterious. Prof. 
Roth considers him a representative of one of the original pair 
of mortals, but this view Prof. Muller rejects. Had the locus 
been Egypt, I should have been inclined to regard the twins as 
the sun nocturnal and diurnal, but here there is not sufficient 
authority for such an opinion. I have already mentioned other 
conjectures. § In the ninth and tenth books of the Rig-Veda 
Yama is prominently introduced in connection with the 
doctrine of a future life and the state of the fathers, tho 
departed worthies of the human race. In the Atharva-Veda we 
read : — 
“Reverence ye Yama, the son of Vivasvat, || 
The assembler of men (in the unseen world) ; 
Who was the first of men that died, 
And the first that departed to this (celestial) world. 
And this is but the slightly later echo of the Rik , — 
“Worship with an oblation King Yama, son of Vivasvat, 
* Rig- Veda, X. xvii. 4. t Ibid. V. lxxxi. 4. 
X Vide the explanation of the Vishuu-mytli by the ancient commentator 
Aurnavabha, a predecessor of Yaska (apud Muir, Sanskrit Texts, iv. 64). 
§ Sup. sec. 19. 
jj The western sun is the son of the brilliant mid-day sun. 
IF Atharva-Veda, XVIII. iii. 13. 
