to Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva.  These “late comers” had undoubtedly been influenced by Babylonian ideas before they entered India.  In their Doctrine of the World’s Ages or Yugas, for instance, we are forcibly reminded of the Euphratean ideas regarding space and time.  Mr. Robert Brown, junr., who is an authority in this connection, shows that the system by which the “Day of Brahma” was calculated in India resembles closely an astronomical system which obtained in Babylonia, where apparently the theory of cosmic periods had origin.[234]

The various alien peoples, however, who came under the spell of Babylonian modes of thought did not remain in a state of intellectual bondage.  Thought was stimulated rather than arrested by religious borrowing, and the development of ideas regarding the mysteries of life and death proceeded apace in areas over which the ritualistic and restraining priesthood of Babylonia exercised no sway.  As much may be inferred from the contrasting conceptions of the Patriarchs of Vedic and Sumerian mythologies.  Pir-napishtim, the Babylonian Noah, and the semi-divine Gilgamesh appear to be represented in Vedic mythology by Yama, god of the dead.  Yama was “the first man”, and, like Gilgamesh, he set out on a journey over mountains and across water to discover Paradise.  He is lauded in the Vedic hymns as the explorer of “the path” or “way” to the “Land of the Pitris” (Fathers), the Paradise to which the Indian uncremated dead walked on foot.  Yama never lost his original character.  He is a traveller in the Epics as in the Vedas.[235]

Him who along the mighty heights departed, Him who searched and spied the path for many, Son of Vivasvat, gatherer of the people, Yama, the King, with sacrifices worship. Rigveda, x, 14, 1.[236] To Yama, mighty King, be gifts and homage paid, He was the first of men that died, the first to brave Death’s rapid rushing stream, the first to point the road To heaven, and welcome others to that bright abode. Sir M. Monier Williams’ Translation.[237]

Yama and his sister Yami were the first human pair.  They are identical with the Persian Celestial twins, Yima and Yimeh.  Yima resembles Mitra (Mithra); Varuna, the twin brother of Mitra, in fact, carries the noose associated with the god of death.[238]

The Indian Yama, who was also called Pitripati, “lord of the fathers”, takes Mitra’s place in the Paradise of Ancestors beside Varuna, god of the sky and the deep.  He sits below a tree, playing on a flute and drinking the Soma drink which gives immortality.  When the descendants of Yama reached Paradise they assumed shining forms “refined and from all taint set free".[239]

In Persian mythology “Yima”, says Professor Moulton, “reigns over a community which may well have been composed of his own descendants, for he lived yet longer than Adam.  To render them immortal, he gives them to eat forbidden food, being deceived by the Daevas (demons).  What was this forbidden food?  May we connect it with another legend whereby, at the Regeneration, Mithra is to make men immortal by giving them to eat the fat of the Ur-Kuh, the primeval cow from whose slain body, according to the Aryan legends adopted by Mithraism, mankind was first created?”