Yama, in the Hindu mythology “a solar hero who rules over the dead; might have lived as an immortal, but chose to die; was the first to traverse the road from which there is no return, tracing it for future generations; in the remotest extremity of the heavens, the abode of light and the eternal waters, he reigns in peace and in union with Varuna (q.v.); there by the sound of his flute, under the branches of the mythic tree, he assembles around him the dead who have lived nobly, they reach him in a crowd, convoyed by Agni (q.v.), grimly scanned as they pass by two monstrous dogs that are the guardians of the road.”
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
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