Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/156
of fire and man alike. It continues, or seems to continue, a sense of the relationship of Agni and man.[1]
Now the Veda discloses, and all Hindu tradition harps upon, a father of the human race by the name of Manu, or Manush Pitar, "Father Manu." The word manu is nothing else than our own word “man": there is good reason to believe that this "original man" was set up as a kind of Adam or Noah in Indo-European times.[2] For a while the primitive mind seems to be well content with this eponymous man: later on, as I shall presently show, Manu is in his turn duly furnished with a well-established father, Vivasvant, about whose origin people have ceased to worry.
From a later time, yet still a very early time, namely, the Indo-Iranian period, comes the Vedic myth of Yama, the son of Vivasvant. This myth is the clearest and best-preserved common piece of property of the two religions. As to the component ideas of this myth I see no room for doubt. Yama means "twin." He is the male of the obligatory twin pair that is required to people the world in real earnest. The female Yamī, little as is said about her in the earlier parts of the myth, plays Eve to Yama's