Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/159

abandoned the twins Yama and Yamī, and resumes, we may understand, her independent station as a divinity.

The final outcome of these mythic entanglements are two progenitors of the human race: Yama the son of Vivasvant, and Manu the son of Vivasvant. They remind us in a way of Adam and Noah, especially as Manu is the hero of the Hindu flood-legend, which is astonishingly like the account of the book of Genesis. Vivasvant and his double progeny all of them are endowed for a good while with purely human qualities. According as the profane or sacred interest preponderates these first, and, of course, great men become kings or great sacrificers of yore. Manu is the typical first sacrificer. The later sacrificer of the time of the Veda, as he performs on his sacrificial place, fancies himself a Manu, doing like Manu (manuṣvat), in the house of Manu. In the Avesta Vīvanhvant is the first mortal who pressed the drink haoma (soma) in behalf of the corporeal world. His son Yima and his descendants continued to do so, but Yima turns rather into a worldly ruler, the king of a golden age, in which there is nor old age nor death; nor heat nor cold; nor want nor disease. He becomes the leading Epic personality in later Persian times. In the Avesta he is called "Ruler Yima," Yima Khshaeta; this ex-