Talk:Yama

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Yama ("Twin" or "Death") is the twin and counterpart (or dual) of Yamantaka ("Defeater of Death"). According to tradition, Yama (Death) was overdoing his role, and depopulating the earth. So, the "Compassionate Lord" (Shiva as Avalokiteshvara) assumed a form more terrible than Death; descended to Hell, and defeated and killed Lord Death himself. This Hindu myth is an instance of the worldwide myth of the dying-ressurecting god, of whom Jesus Christ is apparently a further instance. Other well-known instances comprise: Osiris, Tammuz, Attis, Adonis, Tlaloc, Kronus, and so forth.

Yamantaka originates within Buddhism, possibly derived from a Siva-cult in Udyana, brought to Nalanda in 9thCE. Yamantaka was not the twin of Yama. The myth of Yamantaka that may be referred to is probably not Hindu, as it deals with Yama's conversion (to Buddhism) and enlightenment, and it does not transpire as it is portrayed above. The actual myth says that, Yamantaka goes down to the realm of Yama (not hell), and defeats Yama and his followers who were then liberated by his power; they were not killed, but subdued; so this story is not cognate with the Osiris-myths. (20040302)

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[edit] Picture caption?

Anyone else think it needs to be changed? I can't make head or tail of what it's saying... elvenscout742 09:44, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Uncommented pull by Lord Surya

"He is one of the most ancient mythological beings in the world and in parallel forms or another has also been found all over Eurasia. He is known as Yima by Zoroastrians, Jimmu in Japanese legend, and might be in origin cognate with Ymir of Norse legend."

Surya, why did you pull this? Do you think that Yama is exclusively Hindu? I do not wish an edit war here, but Yama is not exclusive to Hinduism, and the article is already pretty much Hindu POV. You want to accomodate Yama from other traditions, or disambiguate? (20040302 12:40, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC))

Well, he was first record in the Vedas. Without Hinduism, he wouldn't have transfered over to Buddhism. --Dangerous-Boy 05:01, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm no expert of mythology, but I'm fairly certain that in Japan he's known as Enma or Emma-o. I'll need to go and check this stuff out and see what else there is. Sweetfreek 00:55, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I agree. The Japanese one is a Chinese, Buddhist type figure, FYI. I would like to see some evidence to back up the claim that he is cognate with Jimmu Tennō, though. elvenscout742 09:51, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The etymological connections between Vedic Yama and Avestan Yima (>Persian Jamshid) are solid, though very ancient and divergent. There would not appear to be any connection, etymological or otherwise, between Ymir (where the "y" is a fronted "u", reflecting something like *umyos) and Yama (*yemos), or Yama and Jimmu (which is even more fanciful, considering the lack of any contact between Indo-European culture and Japan before the arrival of Buddhism). Yenluo, Emma-o, etc. are borrowings of the name of Yama from Buddhist tradition. I will remove the references to Ymir and Jimmu for lack of factual basis. RandomCritic 05:05, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
I was able to trace where the claimed (though dubious) etymological connection between Ymir and Yama came from, so I have restored a paragraph about Ymir, on a slightly sounder linguistic footing. RandomCritic 15:02, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Yama = Yima?

Yama and Yima seem to have little in common, other than three letters of their name. One is a god of the dead, the other is a mortal king and Noah-analogue. Can anybody provide any evidence that they might refer to the same being? --Spudtater 03:08, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Yama is also the first mortal man and the first man to die. (20040302)

Vedic Yama is the son of Vivasvat. Avestan Yima is the son of Vivanghvat. Connect the dots. :) RandomCritic 07:48, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree. However, there's a faction here that doesn't like to do that (20040302)

[edit] Merged

I merged Emma-o into this article. Emma-o was 90% fancruft, anyway, so very little new information has been added. If people want to purge the cruft from "In media", by all means have at it. — BrianSmithson 15:07, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Yama and Yanluo

We had three articles extant, Yama, Yanluo, and Yan Luo (Chinese mythology). I have merged the latter two, since they obviously had the exact same referent. There is some difference of opinion about merging Yama and Yanluo. (There is clearly no constituency for merging Yima and Yama, or Yama and Jamshid.) Since there is in any case a divergence between the Hindu Yama and the Buddhist Yama, and this article is mostly about the Hindu Yama, I suggest splitting off the Buddhist sections and merging Yanluo with them, leaving the main Yama article to be about the Hindu deity.RandomCritic 06:10, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I feel it would be better to turn this into a general Yama page, and split off Yama (Hinduism) and Yama (Buddhism) from it, for refined articles. After all, there is a lot about Yama which is not specifically Hindu. This method has been used elsewhere (e.g. karma) (20040302)
This makes sense in principle, but as a practical matter, the large number of links going to "Yama" which are intended to link specifically to the Hindu god Yama makes this a difficult proposition -- they'd all have to be (ideally) revised to point to Yama (Hinduism).RandomCritic 12:39, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Ah - well things normally balance out when that happens. What happens if one actually moves this page to "Yama (Hinduism)", and then creates a new page "Yama" ? Or is a move actually a new page, with a redirect? (20040302)
If you move the page to "Yama (Hinduism)", then "Yama" becomes a redirect to "Yama (Hinduism)" and all of the history and discussion of "Yama" ends up at "Yama (Hinduism)". You can't create a new "Yama" page because there already will be one redirecting to "Yama (Hinduism)"; and if you edit that to be a survey article, it is still the target of all the links to "Yama".
There's probably a way, with bots or something similar, to find all of the existing links to "Yama" and change them to "Yama (Hinduism)" without going through each page one by one; but that would miss the handful of pages that ought to link directly to a generic Yama page. Either way, I don't know how to do it.RandomCritic 21:34, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Ok - well, there is a what links here link in the navigation, which probably does all that is necessary. I still feel it's pretty sensible to spawn off a Yama (Hinduism) article. (20040302)

[edit] Yama and Yama (Hinduism)

I have executed the move to split Yama and Yama (Hinduism). I corrected most of the links, including those that wanted to refer to Yamas; generic links still point to the central article. As I have made about 60 changes, it's likely to draw some attention. (20040302 00:23, 8 May 2006 (UTC))

Good job! I think I've taken care of the balance of the links.RandomCritic 19:37, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The picture

Would it be possible to find a picture of the Hindu Yama for this page instead of a picture of the Tibetan one? RandomCritic 12:39, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

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