The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c34.s2.8

v2.c34.s2.8

Another conception of the nature of death is hinted at in the legend of the dogs of Yama,⁷ the four-eyed, a term probably derived from the presence of some mark on the dog which gave the appearance of four eyes,⁸ brindled, broad-nosed, dogs which wander about and guard the path or sit on it: the spirit is bidden to haste past the dogs, and to join the Fathers with Yama. Delighting in lives, they watch men and serve as messengers of Yama, and are entreated to grant continued enjoyment of life. It is possible that they were conceived as going among men, and taking to the abode of death the souls of the dead. The Avestan parallel is one dog, which four-eyed and yellow-eared watches the head of the Cinvaṭ bridge⁹ which reaches from this to the next world, and by his barking scares away the fiends, who would hinder the passing of the souls of the just dead. In the Rigveda there is no clear evidence to any such functions of the dogs as the dividers out of souls as good or bad: the suggestion of Roth¹⁰ and Aufrecht that this was their function is based on interpretations, which are not very probable, and at any rate are uncertain. In the Atharvaveda¹¹ the messengers of Yama appear already as plural as well as dual. Any possibility of holding that they had duties of discrimination would of course disappear if they were to be regarded as being really the sun and the moon, as is argued by Bloomfield (the day and the night in the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa),¹ or the doubles of Yama and Yamī, which was the view of Bergaigne,² but it is difficult to go beyond the view that the imagination of the Indo-Iranians and, if the identification—doubtful in the extreme—of Çabala and Kerberos³ is to be accepted, probably of the Indo-Europeans also, believed that the way to the sky was guarded or infested by a dog or dogs.