That Yama is mixed up with the sun, in the Rig Veda, seems certain
enough. Most phenomena, most gods, shade into each other in the Vedic
hymns. But it is plain that the conception of a 'first man who died' is
as common to many races as it is natural. Death was regarded as
unnatural, yet here it is among us. How did it come? By somebody dying
first, and establishing a bad precedent. But need that somebody have
been originally the sun, as Mr. Max Muller and Dr. Tylor think in the
cases of Yama and Maui? This is a point on which we may remain in doubt,
for death in itself was certain to challenge inquiry among savage
philosophers, and to be explained by a human rather than by a solar myth.
Human, too, rather than a result of 'disease of language' is, probably,
the myth of the Fire-stealer.