Yama, Yami and invention of the night

Yami was madly in love with her brother Yama. She longed to lie with him and suffered deeply from his refusal. According to the Vedas, Yama and Yami were the first two human beings. Yama, the son of Vivasvat (an aspect of Surya, the Sun God) and Saranyu (the Cloud or Aurora), is the primeval man—the first of mortals, and thus the first living being to die and enter the afterlife, where he became the undisputed and feared king of the dead. Yami was his twin sister. From her was born Yamuna, the twin river of the Ganges (or rather of the Ganga). In short, the two were the only humans in existence. Yami constantly insisted that she wanted her brother, that she wished to unite with him in order to have offspring and populate the earth. And whom else could she love, when there was no one else but her brother? The Rig Veda (X, 10) tells this story, offering an original version of the primal theme of incest. “The immortal gods desire offspring from the only mortals,” Yami says to her brother. “Let the manifest power of your mind be united with mine; let your body enter mine.” “Shall we do what has never been done before?” Yama replies. “We speak of righteousness—shall we then act incorrectly?” “The desire for you is now within me. I want to lie in the same bed with you,” his sister insists. “O lascivious woman,” Yama answers, “the gods are watching us.” “The twins were already embraced in the womb, like the sky and the earth,” Yami says. “Why can we not do the same now that we are born?” “Go away. Desire a husband other than myself,” says Yama. “Lie in the same bed with him; unite yourself with him.” “Overwhelmed by desire, I beg you once more: unite your body with mine.” “I will never agree to join my body with my sister,” Yama concludes. “Desire the manifest power of another man’s mind; let that power join with you.” What happened afterward—that is, how the world came to be populated despite the only man’s refusal to unite with the only woman—is of little interest here. What I prefer to remember is that when Yama died, the first man to die, Yami was desperate, and her despair would not abate. To the gods who tried to console her, she replied: “How can I not be desperate when my beloved brother died today?” It was always “today,” because time, day and night, had not yet been invented; everything still existed in an eternal present. So the gods invented the night, and the succession of night to day, and thus the passing of time. Yami then began to say: “My beloved brother Yama died yesterday,” and later, “My beloved brother Yama died seven days ago,” and still later, “A year ago…” “For this reason,” the Maitrayani Samhita concludes, “it is said that the passing of time relieves suffering.”