this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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In Hinduism Yama is the God of death and a punisher. The lord of hell who punishes sinners.
Yeah and Christians always put him and Hades in the evil corner when they're writing stories based on myths. Even Anubis gets the villain treatment by people who really can't be trusted with other cultural mythos.
It really makes me wonder if the Germanic/Norse Hel was actually villainous, given how spotty our actual knowledge of their myth cycle was. It's certainly a convenient name for her to have, but it's also more than possible "Hell" came before "Hel" entirely organically instead of being evidence of Christian revisionism.
Yama is the god of justice, who also collects the dead. He is only a 'punisher' in the sense that he is a judge. He is usually shown as being happy to cancel or reduce punishments if the dead person can give some legal justification for their actions.
If you have read Discworld, Death is very similar to Yama, (except that Death leaves the judgement to the dead person).