Week 13 Storytelling: Old Tales on Young Ears

            “Grandma?” Virahan approached his grandmother with an inquisitive look in his eye and a twinge of guilt on his face.

            “Yes, my dear?” Virahan’s grandmother was very accustomed to him approaching her this way. His mother didn’t have quite the patience for his endless stream of questions, so the boy often came to his grandmother when he was in need of answers.

            “What’s going to happen when you die?”

            Virahan’s grandmother chuckled. The boy’s innocence was far from gone, and death was a hard concept for a 6-year-old to grasp.

            “Well, I won’t be here anymore.”

            “Then where will you go?”

            His Grandmother paused for a second, trying to determine what answer would satisfy such a young mind. “Well, I guess I’ll go live with Yama.”

            “Who’s Yama?”

            Oh dear, she thought to herself. I’ve set him off. “He’s the god of death. He rules over the afterlife, where everyone goes when they die.”

            “Why?”

            Virahan’s grandmother chuckled once more. She set down the dough she was kneading and turned to face her curious grandson.

            “You are full of questions today, aren’t you Virahan?”

            “Sorry Grandma…”

            “No, my child, it’s quite alright. Yama became the god of the underworld many years ago, when his sister cursed him to live down there.”

            “Well that wasn’t a very nice thing to do.”

            “Believe it or not, it wasn’t really on purpose. His sister loved him very much, but she was a powerful goddess. Her curse was an accident, just like sometimes we have accidents that hurt people we love.”

            “How did she curse him?”

            “Well, she grew very angry at him. And in her anger, she cursed him to die. He was the first thing in all the universe to die, so he became the god of death.”

            “Why was she angry at him?”

            That question was a harder one to answer. She knew the legend of course; Yama’s sister, Yami, had loved her brother in more ways than one. After spending an eternity with him, she had fallen madly in love with him. Of course, for millennia, she said nothing, but she admired her beautiful brother from afar. One day, she felt she could yearn no longer. Even for the gods, it was forbidden to love a sibling. Yami knew it was wrong, but more importantly, Yama knew it was wrong. When the goddess threw herself at her brother, he declined her advances. In her wrath, she killed him.

            “Yami loved her brother like your mother loves your father, but such a love was forbidden, even among the gods. When she wasn’t allowed to love him, she blamed him.”

            The inquisitive look on Virahan’s face remained, but the boy fell silent for a moment.

            “You want to know what happened to Yami, don’t you?”

            The boy nodded his head up and down quickly.

            “Well, she became so sad at what she had done that she transformed into the goddess of the night. We call her Yamini so that we may remember her sorrow and remember not to lash out at the people we love.”

            “Grandma… why can’t she love her brother like my mom loves my dad?”

            Virahan’s grandmother closed her eyes and sighed. “That sounds like an excellent question for your mother.”

           

This story is based on the legend of Yama and Yami, told in Epified's 7 Secrets of the Goddess. The excerpt I chose happens at 0:26. In the episode, it is explained that in ancient india, there was a time when women had the choice of who their sexual partners would be. Thus, a male rejecting a females advances was associated with bad things, including death. This led to the story of Yama and Yami, in which Yama died just from rejecting his sister's sexual advances. When he died, he became the god of death, and began to rule the underworld.

Image Info

Yama, God of Death - Wikimedia