Yama's name is unknown outside of the Indo-Iranian circle, and though Ehni seeks to find traces of him in Greece and elsewhere,[18] this scholar's identifications fail, because he fails to note that similar ideas in myths are no proof of their common origin.
It has been suggested that in the paradise of Yama over the mountains there is a companion-piece to the hyperboreans, whose felicity is described by Pindar.

The nations that came from the north still kept in legend a recollection of the land from whence they came.

This suggestion cannot, of course, be proved, but it is the most probable explanation yet given of the first paradise to which the dead revert.
In the late Vedic period, when the souls of the dead were not supposed to linger on earth with such pleasure as in the sky, Yama's abode is raised to heaven.

Later still, when to the Hindu the south was the land of death, Yama's hall of judgment is again brought down to earth and transferred to the 'southern district.' The careful investigation of Scherman[19] leads essentially to the same conception of Yama as that we have advocated.

Scherman believes that Yama was first a human figure, and was then elevated to, if not identified with, the sun.