The altar-fire, Agni, is at once earth-fire, lightning, and sun.

The drink _soma_ is identified with the heavenly drink that refreshes the earth, and from its color is taken at last to be the terrestrial form of its aqueous prototype, the moon, which is not only yellow, but even goes through cloud-meshes just as _soma_ goes through the sieve, with all the other points of comparison that priestly ingenuity can devise.
Of different sort altogether from these gods is the ancient Indo-Iranian figure that now claims attention.

The older religion had at least one object of devotion very difficult to reduce to terms of a nature-religion.
YAMA Exactly as the Hindu had a half-divine ancestor, Manu, who by the later priests is regarded as of solar origin, while more probably he is only the abstract Adam (man), the progenitor of the race; so in Yama the Hindu saw the primitive "first of mortals." While, however, Mitra, Dyaus, and other older nature-gods, pass into a state of negative or almost forgotten activity, Yama, even in the later epic period, still remains a potent sovereign--the king of the dead.
In the Avesta Yima is the son of the 'wide-gleaming' Vivanghvant, the sun, and here it is the sun that first prepares the _soma (haoma)_ for man.

And so, too, in the Rig Veda it is Yama the son of Vivasvant (X.
58.

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