He is the Yama of an Aht paradise, or home of the dead, where " everything is beautiful and abundant."
In the Brahmana period they were distinguished as " deva " and " yama," the fourteen lucky asterisms being probably associated with the waxing, the fourteen unlucky with the waning moon.'
In India Yama, the god of Death, is assumed, like Maui, to have been the first to "spy out the path to the other world."
True, Yama, first of men to enter the world beyond, became the " King of Righteousness " before whose tribunal the dead must appear.
In the Atharva Veda, Yama, like Maui in New Zealand, first " spied out the path to the other world," which all men after him have taken.