With a partial exception in the case of Ushas[1272] (Dawn) the early Hindu pantheon contains no great female figure; there are female counterparts of male deities, but no such transcendent personages as Isis, Athene, and Demeter. Whether this fact is to be explained from early Hindu views of the social position of women, or from some other idea, is uncertain. In certain modern religious cults, however, the worship of the female principle (Çakti) is popular and influential. It is probable that in early times every tribe or district had its female divine representative of fertility, an embryonic mother-goddess. If the Aryan Hindus had such a figure, she failed to grow into a great divinity. But the worship of such deities came into Aryan India at a relatively recent date, apparently from non-Aryan sources, and has been incorporated in Hindu systems. Various forms of Çakti have been brought into relation with various gods, the most important being those that have become attached to the worship of Çiva.[1273] To him is assigned as wife the frightful figure called Durga or Kali (and known by other names), a blood-loving monster with an unspeakably licentious cult. Other Çakti deities are more humane, and there is reason to suppose that the ground of the devotion shown to Kali, especially by women, is in many cases simply reverence for the female principle in life, or more particularly for motherhood.[1274] +735+. The original character of the Hindu lord of the Otherworld, Yama, is obscured by the variety of the descriptions of him in the documents. In the Rig-Veda he appears both as god and (as it seems) as man. He is the son of the solar deity Vivashant (Vivashat); he is named in enumerations of gods, and Agni is his friend and his priest; he receives worship, and is besought to come to the sacrifice.[1275] On the other hand, he is never called "god," but only "king";[1276] he is spoken of as the "only mortal," and is said to have chosen death; he is associated in heaven with the "fathers."[1277] The modern interpretations of his origin have followed these two sets of data. By some writers he has been identified with the sun (particularly the setting sun), and with the moon.[1278] But these identifications are set aside for the Veda by the fact that in lists of gods he is distinguished from sun and moon.[1279] By others he is regarded as the mythical first man, the first ancestor, with residence in the sky, deified as original ancestors sometimes were, and, as the first to die and enter the world beyond, made the king of that world.