Manu and Yama are not unknown to the mythology of the nations of Iran. With the Iranians Yama is Yima; his father, according to the laws of the Bactrian, the language of East Iran, is not Vivasvat, but Vivanghat. The meaning is of course the same. According to the myths of Iran, Yima is the sovereign who first established the _cultus_ of fire, and first tilled the field with the plough. In his reign of 1000 years there was neither heat nor cold, hunger nor thirst, age nor sickness, hate nor strife. And when this golden age came to an end, Yima continued to live an equally happy life in his garden on the mountain of the gods (_i.e._ in heaven), where the sun, moon, and stars shone together, where there was neither night nor darkness, in everlasting light with the elect. In the Rigveda the sacrificers of old time, who kindled the fire with Manu, and offered the first sacrifice,--Angiras, Bhrigu, Atharvan, and their families,--are half divine creatures, though not quite on an equal with Manu and Yama. They were ranged with the spirits of light, and shone like them, though with less brilliancy.[57] In the faith of the Aryas the good and pious deed confers supernatural power; it makes the body light, and therefore like the body of the gods. The myths of Iran also praise certain heroes and sages of old time, who sacrificed first after Yima. We can ascertain with exactness the region in which the greater number of these poems grew up. The Indus is especially the object of praise; the "seven rivers" are mentioned as the dwelling-place of the Aryas. This aggregate of seven is made up of the Indus itself and the five streams which unite and flow into it from the east--the Vitasta, Asikni, Iravati, Vipaça, Çatadru. The seventh river is the Sarasvati, which is expressly named "the seven-sistered." The land of the seven rivers is, as has already been remarked, known to the Iranians. The "_Sapta sindhava_" of the Rigveda are, no doubt, the _hapta hendu_ of the Avesta, and in the form Harahvaiti, the Arachotus of the Greeks, we again find the Sarasvati in the east of the table-land of Iran. As the Yamuna and the Ganges are only mentioned in passing (p. 11), and the Vindhya mountains and Narmadas are not mentioned at all, the conclusion is certain that, at the time when the songs of the Aryas were composed, the nation was confined to the land of the Panjab, though they may have already begun to move eastward beyond the valley of the Sarasvati.[58]