YAMA. In the earliest Ṛgvedic hymns, Yama is a benign god who looks after the well-being of the dead, whom he entertains with food and shelter. His abode and its environment are pleasant and comfortable; survivors supplicate him for the care of...

A mythical king in Indo-Aryan times (he figures in the Avesta as → Yima) who was the first man to die, thereby path-finder into the realm of the dead and now ruler over the dead. He is accompanied by two four-eyed spotted dogs. In Hindu...

Yama (Sanskrit: यम), also known as Yamarāja (यमराज) in India, Yanluowang (閻羅王) or simply Yan (閻) in China, and Enma Dai-Ō (閻魔大王) in Japan, is the lord of death, first recorded in the Vedas. The name Yanluo is a shortened...

in memory of Peter Flanders I. I have them on the desk in front of me now, manila file folders with a faint and indescribable smell about them, compounded of the mildew of sixty years of humid Connecticut summers, of typewriter ink...

For evidence of the evolution the American palate has undergone in the past 20 years, look no further than sushi. In the 1970s, raw fish was considered esoteric and repulsive. Who could have foreseen a time when sushi would be sold in most...