Yama and Citragupta

Yama, Citragupta, simply known as Yama and Chitragupta, Sanskrit: यम, चित्रगुप्त, Telugu: యముడు మరియు చిత్రగుప్తుడు, Hindi: यम और चित्रगुप्त.

Yama Dharmarāja is the ruler of the southern direction, the deva of death, and the judge of every departed jīva (living being). He makes sure that the results of karma come to each one. Citragupta is his divine scribe. He keeps the great ledger in which every act of every jīva is written without omission. Together they run the court to which every jīva comes after death.

The Garuḍa Mahā Purāṇa, Dharma Khaṇḍa, describes Yama’s city, his way of judging, Citragupta’s palace and the whole working of the judgment after death. The Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa and the Mahābhārata add further teachings.

Yama Dharmarāja

Who he is

Yama is also called Dharmarāja, Kāla, Śamana, Mṛtyu, Antaka, Vaivasvata and Daṇḍadhara. He is the son of Vivasvān (Sūrya, the Sun) and Saṃjñā. He is the twin brother of Yamī, who is the river Yamunā, and the half-brother of Vaivasvata Manu.

Seven of his names show seven sides of his nature:

1. Yama: the one who restrains or controls the passions, the jīvas, and in the end their destinies.
2. Dharmarāja: king of dharma. He does not punish without cause, but only by exact law of karma.
3. Kāla: Time itself, in which all things dissolve.
4. Mṛtyu: Death, which cannot be avoided.
5. Antaka: the Ender, who brings all created things to their end.
6. Vaivasvata: son of Vivasvān. His line from the Sun links him to cosmic light and truth.
7. Daṇḍadhara: the rod-bearer. His daṇḍa (staff) is the tool of cosmic justice.

The Dharma Khaṇḍa shows Yama’s work as wholly dharmic. He is not cruel. He is the strictest keeper of cosmic order. The suffering in naraka is not his cruelty. It is the natural result of karma, measured and given with exact care.

Yamapura, the city of Yama

The way in and the gates

Yamapura is a great city of vast size. It is built of materials that have no match in the world we know. Its walls are harder than iron and brighter than gold. They show both the beauty of dharma and the terror of judgment. The city stands on the southern axis of the cosmos, beyond the river Vaitaraṇī, at the end of the Yama-mārga (the road to Yama).

Four great gates open in the four directions:

• Eastern gate. It is for those of great and pure puṇya (merit): those who performed many yajñas, gave freely, spoke only truth, and served their ancestors and devas faithfully. They enter with joy and are escorted with respect.
• Southern gate. The yamadūtas bring the great wrongdoers through it: those weighed down with murders, betrayals, theft from devas and brāhmaṇas, and gross breaking of dharma. Terrible sounds are heard from this gate.
• Western and northern gates. These are for those of mixed karma, who are the great majority. They enter for the full process of judgment.

At the gates stand the yamadūtas who brought the jīvas from death, reporting to the gatekeepers. For those who were devoted to Bhagavān Vishṇu, the process at the gates is changed. The vishṇudūtas (the celestial messengers of Bhagavān Vishṇu) arrive before the yamadūtas can come near. They lead the jīva on the northern path of liberation, the devayāna, and so it passes by Yama’s court altogether.

The court

The central hall of Yamapura, where judgment is given, is enormous. It can take in and deal with thousands of jīvas arriving at the same time. Yama sits on a raised throne. His form is huge and awe-inspiring. He is dark blue, like the deepest part of the night sky, and he wears red. He holds his daṇḍa in one hand, and his gaze is piercing and fair to all. The yamadūtas stand around him in their ranks. At his right is the assembly of the dharma-witnesses, cosmic officers who check the records.

No pleading changes Yama’s judgment. The records speak for themselves.

Citragupta, the divine scribe

Who he is

Citragupta is Yama’s minister and court scribe. His name means “of hidden picture or record”. Brahmā created him for one task, the keeping of cosmic records. He is not a lesser deva in the usual sense. His whole being is turned to guarding the truth of karma.

He is fair in complexion. He sits at a great desk with a writing tool and four ledgers:

• the śruta, the ledger of hearing (what the jīva heard);
• the dṛshṭa, the ledger of seeing;
• the kṛta, the ledger of actions;
• the ukta, the ledger of speech.

The ledger

Citragupta’s palace stands to the right of Yama’s court. It holds the great cosmic records, the karma-grantha (book of karma) of every jīva that has ever lived. Every act, from the smallest thought to the heaviest deed, is written down in exact detail. The records are not made from outside. They reflect the jīva‘s own subtle impressions (saṃskāras). Citragupta’s ledger is the visible form of what each jīva carries within its own sūkshma-śarīra (subtle body).

When a jīva arrives in Yamapura, Citragupta reads out the whole account, every act of puṇya and pāpa (sin), in exact detail and without leaving anything out. The jīva cannot deny it, because the record is its own experience made plain. There is no false record and no error. What was done is what stands in the ledger.

The reading is a deep moment. Many jīvas weep when they hear their lives read back in Citragupta’s clear and fair voice. They do not weep because the record is unjust. They weep because for the first time they see fully the weight and result of choices they made without full awareness.

Yamadūtas and vishṇudūtas

The messengers of Yama

The yamadūtas are Yama’s messengers. They come at the moment of death to lead the jīva away. They are fearsome: dark-skinned, with red eyes and a stern manner. Each carries a pāśa (noose) with which he binds the departing jīva. They know exactly when to come, neither early nor late. They cannot be bribed, argued with or delayed. Their one task is to bring the departing jīva to Yama’s court for judgment.

For jīvas whose lives were mostly pāpa, the arrival of the yamadūtas is terrifying. The jīva sees them coming during the process of dying, while relatives and pleasures fall away, and feels this as the first sign of the results to come.

Vishṇudūtas, the exception

For jīvas who kept true bhakti to Bhagavān Vishṇu, the arrival is different. The vishṇudūtas are celestial beings of shining form. They carry the signs of Bhagavān Vishṇu: the śaṅkha (conch), cakra (discus), gadā (mace) and padma (lotus). They arrive before the yamadūtas. The two groups sometimes dispute the right to lead the jīva. The Dharma Khaṇḍa has a scene in which the vishṇudūtas turn the yamadūtas away, saying: “This jīva belongs to the one we serve. Stand aside.”

The vishṇudūtas do not lead the jīva south to Yamapura. They lead it north on the devayāna, the bright path, which passes through the orb of the Sun toward Vaikuṇṭha. Yama himself accepts the supremacy of Bhagavān Vishṇu: no jīva under the protection of Bhagavān Vishṇu is under Yama’s rule. (Garuḍa Mahā Purāṇa, Dharma Khaṇḍa, Chapter 1)

Yama’s instruction to his kiṅkaras

The Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa, Tṛtīyāṃśa, Chapter 7, holds a teaching on the limits of Yama’s rule. It is told as an account given by Bhīshma to a Kāliṅga brāhmaṇa. In it Yama speaks to his kiṅkaras (attendants and messengers) and tells them whom they must never approach.

Yama’s words

Yama tells his kiṅkaras: “I am the master appointed by Bhagavān Vishṇu for the regulation of all beings. But my authority does not reach those who have taken refuge in Vishṇu. Go near those who have no Vishṇu-bhakti, but not near those who are Vishṇu-parāyaṇa (wholly given to Vishṇu). Leave them entirely alone, for they are under the protection of one greater than I.”

Marks of a devotee of Vishṇu

The kiṅkaras asked how they could know the devotees of Vishṇu so as to keep away from them. Yama gave these marks:

• Śaṅkha-cakra-mudrā. Those who bear the marks of Vishṇu’s śaṅkha (conch) and cakra (discus) on the body, put there by the rite of tāpa-mudrā (marking with heated sacred seals). The kiṅkaras may not touch them.
• Vishṇu-nāma on the body. Those who have the names of Vishṇu written on the arms, forehead and chest, as part of their daily practice of nāma-saṅkīrtana or nāma-dhāraṇa.
• Tulasī on the head. Those who wear the tulasī mālā (garland of tulasī) on the head or around the neck. Tulasī is the most sacred plant of Vishṇu, and its presence makes the wearer dear to Bhagavān Vishṇu.

Anyone who carries these three marks, mudrā, nāma and tulasī, is beyond Yama’s reach. The kiṅkaras must turn back from such a person and report to Yama that the jīva belongs in the care of Vishṇu.

Yama is described elsewhere in the Purāṇas as a great devotee of Vishṇu himself. He accepts this order with complete calm. The Yama-loka account in Chapter 7 is followed by the sadācāra (right conduct) chapters, Chapters 8 to 18, of the Tṛtīyāṃśa.

Citragupta’s secret teaching, told by Yama

In the Rahasya-Dharma cycle of the Anuśāsana Parva, Chapter 130, Yama tells the assembled devas, pitṛs and ṛshis a dear and wonderful teaching he once heard from Citragupta himself. It comes right after Arundhatī’s own teaching on the dawn cow-horn water rite, in the same chapter.

Citragupta’s main teaching is that no puṇya or pāpa, however small, is ever lost. Whatever act of pūjā, however small, a person offers to Sūrya at the time of a parva is remembered by Sūrya. It helps that person after death, on reaching preta-loka (the world of the departed).

Citragupta’s own favourite and most auspicious dharma is the steady giving of drinking-water and lamps. In preta-loka there is a river named Puṇyodakā, set apart for those who gave water in life. Its waters never run out and are like amṛta. One who gave water in life drinks from this river after death. Giving pādukās (sandals) and a chattra (umbrella) to a worthy brāhmaṇa brings fruit that does not fade in the same way.

Citragupta also taught that giving a kapila cow to a brāhmaṇa who has learned the whole Veda, above all at Pushkara in Kārtika, equals the gift of a hundred ordinary cows and cleanses even brahma-hatyā (the killing of a brāhmaṇa). He taught that keeping the sacred agnihotra with full effort is also needed.

He spoke too of the terrible fate waiting for those with no protection. At death, beings are seized by hunger and thirst and tormented by suffering they cannot cross. The fierce servants of Yama burn them, and those of little wisdom are driven into deep darkness with no way out. The dāna (gift) of water and light guards against exactly this, because these acts alone win comfort at the “divine” drinking-places of preta-loka.

When Sūrya heard Citragupta’s teaching told by Yama, he named five dharma-drohis (enemies of dharma) who have no prāyaścitta (atonement) at all and to whom no one may ever speak. They are the killer of a brāhmaṇa, the killer of a cow, the one who goes to another man’s wife, the one who has no śraddhā (faith), and the one who lives like a parasite on a woman. At death these five are thrown into preta-loka and naraka. They are cooked like fish that feed only on filth and blood. They stay unfit to be spoken to even by pitṛs, devas, snātaka brāhmaṇas or tapo-dhanas (those rich in tapas).

Sources

• Garuḍa Mahā Purāṇa, Dharma Khaṇḍa, Chapter 33
• Garuḍa Mahā Purāṇa, Dharma Khaṇḍa, Chapter 1 (the vishṇudūtas and the yamadūtas)
• Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa, Tṛtīyāṃśa, Chapter 7
• Mahābhārata, Anuśāsana Parva, Chapter 130