Mṛtyu (Sanskrit: मृत्यु, romanized: Mṛtyu, lit. 'Death'), is a Sanskrit word meaning death. Mṛtyu, or Death, is often personified as the deities Mara (मर) and Yama (यम) in Dharmic religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.
The Vedic mṛtyú, along with Avestan mərəθiiu and Old Persian məršiyu comes from the Proto-Indo-Iranian word for death, *mr̥tyú-, which is ultimately derived from the Indo-European root *mer- ("to die") and thus is further related to Latin mors.
Mrtyu is invoked in the hymns of the Rigveda:[1]
Depart, Mṛtyu, by a different path; by that which is your own, and distinct from the path of the gods; Ispeak to you who have eyes, who have ears; do no harm to our offspring, nor to our male progeny.
— Rigveda, Hymn 10.18.1
The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad (a mystical appendix to the Shatapatha Brahmana and likely the oldest of the Upanishads) has a creation myth where Mṛtyu "Death" takes the shape of a horse, and includes an identification of the Ashvamedha horse sacrifice with the Sun:[2]
Then he became a horse (ashva), because it swelled (ashvat), and was fit for sacrifice (medhya); and this is why the horse-sacrifice is called Ashva-medha [...] Therefore the sacrificers offered up the purified horse belonging to Prajapati, (as dedicated) to all the deities. Verily the shining sun [ye tapati] is the Asvamedha, and his body is the year; Agni is the sacrificial fire (arka), and these worlds are his bodies. These two are the sacrificial fire and the Asvamedha-sacrifice, and they are again one deity, viz. Death.
— Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, Hymn 1.2.7
Mrtyu fights in the war between the devas and the asuras in the legend of Jalandhara.[3]
The Mahabharata references a legend regarding a dispute between Time, Mrityu, Yama, Ikshvaku, and a Brahmana. Mrityu is female in this legend.[4]
