Sūtrakṛtāṅga 0.5.1

Description of the Hells

I once asked the Kêvalin, the great sage: What is the punishment in the hells? Knowing it, sage, tell it me who do not know it! How do sinners go to hell?

When I thus questioned the illustrious Kasyapa, the omniscient one spoke as follows: I shall describe the truly insupportable pains where there is distress and (the punishment of) evil deeds.

Those cruel sinners who, from a desire of (worldly) life, commit bad deeds, will sink into the dreadful hell which is full of dense darkness and great beings for the sake of his own comfort, who injures them, who takes what is not freely given, who does not learn what is to be practised (viz. control);

The impudent sinner, who injures many beings without relenting, will go to hell; at the end of his life he will sink to the (place of) darkness; head downwards he comes to the place of torture.

They hear the cries of the punishers: Beat, cut, split, burn him! The prisoners in hell lose their senses from fright, and do not know in what direction to run.

Going to a place like a burning heap of coals on fire, and being burnt they cry horribly; they remain there long, shrieking aloud.

Have you heard of the horrible (river) Vaitarant, whose cutting waves are like sharp razors? They cross the horrible Vaitarani, being urged on by arrows, and wounded with spears.

The punishers pierce them with darts; they go in the boat, losing their memory; others pierce them with long pikes and tridents, and throw them on the drowned in deep water. Others again roll about in the Kadambavâlukâ (river) or in burning chaff, and are roasted in it.

And they come to the great impassable hell, full of agony, called Asûrya (i.e. where the sun does not shine), where there is great darkness, where fires, placed above, below, and all around, are blazing.

There, as in a cave, being roasted on the fire, he is burned, having lost the reminiscence (of his sins) and consciousness of everything else; always suffering (he comes) to that miserable hot place that is ever ready (for the punishment of evildoers).

There the cruel punishers have lighted four fires, and roast the sinners; they are roasted there like fishes put on the fire alive.

The prisoners in hell come to the dreadful place called Santakshana (i.e. cutting), where the cruel punishers tie their hands and feet, and with axes in their hands cut them like wooden planks.

And they turn the writhing victims round, and stew them, like living fishes, in an iron caldron filled with their own blood, their limbs covered with ordure, their heads smashed.

They are not reduced to ashes there, and they do not die of their enormous pains; undergoing this punishment, the miserable men suffer for their misdeeds.

And there in the place, where there is constant shivering, they resort to a large burning fire; but they find no relief in that place of torture; the tormentors torture them still.

There is heard everywhere the noise of painfully uttered cries even as in the street of a town. Those whose bad Karman takes effect (viz. the punishers), violently torment again and again those whose bad Karman takes effect also (viz. the punished).

They deprive the sinner of his life; I shall truly tell you how this is done. The wicked (punishers) remind by (similar) punishment (their victims) of all sins they had committed in a former life.

Being killed they are thrown into a hell which is full of boiling filth. There they stay eating filth, and they are eaten by vermin.

And there is an always crowded, hot place, which men deserve for their great sins, and which is full of misery. (The punishers) put them in shackles, beat their bodies, and torment them (by perforating) their skulls with drills.

They cut off the sinner's nose with a razor, they cut off both his ears and lips; they pull out his tongue a span's length and torment (him by piercing it) with sharp pikes.

There the sinners dripping (with blood) whine day and night even as the dry leaves of a palm-tree (agitated by the wind). Their blood, matter, and flesh are dropping off while they are roasted, their bodies being besmeared with natron.

Have you heard of the large, erected caldron of more than man's size, full of blood and matter, which is extremely heated by a fresh fire, in which blood and matter are boiling?

The sinners are thrown into it and boiled there, while they utter horrid cries of agony; they are made to drink molten lead and copper when they are thirsty, and they shriek still more horribly.

Those evildoers who have here forfeited their souls' (happiness) for the sake of small (pleasures), and have been born in the lowest births during hundred thousands of 'former years,' will stay in this (hell). Their punishment will be adequate to their deeds.

The wicked who have committed crimes will atone for them, deprived of all pleasant and lovely objects, by dwelling in the stinking crowded hell, a scene of pain, which is full of flesh (&c.). Thus I say. I shall now truly tell you another kind of perpetual suffering, how the sinners who have committed crimes suffer for the deeds they have done in their former open their belly with razors and knives; taking hold of the mangled body of the sinner, they forcibly tear the skin off his back. (2) They cut off his arms at the armpits; they force his mouth wide open and scald it; they yoke the sinner to a car and drive him, and growing angry they pierce his back with a goad. (3) The (sinners) walk over ground burning and glowing like red-hot iron; scorched they shriek horribly, being urged on with arrows and put to a red-hot yoke. (4) The sinners are driven over slippery ground which is like a road of red-hot iron; in this dreadful place (the ministers of hell) make them go forward like slaves (beating them) with sticks. (5) Proceeding in this intolerable (hell) they are crushed by rocks tumbling down. There is the (caldron) Santâpant, where evildoers suffer for a long time. (6) They throw the sinners into caldrons and boil them; scalded they rise thence again; devilish crows feed on them and (so do) other beasts having claws devour them. (7) There is a place of smokeless fire in the form of a piles where (the sinners) greatly distressed shriek horribly; head downwards they are lacerated and cut into pieces with iron knives. (8) Tied up and skinned they are devoured by steelnebbed birds; it is the hell called Samgivant, where life is long, and where men of an evil mind are people do with a captured pig. Transfixed by a pike the (sinners) shriek horribly; suffering both (bodily and mentally) they feel nothing but pains. (10) There is a great place always on fire, where fires burn without fuel; there for a long time stay the evildoers shrieking aloud. (11) Setting on fire large piles, they thrust into them (a sinner) who will cry horribly; as butter thrown in the fire melts, so does the evildoer there. (12) And there is an always crowded, hot place which one deserves for one's great sins, and which is full of misery. There (the punishers) tie (the sinner's) hands and feet, and belabour him with sticks like an smash his skull with iron clubs; their bodies are split and sawn like a plank; and tortured with red-hot awls (the sinners) are subjected (to cruelties). (14) Cruel evildoers, urged on with arrows, and put to work (by the punishers), carry burdens in the way of elephants; two or three (punishers) get on one (victim) and growing angry hurt his vital and thorny ground; tightly bound with straps they lose their senses; the revenging (punishers) cut them into pieces, and throw them about like a bali-sacrifice. (16) There is a dreadful mountain towering high up in the air, called Vaitâlika, where the evildoers are tortured for more than a thousand hours. (17) Tortured, the sinners shriek, suffering day and night; in this horrid, great hell, which is full of implements of torture, they are put to a cruel (the punishers) crush them with hammers and clubs. With mangled bodies, and vomiting blood, they fall to the ground, head foremost. (19) There are the ever hungry, savage, always wrathful, great jackals by whom the evildoers bound with shackles are devoured. (20) There is the dreadful, slimy river, which is always flowing and full of molten iron; in this very dreadful river (the sinners) must descend one by one 2 (21) These pains are suffered without interruption by the sinner who stays there for a long time. There is no escape from the torture; he must, himself and alone, suffer the pains. (22) Whatever cruelty he has done in a former birth, the same will be inflicted on him in the Circle of Births. Having been born in an extremely miserable state of life, the sufferer experiences infinite pain. (23) A wise man hearing of these hells should not kill any living being in the whole world; believing in true doctrines and renouncing all property he should know the world, but not become a slave to it. (24) Knowing the endless Circle of Births with regard to animals, men, and gods, and the reward they will get; knowing all this, (a wise man) should wait for his decease, practising meanwhile self-control. (25) Thus I say.