Canto XIV - Conversation between the father and son (continued)

Jaḍa’s^[1] narrative (continued)—The conversation with Yama’s officer. Yama’s officer tells king Vipaścit why he was condemned to hell—He explains to him the nature and results of good and evil deeds generally, and mentions at great length the punishments awarded to various special sins.

The son spoke:

Thus interrogated then by that high-souled king in our hearing, Yama’s officer, though dreadful, with modest speech replied.

Yama’s officer spoke:

“Mahārājā! it is even as thou hast said, undoubtedly. Nevertheless thou didst commit, Sir! a very trifling misdeed; I will recall it to thy mind. The wife whom thou hadst, a princess of Vidarbha, named Pīvarī,—her season of aptitude for sexual intercourse was formerly rendered barren by thee, who wast enamoured of the resplendent Kaikeyī; hence for the transgression in the matter of her season thou hast incurred, Sir! a deadful hell such as this. As the Fire expects the fall of the liquid butter at the time of the Homa oblation, even so does Brahmā expect the deposit of seed at the approved season. A righteous man who disregarding that season, may become absorbed in objects of desire, would still incur sin by reason of the debt due to his ancestors and would fall into hell. Such indeed was thy sin; naught else is found; come then! go, O king, to the enjoyment of thy meritorious acts.”

The king spoke:

“I will go, O servant of the god, where thou shalt lead me. Something I ask, deign to declare it to me aright. These crows with adamant beaks are tearing out men’s eyes; and these men are having their eyes renewed again and again. And what deed have they done? Explain this abominable thing. Likewise they are tearing out the tongue from these other men as it is being reproduced anew. Why are these grievously afflicted men. torn with a saw? Why are these other men, immersed in oil, boiled among meal and sand? And these other men are dragged about by iron-beaked birds; say, of what kind are they, screaming with loud cries through the pain caused by the loosened bodily bands. Pained by the wounds in every limb, why are these men, who have wrought iniquity, struck by the onslaught of the iron beaks day and night. Tell me without reservation, through what maturing of their acts are these and other torments seen among sinners.”

Yama’s officer spoke:

“Since thou askest me, O king, concerning the rise of the fruits of sinful actions, I will tell thee that succinctly and correctly. A man verily attains merit and demerit in regular order; and his sin or his merit diminishes as he consumes it. But no human action, whether virtuous or sinful, quickly cleanses except by consumption. Diminution arises through consumption. And he abandons merit and demerit through consuming it; hearken to me! From famine indeed to famine, from affliction to affliction, from fear to fear go needy sinners, more dead than the dead. A manifold course do creatures take through the fetters of their actions. From festival to festival, from Svarga to Svarga, from happiness to happiness go the faithful, and the peaceful, the rich, and the doers of good. But sinners, when slain by sin, encounter perils from beasts of prey and elephants, terrors from snakes and thieves; what surpasses this? Decked with fragrant garlands, dad in fine apparel, enjoying beautiful carriages dwellings and food, those who are praised ever go to sacred groves with their meritorious deeds.

“Thus men’s merit and demerit are amassed in the sum of many hundreds of thousands of lives: they spring from the germs of pleasure and pain. For as the seed, O king, awaits the water, so do merit and demerit await him who acts otherwise than at the right time and place. A trifling sin committed by a man, when it reaches the place and time, inflicts the pain produced by a thorn, when the foot is planted down heedlessly. Then it inflicts the acuter severe pain that is caused by pins and wedges, and likewise scarcely endurable headaches and other pains. It causes the pains engendered by eating unwholesome things, by cold, heat, fatigue, inflammation and such like. Moreover sins have regard to one another amid the confluence of their results. In this way heinous sins have regard to the deteriorated state of protracted illness, &c; and they verily tend to the consequences produced by weapons, fire, calamity, pain, imprisonment, and so forth. A trifling good deed confers at once a pleasing fragrance, or touch, or sound, taste, or shape; more marked likewise after a long time, and great when arising at the proper period. And in this way pleasures and pains spring indeed out of good and bad actions. A man stays here consuming the productions of numerous mundane existences. And the results of knowledge or ignorance are checked by race and country, and remain there united merely by outward sign to the soul.

“Never and nowhere doth the man exist who doeth not a wicked or holy act in body, mind, or speech. Whatever a man receives, whether pain or pleasure, whether great or insignificant, it produces a changed condition of the mind; by so much either his virtue, or on the other hand his sin, gradually diminishes by consumption, just like food that is being eaten. In this way these men, dwelling within hell, diminish their awful heinous sins by torments day and night. Likewise, O king, they consume their virtues in the company of the immortals in Svarga with the songs and other joys of the Gandharvas, Siddhas and Apsarases. In the condition of a god, and a human being, and a brute creature, one consumes good or evil, arising from virtue or sin, and characterized by pleasure or pain.

“What thou enquirest about of me, O king! namely ‘Of what particular sins are the tortures of wicked-doers the consequences?’ that I will declare to thee in full detail.

“When vile covetous men have gazed on others’ wives and on others’ goods with evil eye and evil mind, these birds with adamant beaks tear out their eyes; and they have their eyes reproduced continually. Moreover during as many twinklings of the eyes as these men have committed the sin, so many thousands of years they undergo the eye-torture.

“Those men who have given instruction in wicked Śāstras, and those who have advised such instruction, for the purpose of completely destroying the sight even of their enemies; those who have repeated the Śāstra improperly; those who have given utterance to an evil word; those who have blasphemed the Veda, the gods, the dvijas and their guru; for so many years these very terrible birds with adamant beaks tear out those men’s very tongues as they are continually reproduced.

“Also base men, who have caused dissension among friends, or dissension between a father and his son and relations, between a sacrificer and a spiritual preceptor, between a mother and her son who is her companion, and between wife and husband,—see! these men who are such are torn with a saw, O king!

“Also those who cause pain to others; and those who forbid joyousness; and those who deprive others of fans, breezy places, sandal, and uśīr grass;^[2] and base men who have inflicted suffering on innocent men at life’s end,—these participators in sin, who are such, are placed within meal and sand.

“Moreover the man who eats another’s śrāddha, when invited by the other to a ceremony either to the gods or to the pitṛs, he is rent in twain by birds.

“But whoever lacerates the vitals of good men with wicked words, these birds unchecked continually strike him.

“And whoever indulges in backbiting, dissembling in speech, dissembling in mind, his tongue is assuredly torn in twain thus by sharp razors.

“Whoever, puffed up, show contempt towards their parents and gurus—these men, who are such, are plunged head foremost into a pit reeking with pus, ordure and urine.

“Those who eat, while the gods, guests and living beings, dependants and visitors, and also the pitṛs, the fire and birds are left unfed; those evil men feed on carrion and exudations, and they become Sūcimukha birds,^[3] as large as mountains. Behold! these are men of that kind.

“But those who feed a brāhman or a man of another caste in one company disagreeably on earth,—those men, like these persons, feed on ordure.

“Whoever eat their own food neglecting a man, who has gone forth in company with them, and who being destitute seeks wealth,—these men, who are such, feed on phlegm.

“Those men who, without washing their hands and mouth after meals, O king! have touched cattle, brāhmans and the fire,—these hands of theirs placed in fire-pots are licked repeatedly.

“But those men who, without washing their hands and mouth after meals, have gazed longingly at the sun, moon and stars,—in their eyes Yama’s servants place fire and augment it.

“Moreover whatever men have touched cattle, fire, their mother, a brāhman, their eldest brother, father, sister, daughter-in-law, their gurus and the aged with their feet, they stand mid piles of charcoal, with their feet bound with red-hot iron fetters, enduring burning up to the knees.

“Whoever have eaten in an unhallowed manner milk, khichree, goat’s flesh, and things offered as food to the gods,— the eyes of those sinners, as they lie hurled to the ground gazing with starting eyes, are torn out, see! from their faces by Yama’s servants with pincers.

“And base men who have hearkened to blasphemy against gurus, the gods, and dvijas, and against the Vedas,—these servants of Tama continually drive iron wedges, red as fire, into the ears, of such wicked men who rejoice in such things though they bewail the while.

“Whoever, led by anger and covetousness, have broken up and destroyed beautiful rest-houses,^[4] the abodes of gods and brāhmans, and assemblages in the temples of the gods,—Yama’s exceedingly cruel servants continually flay the skins of those men from their body by means of these sharp instruments.

“Whatever men have made water in the path of cattle, brāhmans, and the sun, these entrails of theirs are drawn out through the anus by crows.

“Where a man after having given his daughter to some one, gives her to a second person, truly that man is thus divided into many portions, and swept along in a stream of burning corrosive.

“Whatever man, moreover, engrossed in his own nourishment abandons his destitute children, dependants, wife and other relatives in a famine or in a disturbance, he indeed in his hunger thus gets portions of his own flesh, which Tama’s servants cut off and put into his mouth.

“Whoever through avarice abandons those who have sought protection and who are dependent on him for their livelihood, he indeed is thus tortured by Tama’s servants with tortures by means of machines.

“Men who check good deeds all their lives long are ground with the grinding of rocks, as are these evil-doers.

“Men who carry off pledges are bound with bands on all their limbs, and are devoured day and night by insects, scorpions, and ravens.

“Wicked men who indulge in sexual intercourse by day, and men who defile others’ wives, are worn away by hunger, have their tongues dropping from their palates by reason of thirst, and are racked with pangs.

“Moreover, see the “seemul tree”^[5] with its long iron thorns; mounted thereon the bodies of sinners are pierced, and they are foul with the streams of blood that pour forth.

“See also, O tiger-like man! these defilers of others’ wives, who are being destroyed by Tama’s servants in the “mouse.”^[6]

“Whatever man, deposing his spiritual preceptor, stubbornly pursues his learning or art,—he verily, bearing thus a rock on his head, undergoes affliction in the public way, suffering exceeding pain, emaciated with hunger day and night, his head quivering through the pain of his burden.

“Those who have discharged urine, phlegm or ordure in water,—they, such as these persons, have come to a hell stinking with phlegm ordure and urine.

“Pressed with hunger these men are devouring one another’s flesh—these men formerly did not eat according to the rules of hospitality mutually.

“Those also who have discarded the Vedas and the fires, themselves kindling their own fires,—they, such as these persons, are repeatedly hurled down from the loftiest summit of a mountain.

“Those men who have married virgin widows and have grown old to the full extent of life,—these turned into worms are consumed by ants.

“By receiving favours from an outcaste,^[7] by performing sacrifices for an outcaste, by constant attendance on an outcaste, a man ever reaches the condition of an insect that lives among stones.

“The man, who eats sweetmeats all by himself, while his relatives or his friends or a guest look on, eats a pile of burning charcoal.

“This man’s back is continually devoured by fearful wolves, because, O king! he was a backbiter of people.

“Blind, moreover, deaf, dumb, this man roams about, sick with hunger—he, base man, was ungrateful to men who occupy themselves in conferring benefits.

“This man, who returns evil for good, working injury to his friends, very evil-minded, drops into Taptakumbha; thereafter he will suffer grinding; then he will go to Karambha-bālukā;^[8] next he will undergo mechanical tortures; then Asipatravana; and rending with saw-like leaves. After experiencing, too, division by the thread of Fate and manifold torments, how he will obtain expiation herefrom I know not.

“Corrupt Brāhmans, for having assailed one another when assembled at Śrāddhas, drink verily the moisture that exudes from every limb.

“A gold-stealer, a brāhman-slayer, a drinker of spirituous liquors, a defiler of his guru’s bed, remain, being burnt in blazing fire beneath, above, around, for very many thousands of years; thereafter they are re-born as men afflicted with leprosy, consumption, sickness and other diseases. And when again dead, they enter hell; and when again born, they undergo a similar malady until the end of the kalpa, O king!

“A cow-slayer also goes to hell for a rather less period, namely, during three lives.

“There is likewise a fixed ordinance regarding all minor sins.

“To what various grades of creatures, for what several definite sins, men go, when released from hell—listen to me while I recount that.”

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

The ‘Stupid one,’ Sumati’s nickname.

[2]:

Andropogon muricatus, Roxburgh; the modern khas-khas. The roots, when dry, and then gently moistened, emit a pleasant fragrance; they are employed to mate large fans; and also screens, which are placed before doors and windows, and which being kept moist during the hot winds render the air that passes through them cool and fragrant (Roxb. p. 89).

[3]:

The dictionaries do not say what bird this is. I would suggest from the meaning of the word, that it means a Honey-Sucker (the commonest species of which is the Purple Honey-Sucker, Arachnechthra asiatica), or it may be the Hoopoe, Upupa epops, which also has a long slender beak (Jerdon, vol. I, pp. 370 & 390.)

[4]:

Prapā, road-side sheds for accommodating travellers with water.

[5]:

Śālmali, the Cotton or Silk-cotton tree, Bombax malabaricum (heptaphylla, Roxb.), the Bengali simul, the Hindustani semal. It is a large tree, common almost everywhere, with stout hard conical prickles (Hooker, vol. I, p. 349; Koxb., p. 514). Here it means a kind of instrument of torture.

[6]:

A kind of instrument of torture.

[7]:

See Canto XV. verse 1.

[8]:

See Canto XIII, verse 5.