Trishashti Shalaka Purusha Caritra

by Helen M. Johnson | 1931 | 742,503 words

This page describes Sermon on the four gatis: hell-inhabitants which is the eleventh part of chapter IV of the English translation of the Padmaprabha-caritra, contained within the “Trishashti Shalaka Purusha Caritra”: a massive Jain narrative relgious text composed by Hemacandra in the 12th century. Padmaprabha in jainism is one of the 63 illustrious beings or worthy persons.

Part 11: Sermon on the four gatis: hell-inhabitants

The four divisions of creatures in saṃsāra—hell-inhabitants, animals, men, and gods, have great pain generally from bondage to karma. In the first three hells there is heat; in the last three cold; in the fourth heat and cold. This pain arises from the place. If an iron mountain should fall in the hot and cold hells, it would melt or burst to pieces when it had touched the ground. They have great pain produced by each other and by asuras. Tortured by pain of these three kinds, they dwell in the hells. Produced in buckets on water-wheels they are dragged like leaden pegs by force by Adhārmikas[1] through small openings. They are beaten on the top of rocks, like clothes by washermen, by them (asuras) seizing their hands, feet, etc. full of hard splinters. They are cut, like logs of wood, by cruel saws; then they are ground like sesame-seed by various machines. Afflicted by thirst, the miserable wretches are dipped into the river Vaitaraṇī which has a stream of hot tin and lead. Longing for shade they go quickly to a grove of asipattra (sword-leaved), where they are cut into little pieces repeatedly by falling knives. Full of hard thorns from the seemul tree,[2] they are made to embrace maidens of hot iron, reminded of enjoyment of other men’s wives. They are forced to eat flesh from their own bodies reminding them of their eagerness for meat; and making them recall a fondness for liquor, they are compelled to drink hot tin. They are made to experience pains from cooking in a frying-pan, boiler, on big stakes, in earthen jars, etc. unceasingly, and they are roasted like meat on spits. The limbs, eyes, etc. of creatures that have been cut up and divided and their bodies put together again, are dragged out by birds, cranes, herons, etc. So destroyed by great pain, deprived of an atom of comfort, they pass a long time, up to thirty-three sāgaras.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Adhārmika=paramādhārmika, the name of these demons. See I, n. 58.

[2]:

Bombax Malabaricum, the silk-cotton tree, is very thorny.

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