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142
VISHNU.
XLIII, 26.
26. Criminals in the fourth degree, for the period of a Katuryuga;
27. Those who have committed a crime effecting loss of caste, for a thousand years;
28. Those who have committed a crime degrading to a mixed caste, for the same period;
29. Those likewise who have committed a crime rendering unworthy to receive alms and the like.
30. And those who have committed a crime causing defilement;
31. Those who have committed one of the miscellaneous crimes, for a great number of years;
32. All sinners who have committed (one of those nine kinds of) crimes have to suffer terrible pangs, when they have departed life and entered upon the path of Yama.
33. Being dragged hither and thither (upon even and uneven roads), by the dire ministers of Yama, they are conducted (to hell by them), with menacing gestures.
34. (There) they are devoured by dogs and jackals, by hawks, crows, herons, cranes, and other (carnivorous animals), by (bears and other) animals having fire in their mouth, and by serpents and scorpions.
35. They are scorched by blazing fire, pierced by thorns, divided into parts by saws, and tormented by thirst.
36. They are agitated by hunger and by fearful troops of tigers, and faint away at every step on account of the foul stenches proceeding from pus and from blood.
31. 'A great number of years' means three hundred years. (Nand.)
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