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denoting the state of existence which bespeaks of liva's unspeakable suffering and intense agony. It stands for the hell of the Christians with this difference only that according to the Christian idea, a jiva once condemned for an act of sin against God into any of its numerous chambers, cannot expect to return, however penitent it might be subsequent to its being condemned there. But the Jain view of the question is that by the narak gati karma or the set of action-currents corresponding to it, a Jiva may indeed be led to live in and suffer in this abode of tortures and torments, but with the dissipation of the particular karmu which drifted it into an abode like this, and if there be no other determinant causes and conditions working upon the jiva to prolong its period of existence in this suffocating condition, it gets rid of this state of existence and retires to some other gati-abode,
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