________________
BOOK I, LECTURE 5, CHAPTER I.
There the cruel punishers have lighted four fires, and roast the sinners; they are roasted there like fishes put on the fire alive. (13)
The prisoners in hell come to the dreadful place called Santakshana1 (i.e. cutting), where the cruel punishers tie their hands and feet, and with axes in their hands cut them like wooden planks. (14)
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. (15)
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. (16)
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. (17)
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). (18)
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. (19)
Being killed they are thrown into a hell which is
281
1 Here and in similar places the commentators do not take the word as a proper name, but as an epithet.
2 Anubhaga.
3 Or, with burning fire they roast them.
* See Uttarâdhyayana XIX, 69 ff., above p. 96.