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282
SÛTRAKRITÂNGA.
full of boiling filth. There they stay eating filth, and they are eaten by vermin. (20)
And there is an always crowded, hot place, which men deserve for their great sins, and which is full of misery! (The punishers) put them in shackles, beat their bodies, and torment them (by perforating) their skulls with drills. (21)
They cut off the sinner's nose with a razor, they cut off both his ears and lips; they pull out his tongue a span's length and torment (him by piercing it) with sharp pikes. (22)
There the sinners dripping (with blood) whine day and night even as the dry leaves of a palm-tree (agitated by the wind). Their blood, matter, and flesh are dropping off while they are roasted, their bodies being besmeared with natron. (23)
Have you heard of the large, erected caldron of more than man's size, full of blood and matter, which is extremely heated by a fresh fire, in which blood and matter are boiling ? (24)
The sinners are thrown into it and boiled there, while they utter horrid cries of agony; they are made to drink molten lead and copper when they are thirsty, and they shriek still more horribly. (25)
Those evildoers who have here forfeited their souls' (happiness) for the sake of small (pleasures), and have been born in the lowest births during hundred thousands of 'former years,' will stay in this (hell). Their punishment will be adequate to their deeds. (26)
The wicked who have committed crimes will
Compare note on verse 12. The same lines recur in the next chapter, verse 13. The commentator gives the same explanation there as here.
