________________
BOOK 1, LECTURE 5, CHAPTER 2.
285
hands and feet, and belabour him with sticks like an enemy. (13)
They break the sinner's back with a weapon, and smash his skull with iron clubs; their bodies are split and sawn like a plank; and tortured with red-hot awls (the sinners) are subjected (to cruelties). (14)
Cruel evildoers :, urged on with arrows, and put to work (by the punishers), carry burdens in the way of elephants; two or three (punishers) get on one (victim) and growing angry ? hurt his vital parts. (15)
The sinners are driven over the large, slippery, and thorny ground; tightly bound with straps: they lose their senses; the revenging (punishers) cut them into pieces“, and throw them about like a bali-sacrifice. (16)
There is a dreadful mountain towering high up in the air, called Vaitâlika 5, where the evildoers are tortured for more than a thousand hours. (17)
Tortured, the sinners shriek, suffering day and night; in this horrid, great hell, which is full of implements of torture, they are put to a cruel death. (18)
Full of wrath, like their enemies in a former life,
i Ruddaasâhukammî = raudra-asadhu-karmânah. Silânka thinks that the ministers of hell are meant; but then the verse will not construe.
3 See note on verse 3.
3 Vivaddhatappêhim, in a marginal gloss, explained: baddhva karmabandhanaih. But it might also be vivridd hatâpaih 'under increased tortures.'
• Kotta = kuta yitva.
5 Vêtâliya. The commentators render it vaikriya 'produced by magic,' and moreover explain the word as an epithet, not as a proper name.
