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The Ways of Action (Sūyagada II 2.)
side, square"? (and) in depth the form of a knife (-blade), of eternal darkness,
[insofar as) without the shine of planets, moon, sun, houses of the moon and (other) fixed stars; the ground (there) is slimy through lard, flesh, blood, pus, (and) rubbish in
masses;119
68.
horribly stinking because of filth [and] excrement,120 with an uncertain glow of fire, 121 sharp to the touch, unbearable. The hells [are] bad, the feeling in the hells bad. 122 The hell beings do not sleep and slumber, they do not accept 123) rest, 124 nor satisfaction or reason. The beings in hell continuously feel hot, strong, deep, hard, sharp, cruel, bad, heavy, bitter, unbearable pain. Just as when a tree growing on a mountain peak is felled from the root plunges into the depths, an abyss, a wilderness, because it is heavy on the top, exactly like that such a man (plunges) from one womb to another, from birth to birth, from death to death, from suffering to suffering; she is] destined for the land of death, determined for hell, a child of death, and will with difficulty arrive at the knowledge which the future [liberators will proclaim).125 This
attitude ... (like 57, until) impious. With this, then, the discourse of the first case, of guilt, has taken place. Now the
69.
"It is already indicated through the brackets that this description does not present the form of a single hell, which would also be difficult to imagine in this form, but of all their kinds. Later Jaina dogmatics (Jīvābh. 215ff., Pannav 87) describe more exactly how the middle hells are round and those which are around them in rows are triangular or square, whereas the lowest four in the four directions are spread out triangularly (namely, like the blade of a knife).
118 $il. and DỊ derive -pahā from path, "way," not from prabhā, "lustre."
119 The indented lines entail a gāhā part which we often come across in connection with vedhas incidentally, Šil. knows the reading nicc 'andha-tamasā), and two of them, of which only the second is disturbed in the middle, because in meya-vasā-mamsa-ruhira-puya-padala-cikkhalla-littânulevana-talā, by changing padala and cikkhalla, an odd gana is missing after pūya (read püyana). As far as I can see these vedhas are new to those known from the Uvav., Jin., and Nāyādh.
120 Śil. and, following him, Dț, separate asui-visā from parama-dubbhigandha. May we see here also a vedha, at least a remainder of it?
121 Instead of kanhā CD correctly have kāū, which however in C is also erroneously rendered as krsna, whereas Dt aims at käpota (kāpotâgni-varn 'ābhaḥ, dhamyamäna-lohågni-jvāla-kalpa iti bhāvah). The description here is invalidated by the metrical details about the eternal darkness inserted earlier. 122 D has narayassa. 12 In German annehmen, but obviously to obtain, to have a rest, or 'to know what rest is, is meant (WB). - Before this sūim, allegedly śrutim. (Jacobi 1895, p. 376 n. 2 and the 1917 ed. read suim (WB).)
125 Compare 56.
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