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PADMAPRABHACARITRA
295
to pieces when it had touched the ground. They have great pain produced by each other and by asuras. Tortured by pain of these three kinds, they dwell in the hells. Produced in buckets on water-wheels they are dragged like leaden pegs by force by Adhărmikas 487 through small openings. They are beaten on the top of rocks, like clothes by washermen, by them (asuras) seizing their hands, feet, etc. full of hard splinters. They are cut, like logs of wood, by cruel saws; then they are ground like sesame-seed by various machines. Afflicted by thirst, the miserable wretches are dipped into the river Vaitarani which has a stream of hot tin and lead. Longing for shade they go quickly to a grove of asipattra (sword-leaved), where they are cut into little pieces repeatedly by falling knives. Full of hard thorns from the seemul tree, 488 they are made to embrace maidens of hot iron, reminded of enjoyment of other men's wives. They are forced to eat flesh from their own bodies reminding them of their eagerness for meat; and making them recall a fondness for liquor, they are compelled to drink hot tin. They are made to experience pains from cooking in a frying-pan, boiler, on big stakes, in earthen jars, etc. unceasingly, and they are roasted like meat on spits. The limbs, eyes, etc. of creatures that have been cut up and divided and their bodies put together again, are dragged out by birds, cranes, herons, etc. So destroyed by great pain, deprived of an atom of comfort, they pass a long time, up to thirtythree sāgaras.
Animal-births (100–127) Even when they have reached the animal condition of existence, and have attained the stage of one-sensed creatures, etc., and in it have acquired the form of earth-bodies, they are divided by implements such as plows; they are • 437 90. Adhārmika=paramadhārmika, the name of these demons. See I, n. 58.
488 95. Bombax Malabaricum, the silk-cotton tree, is very thorny.
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