བསླབ་པ་ལྔའ་ཕན་ཡན་གྱ་མད intro.10

intro.10

It is in this regard that mention should be made of a short passage¹² within the second part that is (as far as we can determine) unique to this text, and that many readers—even those fortified with a strong dose of historical and cultural relativism—will find strikingly discordant with present-day values. It is an extra description, seemingly interposed as a supplement to the section on sexual misconduct, that places a woman’s lack of subservience and obedience to her husband in a stark moral light with descriptions of its own specific fruition in the experience of the hell realms. None of the other descriptions in this text of negative actions and the violent sufferings experienced by hell beings as their fruition make pleasant reading; nor indeed do comparable passages in a number of other canonical works and in the later literature. But this particular passage stands out as an outlier, and it would seem justifiable that its canonical status might at least be questioned.