經律異相 50.4

50.4

The Avīci Hell (in the Liang language, 'unobstructed', also called 'incessant', or 'fierce fire entering the heart') is exactly eight thousand yojanas in length and breadth. It has seven layers of iron walls and seven tiers of iron nets. Below, there are eighteen compartments, encircled in seven folds, all of which are forests of knives. There are further seven folds of forests of swords. At the four corners are four great copper dogs, forty yojanas wide and long; their eyes are like flashing lightning, their fangs like sword-trees, their teeth like mountains of knives, their tongues like iron thorns. All the hair on their bodies burns with fierce fire, its smoke foul and stench-ridden. There are eighteen hell wardens whose mouths resemble yakṣas, their sixty-four eyes scattering iron pellets; their dog-like fangs protrude upwards four yojanas high, and streams of fire from the tips of their fangs scorch and boil iron carts. Fire bursts from the wheel-rims, and sharp-bladed swords and halberds burn the city of Avīci so that it is red like molten copper. The wardens have eight heads and sixty horns; fires burn at the tips of their horns, and the fire transforms into copper, and again into knife-wheels, which in succession amid the blazing flames fill the city of Avīci. Inside the city are seven iron banners; fire wells up like boiling liquid iron, and molten iron spurts out of the four gates. Above, there are eighteen cauldrons, overflowing with boiling copper to fill the city. Between two compartments are eighty-four thousand great iron pythons, spitting venom into the fire, filling the interior of the city with their bodies; their roaring is like heavenly thunder, raining down five hundred great iron pellets. Furthermore, five hundred billion worms, each with eighty-four thousand beaks from whose tips streams of fire pour like rain, fill the city of Avīci. When these worms descend, fierce fire flares intensely, illuminating eighty-four thousand yojanas above the hell, surging against the great ocean and Mount Wojiao, piercing straight through down to the bottom of the ocean like axle-trees dripping. If anyone kills their father, harms their mother, or curses and reviles their six close kin, at the time of their death the copper dogs transform into eighteen carts, shaped like jewelled canopies; all the flames transform into jade maidens. Seeing them from afar, the sinners are pleased at heart and wish to go thither. When the wind-knives dismember them, freezing cold in their distress makes them lose their voices; they wish only to obtain good fire and be comfortably placed on the cart to warm themselves by the fire. Immediately upon dying, they sit in the golden carts and gaze at the jade maidens, but all [the maidens] take iron axes and hack their bodies to pieces. In the time it takes to bend or extend an arm, they fall straight into Avīci. From the upper compartment, like a whirling wheel of fire, they reach the lower compartment, their bodies filling the compartment. The copper dogs roar loudly, biting bones and sucking marrow. The rākṣasa hell wardens take great axes to chop them, and use pitchforks to spear their necks and make them stand up, their entire bodies engulfed in flames filling the Avīci Hell. King Yama declares with a loud voice: 'Foolish men, seed of hell! When you were in the world, you were unfilial to your parents and perverse, arrogant, and without principle. The place where you are born now is called the Avīci Hell!' The wardens again take them from the lower compartment up to the upper compartment, passing through eighty-four thousand compartments, their suspended bodies passing through all the way to the border of the iron net. A single day and night is sixty small kalpas in Jambudvīpa, lasting for an entire great kalpa. Those who commit the five heinous crimes, at the point of death, eighteen wind-knives like iron fire-carts dismember and hack their bodies. Because they are oppressed by the heat, they make this thought: 'If I could obtain beautiful flowers and cool, great trees to play beneath, would that not be delightful?' When they make this thought, eighty-four thousand evil forests of swords transform into jewelled trees, their flowers and fruits lush and arrayed before them; the intensely hot flames transform into lotus blossoms. The sinners, swifter than torrential rain, sit upon the lotus blossoms. The iron-beaked worms arise from the fiery blossoms, boring through their bones and entering their bodies, writhing about. All the sword-branches shave away their flesh and bones; boundless forests of knives descend from above; and the eighteen painful matters such as fire-carts and burning coals all arrive at once to greet them. When this appearance manifests, they sink into the earth. From the lower compartment their bodies spread out like blooming flowers, filling the lower compartment, while the fire below blazes fiercely. Reaching the upper compartment, their bodies fill it; because the burning distress is acute, their eyes open wide and their tongues protrude. Tens of billions of [streams of] molten copper and hundreds of thousands of knife-wheels descend from the sky, entering at the neck and exiting at the feet. All these painful matters exceed what was described above by hundreds of thousands of times. Those who have committed all five heinous crimes suffer punishment for five kalpas. Furthermore, there are sentient beings who violate the four grave prohibitions, vainly consume the offerings of the faithful, slander [the Dharma] with false views, do not recognise cause and effect, sever the study of prajñā, defame the Buddhas of the ten directions, steal the property of the Saṅgha, act lustfully without principle, violate pure-precepted nuns, sisters, and female relatives, and commit all manner of evil deeds. As the karmic retribution of such people, at the point of death, wind-knives dismember their bodies; they toss and turn on their beds without rest, as though being flogged. Their minds are wildly disordered and they give rise to mad and foolish thoughts, seeing their own chambers, men and women, young and old, as nothing but impure things, with feces, urine, and foul stenches overflowing outside. The rākṣasa wardens lift them up on great iron forks. The Avīci Hell and the various forests of knives transform into jewelled trees and cool ponds; the flames transform into golden-leaved lotuses; the various iron-beaked worms transform into ducks and geese; and the sounds of bitter pain seem like melodious songs. When the sinners hear this, they think: 'I shall sport therein.' Sitting upon the fire-lotuses, the various creatures vie to tear them apart; dogs eat their hearts. In an instant, their bodies, like iron flowers, fill the eighteen compartments. These sinners undergo eighty-four thousand great kalpas, and then re-enter the eighteen compartments in the eastern direction, suffering pain as before; and so too in the south, west, and north. Those who slander the Vaipulya sūtras, commit all five heinous crimes, destroy the Saṅgha, defile bhikṣuṇīs, sever all wholesome roots, and possess all manner of sins fill the Avīci Hell with their bodies, and their four limbs also fill the eighteen compartments. This Avīci Hell burns only such sentient beings who are the seed of hell. When the kalpa is about to end, the eastern gate opens; outside the eastern gate, clear springs, flowing water, and forests of flowering and fruiting trees all appear at once. When these sinners see from the lower compartment that the bright fire has temporarily subsided, they rise from the lower compartment, crawling on their bellies and slithering along, scrambling upward until they reach the upper compartment. Their hands clutch the knife-wheels; meanwhile, hot iron pellets rain down from the sky. They run toward the eastern gate, and once they reach the threshold, the rākṣasa hell wardens take iron pitchforks in hand and stab them straight through the eyes; iron dogs gnaw their hearts, and they swoon and die. The south, west, and north gates are also like this, lasting for half a kalpa.