Bhagavatapurana 5.26

English (machine translation) 5.26

Language: English

5.26.38 — 1 part
5.26.39 — 1 part

5.26.1

The king said: O great sage, why is there such diversity among living beings in this world?

The sage said:
Because of the three qualities of the performer and according to his faith, the paths of action are of distinct kinds; they all come about in graded differences for everyone.
Now, in the same way, on account of the diversity of the performer's faith, the fruit of adharma—which has the nature of the forbidden—is diverse. We shall describe in detail these paths numbering in the thousands, which arise from the desires formed through beginningless ignorance and are characterized by their transformations.

5.26.3

The king said:
O Lord, are the hells specific regions, or are they outside the three worlds, or in the intermediate space?

5.26.4

The sage said:
They are indeed in the intermediate space of the three worlds, in the southern quarter, beneath the earth and above the waters, in which quarter the ancestors such as the Agniṣvāttas reside, wishing with supreme contemplation only true blessings upon their own lineages.

5.26.5

There indeed the lord Vaivasvata, king of the ancestors, together with his retinue, never transgressing the command of the Lord, executes punishment upon living beings who have died and been brought to his domain by his attendants, strictly according to the fault of their action.

5.26.6

There, some count twenty-one hells. Now, O King, we shall enumerate them by name, form, and characteristics: Tāmisra, Andhatāmisra, Raurava, Mahāraurava, Kumbhīpāka, Kālasūtra, Asipatravana, Sūkaramukha, Andhakūpa, Kṛmibhojana, Sandaṃśa, Taptasūrmi, Vajrakaṇṭakaśālmalī, Vaitaraṇī, Pūyoda, Prāṇarodha, Viśasana, Lālābhakṣa, Sārameyādana, Avīci, and Ayaḥpāna. Moreover: Kṣārakardama, Rakṣogaṇabhojana, Śūlaprota, Dandaśūka, Avaṭanirodhana, Paryāvartana, and Sūcīmukha—thus there are twenty-eight hells, realms of various torments.

5.26.7

There, he who steals the wealth, children, or wives of others is bound by the noose of Time and forcefully cast down by the terrifying servants of Yama into the Tāmisra hell. There, tortured by torments such as deprivation of food and water, beatings with rods, and intimidation, the living being reaches bewilderment and repeatedly falls into a faint in that gloom-filled place.

5.26.8

In this very way, into Andhatāmisra falls the person who, having deceived someone, enjoys his wife and the like. There, cast down and undergoing torture, the embodied being loses his reason and loses his sight due to the pain, like a tree whose roots are being severed; therefore they call it Andhatāmisra.

5.26.9

He who in this world, thinking 'I am this' and 'this is mine', sustains solely his own family day by day by inflicting harm upon living beings, leaves that [family] behind here and, by that very unwholesome deed, falls into Raurava alone.

5.26.10

Those beings who were harmed by him in this world become rurus in the next world and inflict harm on him in the same manner when he has come under the torments of Yama; therefore they call it Raurava. 'Ruru' is a designation for a creature more cruel than a serpent.

5.26.11

In this very way is Mahāraurava, where carnivorous beings named rurus kill with flesh that man who was cast down there, who was merely a nourisher of his own body.

5.26.12

He who in this world, being cruel, cooks animals or birds while they are alive—that unmerciful man, despised even by man-eaters, the attendants of Yama cook in boiling oil in Kumbhīpāka in the next world.

5.26.13

He who in this world harms a brāhmaṇa is placed in the hell named Kālasūtra, which is ten thousand yojanas in circumference, made of copper, a heated surface severely scorched from above and below by fire and the sun; burning with hunger and thirst inside and outside his body, he sits, lies down, wriggles, stands, and runs around for as many thousands of years as there are hairs on the animal.

5.26.14

He who in this world, without being in distress, abandons his own Vedic path and takes to heresy—making him enter Asipatravana, they strike him with a whip. Running here and there, his entire body sliced by the sword-like leaves of the palmyra grove with double edges, crying 'Alas, I am ruined!', he faints from supreme pain and falls at every step; the destroyer of his own dharma experiences the fruit conforming to heresy.

5.26.15

A king or a king's official who in this world inflicts punishment upon one who is not to be punished, or corporal punishment upon a brāhmaṇa—that most sinful man falls in the other world into the Sūkaramukha hell. There, his limbs being crushed by very powerful beings just like sugarcane here, wailing in an agonized voice, he sometimes faints and falls into bewilderment, just as innocent people here are imprisoned.

5.26.16

He who in this world, having a livelihood devised by humans and possessing awareness of others' pain, inflicts pain upon living beings whose livelihood is ordained by the Lord and who do not possess awareness of others' pain, falls in the other world into Andhakūpa because of that hostility. There, being attacked on all sides in the darkness by those very creatures—beasts, wild animals, birds, reptiles, mosquitoes, lice, bedbugs, flies, and whatever else was harmed by him—his rest and sleep shattered, finding no stable place, he wanders around like an embodied soul in a wretched body.

5.26.17

He who in this world eats whatever has come to him without sharing, performing no five daily sacrifices and praised [only] by crows, falls in the other world into Kṛmibhojana, the lowest of hells. There, in a worm-pit of a hundred thousand yojanas, having become a worm himself and being eaten by worms while eating worms, that eater of food unoffered and ungiven tortures himself until he has atoned for it.

5.26.18

A man who in this world, without being in distress, takes away gold, jewels, and the like from a brāhmaṇa or anyone else by theft or by force—him, O King, the servants of Yama scrape on his skin with tongs that are fiery balls of iron.

5.26.19

He who in this world approaches an inaccessible woman, or a woman who approaches an inaccessible man—the two of them, being struck with a whip in the other world, they cause the man to embrace a red-hot female effigy made of iron, and the woman an effigy having the form of a man.

5.26.20

He who in this world engages in indiscriminate sexual intercourse is taken to hell in the next world, where [Yama's servants] force him to climb a silk-cotton tree with adamantine thorns and then drag him down.

5.26.21

Those royalty or royal officials in this world who, though not apostates, breach the dams of dharma, fall at death into the Vaitaraṇī, having transgressed boundaries. In that river, which serves as the moat of hell, bitten on every side by aquatic monsters yet never separated from life by their vital breaths, swept along by the currents, recalling the fruitions of their own sinful deeds, they are tormented in that stream bearing feces, urine, pus, blood, hair, nails, bones, marrow, flesh, and fat.

5.26.22

Those who in this world are husbands of low-caste women, who have abandoned purity, good conduct, and religious rules, and casting aside all shame behave like beasts, fall after death into an ocean filled with pus, feces, urine, phlegm, and filth, and eat that exceedingly revolting substance.

5.26.23

Those who in this world keep packs of dogs and donkeys, whether brāhmaṇas or others, and roaming about on hunts kill deer unlawfully, are themselves made into targets after death and pierced with arrows by Yama's servants.

5.26.24

Those hypocrites who in this world slaughter animals in fraudulent sacrifices are cast into the hell named Vaiśasa in that other world, where the lords of hell torment them and then slaughter them.

5.26.25

A twice-born man who in this world, deluded by lust, forces his wife of the same caste to drink his semen, is cast into a canal of semen in the next world, and the [hell-guards] force that sinner to drink semen.

5.26.26

Those robbers, incendiaries, poisoners, kings, or royal soldiers who in this world pillage villages or merchant caravans are, after death, torn to pieces and furiously devoured by seven hundred and twenty adamantine-toothed dogs of the messengers of Yama.

5.26.27

He who in this world speaks falsehood in bearing witness, in trading goods, or in making a gift, is after death thrown headlong from the peak of a mountain a hundred yojanas high into the hell called Avīcimat, where there is no foothold and where a surface of stone appears like water; his body is shattered into pieces like sesame seeds, but not dying, he is repeatedly raised up and cast down again.

5.26.28

If a brāhmaṇa, kṣatriya, or vaiśya who has drunk soma, or his wife, or anyone under a religious vow, drinks liquor through heedlessness, they are led to hell in the next life, where [Yama's servants] step upon their chests and pour molten black iron into their mouths with fire.

5.26.29

Furthermore, he who in this world, being base himself, conceitedly fails to honor his superiors who possess birth, austerity, learning, conduct, and correct caste and stage of life, is indeed a living corpse; upon dying, he is cast head downwards into the hell called Kṣārakardama, where he suffers endless torment.

5.26.30

Those men who in this world sacrifice human beings in human sacrifices, and those women who eat human flesh, are slaughtered in Yama's abode like animals by the hosts of rākṣasas; who, tormenting them like butchers, carve off [their flesh] with an axe, drink their blood, and dance and sing rejoicing, just as cannibals do here.

5.26.31

Those who in this world torment innocent creatures that wish to live, having lured them by trust in the forest or in a village, and impaling them on spikes and threads treat them as toys—they too, after death, are impaled on spikes and the like in the torments of Yama; afflicted by hunger and thirst, and struck on all sides by herons, vultures, and other sharp-beaked birds, they remember the sins they committed.

5.26.32

Those humans of savage nature who in this world terrify living beings like serpents, fall after death into the hell named Dandaśūka, where, O King, five-headed and seven-headed serpents approach and swallow them, just as [serpents swallow] mice in their holes.

5.26.33

Those who in this world confine living beings in dark pits, grain bins, and caves, are in like manner confined in those very places in the next world by blazing fire and poisonous smoke.

5.26.34

A householder who in this world repeatedly glares with an evil eye at guests or visitors as if wishing to burn them with rising anger—in hell, the eyes of that evil-eyed person are violently gouged out with great force by adamantine-beaked vultures, herons, crows, and owls.

5.26.35

He who in this world is proud of his wealth, arrogant, looking askance at others, suspicious of everything, his face and heart withered by anxiety over the expense and loss of his wealth, knowing no happiness, and guarding his money like an evil spirit—he, possessed by the sin of acquiring, increasing, and protecting that [wealth], falls after death into the hell named Sūcīmukha, where the agents of the King of Dharma, like weavers, stitch that sinful man, seized by greed for wealth, with threads all over his limbs.

5.26.36

Such hells exist by hundreds and thousands in the realm of Yama. Into all of them, O ruler of the earth, all those who follow unrighteousness—both those mentioned here and those not mentioned—enter in turn; just so do those who follow dharma enter the other realms; and then, in their rebirth here, they enter according to the remainder of both [kinds of karma].

5.26.37

The path characterized by cessation has already been explained at the very beginning. Such is the cosmic egg, which is described and sung of in fourteen divisions in the Purāṇas; he who reverently reads, hears, or recites this, the grossest form of the Lord Nārāyaṇa, the Supreme Person Himself, composed of the qualities of His own creative power, understands with an intellect purified by faith and devotion that which is fit to be sung of the Lord, the Supreme Self, though beyond ordinary grasp.

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The Srimad Bhagavatam — S. Subba Rau 1928, English

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Bhāgavatapurāṇa — Vyāsa, Sanskrit

Bhagavatapurana 5.26

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