Garudapurana 2.16

The Holy Garuḍa Mahāpurāṇa — 16
The Blessed Lord said:
As that ghost laments in this manner, O Lord of Birds, / crying out unceasingly and tortured by the attendants,

he is dragged alone along the aerial path for seventeen days; / and on the eighteenth day and night, he arrives first at the city of Yama.

In that delightful, supreme city there is a vast host of ghosts; / there flows the river Puṣpabhadrā, and there stands a pleasant-looking banyan tree.

In that city he is granted rest by Yama's attendants; / there, deeply sorrowful, he remembers wife, children, and previous comforts.

He weeps with pitiful words, afflicted by thirst and tormented by fatigue; / [remembering] his own wealth, his own wives, home, sons, and pleasures,

servants, friends, and other things, he grieves for all of them then; / and in that city, to him afflicted by hunger, it is said by the attendants:

The attendants said:
Where is wealth? Where are sons and wife? Where is home? Where are you now in such a state? / Enjoy what was earned by your own deeds! Walk for a long time along the Great Path!

You know that the strength of travelers depends on provisions, but as a traveler to the next world, you did not strive for provisions. / You must certainly travel by that path where there is no buying or selling for you.

O bird, have you not heard these words spoken by Yama's messengers? / Thus addressed by all, he is then beaten with clubs.

He eats the monthly rice-ball given here by sons into a vessel out of affection or compassion; / from there he travels to the city of Śauri.

There indeed rules a king named Jaṅgama, assuming the form of Time; / terrified on seeing him, [the ghost] sets his mind on rest.

Having arrived in that city, he eats the water and food; / what was offered at the forty-five-day rite, [he eats, and then] departs that city.

The ghost travels day and night to the pleasant city of Nagendra; / as he goes, seeing terrible forests, he weeps there.

Tormented by fearsome things, he weeps again and again; / at the end of two months, he reaches beyond that city.

Having eaten the food and drunk the water given here by relatives, / tormented by nooses, he is then led away by Yama's attendants.

When the third month arrives, [he reaches] the auspicious city of the Gandharvas; / having eaten the third monthly offering, he proceeds onward from there.

In the fourth month, he reaches the city of Śailāgama; / there stones rain down upon the ghost stationed below.

Having eaten the funeral offering of the fourth month, he finds comfort there.

Then, in the fifth month, the ghost proceeds to the city of Krūra; / stationed in that city, the ghost eats what is given here by sons; / then, in the sixth month, the ghost travels to the city named Krauñca.

Nourished in that city by the rice-ball given in the funeral rite, / having rested for half a muhūrta, trembling and deeply grieving,

passing beyond that city, threatened by Yama's attendants, / he journeys to Citranagara, where Vicitra is the king,

where indeed Śauri, the younger brother of Yama, rules the kingdom; / at five and a half months comes the lesser six-month rite.

Beaten by Yama's servants, he consumes the lesser six-month offering there; / on the path, hunger torments him severely again and again.

'Since I died, does any son or relative of mine remain / who might bring comfort to me as I fall into an ocean of grief?'

Thus he laments on the way, restrained by the attendants; / then boatmen come toward him there by the thousands:

'For you who wish to cross the great river Vaitaraṇī, / a hundred leagues wide and crowded with pus and blood,

thronged with various fish and surrounded by flocks of various birds, / we shall carry you across with ease,' they say.

'Pay the fare, O traveler, if you have a great desire [to cross]!' / By the cow given by him there, he advances by that boat; / a gift at the time of death is remembered as beneficial to humans at the Vaitaraṇī.

It burns away all great sin and leads to the world of Viṣṇu; / if [a cow] was not given, O best of birds, he approaches it and sinks.

While the body is still in a healthy state here, one should perform the rite of Vaitaraṇī; / and a cow should be given to a wise man by one wishing to cross that river.

Helplessly sinking, he censures himself through his own self: / 'Nothing was given by me to a brahmin for provisions for the road;

nothing was given, no oblation made, no mantra chanted, no ritual bath taken, no praise offered; / foolish one, reap what kind of deeds you performed!'

Then, utterly deluded in heart, beaten by soldiers, he laments; / on the other bank of the Vaitaraṇī, he consumes the water pot and other things that were given.

Having eaten the lesser six-month funeral offering, he proceeds ahead; / O Tārkṣya, there one should especially feed virtuous brahmins.

Two hundred and forty-seven leagues / he travels each day, O Tārkṣya, emaciated by day and night.

When the seventh month arrives, he reaches the city of Bahvāpada; / having consumed there the seventh monthly funeral offering that was presented,

when the eighth month arrives, he goes to the city of Nānākrandapura; / seeing crowds of various wailers crying out most dreadfully,

he himself, with an empty heart, wails aloud in distress; / and having eaten the funeral offering of that month, he finds comfort there.

Leaving that city, the ghost proceeds toward the city of Tapta; / reaching the city of Sutapta in the ninth month, he consumes / the offering of rice-balls and food for brahmins performed in the funeral rite by his son.

When the tenth month arrives, he goes to a terrible place; / having consumed what was offered in the tenth month, he departs.

Having eaten the eleventh-month offering, he reaches Payovarṣaṇa; / clouds rain down there, inflicting suffering upon ghosts.

Departing from there, afflicted with great heat and thirst, / he eats there the funeral offering of the twelfth month, deeply distressed.

Then, at a little less than a year, or at eleven and a half months, / he goes to the city of Śītapura, where the cold brings extreme suffering.

Afflicted by cold and hungry, he looks in the ten directions: / 'May some relative stand by who might remove my suffering!'

The attendants say to him thus: "Where indeed is such merit of yours?" / Having heard their words, he cries out: "Alas, Fate!"

"Fate is indeed previous good deeds, and that was never accumulated by me!" / Having reflected thus many times, he once again summons his courage.

Forty-four yojanas from there, indeed, / lies the delightful city of the King of Dharma, crowded with gandharvas and apsarases,

inhabited by eighty-four hundred thousand embodied and unembodied beings. / Thirteen gatekeepers dwell in the city of the King of Dharma.

Constantly deliberating on whatever action is good or evil, / the Śravaṇas, the sons of Brahmā, having been honoured, themselves report / to the world the conduct of human beings.

Whatever has been spoken and done by satisfied and nourished people, / they reported all of that to Citragupta and to Yama.

Possessing knowledge through hearing from afar, having objects of vision from afar, / such are the activities of those eight, who traverse heaven, earth, and the underworld.

Likewise, their wives, formidable and bearing individual names, are the Śravaṇīs; / such power belongs to them, who have authority over mortals.

Whatever person worships them here with religious observances, gifts, and hymns of praise, / to that one they become gentle, bestowing an easy death.

Thus ends the sixteenth chapter, entitled "The Description of the Journey of the Departed Spirit and Other Matters", in the Pretakalpa of the Dharma section, in the second part of the Uttarakhaṇḍa in the glorious Garuḍa Mahāpurāṇa, in the dialogue between Śrī Kṛṣṇa and Garuḍa.