On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v2.c19.11

v2.c19.11

This short history of Asoka's Hell was probably condensed from the legends in the Divyāvadāna and "Tsa-a-han-ching".¹ These agree closely in all the main incidents, and differ in some particulars, from the story as told in other books. According to the former accounts king Asoka had burned to death 500 ladies of his harem, and his chief minister Rādhagupta (called also Anuruddha), reminding him that such proceedings were unseemly for a king, recommended His Majesty to institute a place of punishment under a proper official. The king took the advice, and caused a jail or place of punishment to be constructed, a handsome attractive building with trees and tanks like a city. After search and enquiry a sufficiently cruel, ugly, wicked man named Chaṇḍa-Giri, in Chinese O-shan (惡山) or “Wicked Hill”, was found for the post of jailer; he was duly installed and allowed to make the rule that no one who went in was to be let out. The jail was furnished with the tortures described in a Buddhist book on the infernal places of punishment, Wicked Hill having listened to a monk of the Ketuma monastery reading this exhilarating treatise aloud. But according to Fa-hsien¹ and others Asoka had personally visited the infernal regions (the hells within the Iron Hills), and studied their tortures. Now Wicked Hill in this cruel Hell of Despair had boiled, roasted, pounded to fragments, and otherwise tortured to death very many wretched victims. But one day a stranger bhikshu named Samudra, in Chinese Hai or “Sea”, in ignorance and by accident, came to the gate of the Prison, and wandered in, attracted by the beauties of the place. Wicked Hill immediately had the bhikshu seized and was proceeding to boil him when the bhikshu piteously implored a short respite. The jailer demurred at first but at length yielded. At that time one of the king's concubines arrived to undergo punishment for misconduct. She was at once pounded to atoms in the presence of the bhikshu. The latter now made the most of his respite, and by zealous application became an arhat. When his time for being boiled came, events occurred as Yuan-chuang relates. We have the story of Asoka's Hell-prison told also by Fa-hsien; but he places the site about half a mile to the south of the city, whereas Yuan-chuang places it to the north. Fa-hsien's account is not taken from the “Divyāvadāna”, but it agrees with that work in placing the site of the Hell near the tope erected by Asoka over Ajātasattu's share of Buddha's relics. Yuan-chuang also seems to have found the site near, and to the north of, the Relics Tope as Fa-hsien describes. Our pilgrim's statements, however, are not quite consistent with themselves. But as he remained at the place for seven days visiting all the sacred traces his account is not to be set aside lightly.