History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v5.c71.s1.600

v5.c71.s1.600

It is now necessary at this stage to enter upon a historical though brief account of the idea of Hell and of its opposite Heaven³⁵⁹ There are in the Ṛgveda hardly any clear or express references to Hell In Ṛg II. 29.6 the sage prays to the Viśve-Devas ‘save me from the pit, from falling down into it’ (trādhvaṁ kartād-avapado yajatrāḥ). In Ṛg IV 5 5 it is said³⁶⁰ that those men who are bereft of *ṛta* and *satya*, being sinful, create a deep place for themselves. In Ṛg. VII. 104.3 the poet calls upon Indra and Soma to strike down³⁶¹ into bottomless darkness evil-doers, and in VII. 104.11 the poet prays that whatever enemy desires to harm the poet by day or night may be deprived of his body and progeny and may be hurled below the three earths Indra is implored in Ṛg X. 152.4 by the sage to send down into darkness whoever attacks him and his people. In Ṛg. IX. 73 8 Soma is said to throw down in a pit those who do not observe Soma's ordinances and who are disliked by him. From these passages what emerges is that the sages of the Ṛgveda had some faint glimmerings of (or belief in) the idea of a dark deep pit below the earth to which wicked persons were relegated by the gods But there is no mention in the Ṛgveda of the tortures of Hell. It is in the Atharvaveda that we find the clearest references to Hell (Naraka). Sorcerers and demons dwell in a house below (the earth), according to A. V. II. 14. 3. Atharvaveda V. 30 11 asks a man to come out from death, from the deep and black darkness. In Atharvaveda ³⁶² V. 19. 3 it is asserted that those who spat in the face of a brāhmaṇa or who imposed a levy of money on him remain biting hair in the midst of a river of blood Atharvaveda XII. 4. 36 mentions ‘Nāraka-loka’. In the Vāj. S. XXX. 5 the *Vīrahan* ³⁶³ (i. e. one who gives up or extinguishes the consecrated Vedic fires) is relegated to *nāraka* (nārakāya vīrahaṇam). A *vīrahan* may also mean ‘one who kills a valiant man’ but that does not seem to be a proper sense in this passage of the Vāj S. In the Śat. Br. XI. 6. 1 4 we find a reference to torments of Hell, viz. men cutting up the limbs of others one by one for crimes committed The Tai. Ā I. 19 speaks of four *narakas* called Visarpin, Avisarpin, Viṣādin and Aviṣādin in the south-east, south-west, north west and north-east. From the Kathopaniṣad it appears that at that time there was a belief that those foolish men who do not know the Reality and who only believe in the existence of the mundane world alone have to be born again and again and fall into the hands of Yama ³⁶⁴ (II. 5–6) The same Upaniṣad (V. 7) states that after the death (of the body) some enter the womb in accordance with their actions and knowledge to have an embodied existence, while others go into fixed matter (the form of trees and the like). But that Upaniṣad says nothing about the torments of Hell. They were therefore probably not believed to exist in those days, at least, to the same degree as in the days of the Epics and Purāṇas. The very words at the beginning of the Katha Up. (I. 21 ‘devair-atrāpi vicikitsitam’) indicate that there were even then various views about the fate of the departed The Kauṣītaki Br (XI. 3) propounds the remarkable proposition that just as men in this world eat the (flesh of) beasts, so in the next world the beasts eat men.³⁶⁵