History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v5.c71.s1.670

v5.c71.s1.670

One need not wonder at the crude ideas of *naraka* and *svarga* entertained by most ancient Indian writers and works. The same ideas were prevalent among peoples of all religions all the world over. For example, The Egyptians whose dynastic history covers a period of about 5000 years had very remarkable beliefs about Heaven and Hell which were illustrated with pictorical representations copiously (as no other nation had ever done), although the oldest Books of the Dead are without illustrations of any sort (vide E. A. W. Budge's 'Egyptian Heaven and Hell', 1905 p. XI and 2). Sheol was the name the Hebrews gave to the gloomy abode of the dead in the lowest parts of the earth and it was a land of darkness, which was appointed as the house for all living (Job 10. 21-22 and 30. 23) The Greek Hades closely resembles the Hebrew Sheol in its chief characteristics. In the New Testament also Hell is a land of everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels and it is a place where the wicked go into everlasting torment and punishment, while the righteous attain life eternal (Matthew 25. 41 and 46, Luke 16.23). The words of the New Testament are plain enough that Heaven was supposed to be a place above the earth and the clouds and that Hell was a place below the earth full of darkness and torments. Vide Luke 23. 43, Ephesians I. 3 and 20, II. Cor. 12. 4, Rev. 2. 7 ; and Luke 12.5 and 16.23; II. Peter 2.4 and Rev. 6 8, 20. 13–14. Bloomfield in his ‘Religion of the Veda’ p. 252 remarks ‘In later Hindu times Hell is filled out with the usual gruesome stage-setting in the style of Dante’s Inferno or the wall painting in the campo santo at Pisa’. Even men of genius like Shakespeare and most Christian theologians⁴⁰⁹ down even to modern times believed in a literal interpretation of passages from the Bible which speak of Heaven and Hell as places. It is only recently that many Christians have begun to hold that the language of the Bible about Heaven and Hell is purely symbolical in character⁴¹⁰.