Epic Mythology c6.s3.3

c6.s3.3

§ 55. In hell, cruel men with clubs, lances, and pots of fire torment sinners, who are also tortured by forests of swords, hot sands, thorny trees, and yātanās (torments) of various kinds, until, purified but not yet free, they are reborn as worms, etc. (13, 111, 92 f.). Men slay again here those already slain; a field of carnage, where lie heaps of slain men, horses, and elephants, resembles the realm of Yama (8, 92, 10). Incorporate though the ghosts be, yet these Pretas feel the mutilations to which they are exposed and shriek aloud. Worms gnaw them; dogs (sārameyas) devour them; they are plunged into the river of blood, Vaitaraṇī; they are burned in hot sand, cut by sword-leaf trees, plunged into the hell of roaring, Raurava, and into the river of acids, kṣāranadī (Vaitaraṇī), and cut on razor-blades. They beg in vain for water; they hunger and thirst, and are pale and wretched, appearing, with loosened hair, muddy and rough (R 7, 21, 12 f.). Both the river of acids and the river of pus (above) are elsewhere unknown to either epic, but Jain literature recognises the