The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c34.s2.39

v2.c34.s2.39

The other side of the belief in heaven is the belief in hell. It is of course in itself perfectly possible that the Vedic Indian might not have believed in the existence of hell: the view that annihilation might be the fate of the souls which did not receive the boon of immortal life from the gods is not in itself absurd, but a hell is a natural complement to heaven, and in point of fact the Rigveda⁶ itself seems to contain references to a place of punishment, into which Indra and Soma are to hurl the evil doers so that not one can emerge; under the three earths is the place of the enemy and robber, and the demoness is to disappear in endless abysses. There occurs here and in a few other places the idea of the eternal punishment in a place of deep darkness of the evil.⁷ The idea of hell is made clear by the Atharvaveda⁸ which has the word Naraka Loka in contrast to Svarga, heaven, as the place for female goblins and sorceresses: it is also the place of the murderer,⁹ and appears as black, blind or the lowest darkness.¹ There is no trace of the fires of hell, nor of a wolf of hell in the Vedic literature,² nor can the view of Geldner³ that the word Vīci in the Rigveda⁴ directly denotes hell be accepted; but there is reason enough to hold that the idea was present in germ. The actual tortures of hell are reserved for later texts in the main, and are dwelt on by Buddhism in a way to make us realize that on the popular mind these horrors had due result. In the Atharvaveda⁵ the sinners who injure the Brahman sit in streams of blood eating hair, and in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁶ and the Jaiminīya the proud Bhṛgu goes to the other world, where he sees many horrible things such as men being cut to pieces, and men being eaten, and also the lord of the place as a black man with a staff and yellow eyes beside two maidens, one fair and one, described by an epithet *atikalyāṇī*, as either ‘very fair’ or ‘past her beauty’. The Jaiminīya mentions three hells and three heavens. Another horror is suggested by the Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa,⁷ which threatens man with being eaten in the next world by the animals which he devoured in this, unless he adopts a certain ritual practice of special potency. The idea of punishment or reward according to one’s deeds is constantly expressed in the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa⁸ under diverse forms, but it appears rather as a philosophical doctrine brought out to explain the operation of the universe than as a popular belief. The Vedic view is clearly far other than this: the great majority of men believed themselves to be good and destined to the joys of heaven, but they did not regard these joys as making earth less desirable. The normal attitude of the whole of the Vedic religion, down to the very end of the period of the Brāhmaṇas, is that it is a good thing to behold the light of the sun, and to live a hundred years, for which prayers and spells alike are earnestly resorted to, and that, at the end of the life one attains, there will be another, if different yet analogous, life in the world to come with the same pleasures as on earth, but without the disadvantages of human imperfection.