Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies - DUBOIS, Abbé Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Dubois | Page 605

TORMENTS OF THE DAMNED
565
They are buried there in eternal darkness only groans
and frightful lamentations are heard the sharpest pains
that steel and fire can cause are inflicted without respite.
:
;
There are punishments fitted to each kind of sin, to each
Fire, steel, serpents,
sense, to each member of the body.
venomous insects, savage beasts, birds of prey, gall, poison,
stenches
in a word, everything possible is employed to
torment the damned. Some have a cord run through their
nostrils, by which they are for ever dragged over the edges
others are condemned to pass
of extremely sharp knives
through the eye of a needle others are placed between
two flat rocks, which meet, and crush without killing them
others have their eyes pecked incessantly by famished
;
;
;
;
vultures
;
while millions of
them continually swim and
paddle in a pool filled with the urine of dogs or with the
mucus from men's nostrils, &c.
The damned do not succumb under these terrible penal-
ties, but rend the air continually with their screams and
groans, which echo throughout the whole abyss of hell
and add
still
greater horror to this frightful dwelling-
place.
The pains of hell do not endure for ever they last pro-
portionately to the gravity of the crimes committed. The
Hindu sacred writers say nothing of eternal punishment.
At the end of every yxiga, they say, there takes place a
universal revolution a total change in nature.
When the
Kali-yuga, in which we now live, has filled its allotted span,
all souls will return to the divine essence from which they
were originally separated, and, the world having come to
an end, the sufferings of the damned will cease also. I have
before mentioned how many years of the Kali-yuga have
already elapsed, and how many millions of years it has
still to run.
When the souls in hell have expiated their sins, they are
sent back to the earth in order to undergo new transmigra-
tions.
Their return to the world always takes place under
the form of some vile animal; and proceeding from one
metamorphosis to another, after millions of years they are
able to acquire the degree of virtue and perfection necessary
to admit of their being again united inseparably with the
Supreme Being, the Universal Soul of the world.
;
—