Naraka

Naraka the hell of the Hindus, according to Manu (q.v.), is divided into twenty-one cells or apartments, each of them 10,000 yojanas in length, breadth, and height. The walls are said to be nine yojanas in thickness, and of so dazzling a brightness that they burst the eyes of those who look at them, even from the distance of 100 yojanas. Each hell is so enclosed that there is no possibility of escape from it. Manu, the celebrated Hindd Moses, gives a general description, dwelling with considerable detail on the tortures which await the impious in the other world. "They will be mangled (in these hells) by ravens and owls; they will swallow cakes boiling hot, walk over burning sands," etc. The Puranas, of course, also furnish an account of Naraka, and they are indeed far more systematic. The Vishnu-Purana, for instance, not- only names twenty-eight such hells, but distinctly assigns each of them to a particular class of sinners. Thus a man who bears false witness, or utters a falsehood, is condemned to the hell Raum-vaa (i.e., fearful); one who causes abortion, plunders a town, kills a cow, or strangles a man, goes to the hell Rodha (i.e., obstruction); the murderer of a Brahmin, stealer of gold, or drinker of wine, goes to the hell Sukara (i.e., swine); and so on. Besides these twenty-eight hells, however, which the PurAna names, we are told of "hundreds and thousands of others in which sinners pay the penalty of their crimes." SEE HINDUISM.