Page:History of Zoroastrianism.djvu/453

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LIFE AFTER DEATH

their tongues ever gnawed by noxious creatures.[1] The law obtains in hell that all demons assail their victims from the front, but the demon of slander alone attacks from the rear, because a backbiter usually indulges in secret calumnies in the absence of a person.[2] An apostate is converted into a creature with the head of a man and the body of a serpent.[3] The person who in life has defiled the fire or the water through some pollution by means of dead matter must in hell continually devour dead matter.[4] The man who withheld food from the dogs in this world has to offer them bread in plenty in the inferno, but they prefer to devour his flesh instead; nor do they give him a moment's respite.[5] The individual who has removed the boundary stones of others and usurped their lands has to pay the penalty of digging a hill with his fingers and of carrying a mountain of stones on his back.[6] One who has ill-treated cattle is ever trodden under their feet.[7] This method of inflicting punishment analogous to the sins is so systematically carried out that in certain cases where the greater portion of the body of a sinner is exposed to torture corresponding to the sin a single limb may be exempted from the punishment, because it served as a medium of doing some good. For instance, a man whose whole body was either cooked in the caldron or was undergoing some other torment had one of his legs stretched out unmolested, because he had either shoved a wisp of hay before a hungry animal that was tied and could not reach it or killed some noxious creatures with it.[8] He had not done any other good deed his whole life long.

All conceivable forms of physical torture prevail in hell. Viraf recounts the ghastly spectacle he had witnessed in the vision vouchsafed him of hell. The various kinds of most hideous tortures in hell are so dreadful that the torments and sufferings in this world dwindle into insignificance before them; and the worst of earthly calamities and inflictions present but a feeble and inadequate counterpart of their terror.[9] Nay, the memory

  1. ↑ AV. 29. 1–6; 33. 1–6; 66. 1–6.
  2. ↑ Mkh. 2. 12.
  3. ↑ AV. 36. 1–7.
  4. ↑ AV. 38. 1–7; 41. 1–8.
  5. ↑ AV. 48. 1–7.
  6. ↑ AV. 49. 1–9; 50. 1–6.
  7. ↑ AV. 75. 1–6.
  8. ↑ SLS. 12. 29; Sd. 4. 3–11; AV. 32. 1–6; 60. 1–8.
  9. ↑ Dd. 27. 5.
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