Page:History of Zoroastrianism.djvu/454

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LIFE AFTER DEATH

of the miseries on earth is the only joy for the unfortunate inmates of hell in contrast to the torment they have to undergo in the inferno. Viraf relates that the souls are ever gnawed by snakes and scorpions, worms and other noxious creatures, flogged with darting serpents as whips in the hands of demons, suspended head downwards by one leg or by the breasts in the case of women or, again, trodden under the feet of cattle. Iron spikes and wooden pegs are driven into their eyes; they are made to stand on hot brass and compelled to lick a hot oven with their tongues. A brazen caldron is constantly boiling, and is continually fed by the tens of thousands of wretched souls flung into it. Miserable as their lot is as they are cooked, it is made still more miserable by the fact that the fire that burns them never consumes them. On earth such miserable wretches could have hope that a merciful death would release them by bringing an end to their sufferings; but even that one solace is denied to the damned, for though the fire burns them unceasingly, their souls are equally eternal, and cannot therefore be annihilated.

Solitude in hell is appalling. One of the miseries that the souls have to endure in hell is its solitude.[1] The souls stand as close to one another as the ear is to the eye, but each one feels itself alone and solitary; and though the souls be as many in number as hairs in the mane of a horse, each one feels that it is lost in solitude, with no eyes to see its sufferings and no ears to hear its groanings.[2] A thousand souls are huddled together in the short space of a span, and yet every one is ignorant of the presence of others besides itself, and considers itself thrown out in the wilderness.[3]

Intensity of the darkness and stench of hell. The infernal region is the abode of all darkness.[4] The Avestan texts spoke of hell as the abode of darkness; in the Pahlavi texts the concept is intensified, and the darkness is conceived of as being so dense that it can be grasped by hand,[5] and the stench such that it can be cut with a knife.[6] All the wood in the world put on the fire would not emit a smell in this most stinking place.[7]

  1. ↑ Dk., vol. 7, p. 495.
  2. ↑ AV. 54. 5, 8.
  3. ↑ Bd. 28. 47.
  4. ↑ Dd. 33. 4.
  5. ↑ Phl. Vd. 5 62; 7. 22; Mkh. 7. 31; cf. Exodus 10. 21.
  6. ↑ Bd. 28. 47.
  7. ↑ AV. 54. 4.
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