Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/268
you will, death remains uncanny. The prospect of paradise is marred to some extent by visions of hell, the inevitable analogical opposite of paradise, that deep place of bottomless, blind darkness, which in a later time is fitted out with the usual gruesome stage-setting in the style of Dante's Inferno, or the wall-paintings in the Campo Santo at Pisa.
From the start there is the idea of retribution. To Yama's blissful seat only they who have done good may aspire. We remember the belief that the things sacrificed and given the priests (the ishṭāpūrta) await in highest heaven the faithful as a sort of twin guardian angels, securing for them bliss. On the other hand, the oppressors of the Brahmans, "they who spit upon the Brāhmana sit in the middle of a pool of blood chewing hair." ... "The tears which did roll from the eyes of the oppressed, lamenting Brāhmana, these very ones, O oppressor of Brahmans, the gods did assign to thee as thy share of water."[1] In an early version of hell the sage Bhrigu observes some yelling men who are being cut up and devoured by other men who also yell: "So they have done to us in yonder world, so we do to them in return in this world."[2]
But now the Hindu, subtle and at the same time naive, given over to rigid schematism and mechan-