THE BUDDHIST HELL.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XX, Issue V, 29 January 1898, Page 115

THE BUDDHIST HELL.

BY FREDERIC J. MASTERS, D.D. Noctes atque dies patet atrl janua Ditis. THERE are three great religions systems in China: Confucianism. Taoism and Butldhism. The two first are of native growth, while the latter is a foreign religion that was propagated in China by Indian missionaries in the first century of the Christian era. The endeavour of Confucian teachers had been to raise morality to that higher level of spontaneous. disinterested obedience to duty. Virtue was to be loved because it was good, and practised because of its own intrinsic great reward. The teachings of Confucius only comprehended the limits of the present life. The Master recognised no other sphere of happiness and woe than the pre-

sent world. If he spoke of rewards and punishments he left them undefined; never offered a hint of the time or place of their distribution, or indulged in any speculation upon a future life. His agnosticism on the subject of a future life is expressed in his reply to the question of Kee Loo: ‘While we know so little about life, what can we know about death?’ As to this life, beyond which his followers were not permitted to inquire, there were so many contradictions of the doctrine that happiness and misery were apportioned according to human merit or demerit, as were sufficient to nullify its value as an incentive to a virtuous life. Confucius overestimated the national character when he expected a Chinaman to do good without pay, or to be deterred from evil because it was wrong. The great mass of men who could only be restrained from vice by vivid pictures of its future penalties, and who could only' be made virtuous by promises of eternal reward, found the needed motives in that modified and more popular form of Buddhism that pictured the bliss of the Western Paradise and the torments of the 160 hells; and which taught that every' act of worship, kind deed, good desire and holy’ purpose are unerringly placed to their credit in the great ledger of the gods. Buddhism taught six states of being: gods. men. demons, animals, hungry ghosts and torment in hell. Life is represented as a great wheel with six spokes ever turning—an incessant change from one state of being into another—and to be lifted oil’ this transmigration treadmill into the Nirvana of non-being is the strange prospect held out by' Gautama Buddha. Until that goal is reached there is no rest, but an incessant ebb and flow of the tides of life, birth and re-birth into states determined by a man’s store of accumulated merit or demerit, either in ascending shapes from man up to Buddhahood, or in descending forms of life from man down to worms and slugs. Sir Edwin Arnold’s words come to us:—While turns this wheel Invisible. No pause, no peace, no staying place can be; Who mounts will fall, who falls may mount: the spokes Go round Incessantly. Whatever may have been the teachings of the earlier Buddhists on the question of a future life, the popular

conception of future retribution entertained by the Chinese to-day bears many points of resemblance to that of the Grecian and Homan classics. The Chinese yam-kan or yam-fu is the Greek Hades, the world of shades and place of departed spirits. Tartarus is represented by ti-yuk, or earthly prison. Elysium is represented by the Western Paradise, the abode of the happy dead, while grim Pluto becomes the Chinese Yim Loh Wong, the King of Hades and ruler of the under world. One of the most popular gods in Canton is Shing Wong, the patron deity of walled cities. Travellers will remember an apartment in the temple of this god called by foreigners "the

chamber of horrors.’ It is a representation of the ten kingdoms of purgatory, containing hideous images standing in threatening attitudes, behind which are groups of small figures in stucco relief exhibiting the pains and penalties of purgatory. Each group has its judge, lietors, criminals and executioners, and its own peculiar forms of punishment. The judges, officials, police-runners and executioners are thoroughly Chinese, and the mode of procedure is that of a criminal sessions and gaol delivery in a district, magistrate's yamen. It is not generally known that San Francisco can boast of a temple of Shing Wong. His temple may be found on Waverlystreet. between Clay and Sacramento streets, and opposite the temple of the Ning Yeung Company. It is reached by two Hights of stairs, and the visitor will find a very courteous templekeeper ready to show every nook and corner of his sanctum sanctorum, and explain its details to anyone who understands Cantonese. There is no chamber of horrors as in Canton, but this is substituted by ten rudelypainted pictures that adorn the smoky walls, describing the halls of Tartarus ami the different grades of metempsychosis. The engraving, ‘The Ten Halls of Purgatory,’ given below, is a reduced copy of a rude Chinese drawing hung in private homes, representing the ten judges or kings of Hades, with attendants arranged in groups, while in the centre is an illustration of the transmigration of souls and the punishments inflicted on the ghosts of wicked [>eople. The description of the Buddhist purgatory given in this paper is based upon the drawings and models found in the temples of Shing Wong, and especially the detailed account given in a religious book published in Canton called ‘Yuk lik chi po pin.’ These Canton moralists have drawn some very ghastly pictures, though they do not approach the lurid colours and weird imagery- of Dante. No heartrending wails and shrieks resound through the hollows and caves of the

Chinese Tartarus such as greeted Aeneas on the banks of the Styx, or Dante on the shores of gloomy Acheron. A Chinaman can bear pain with calm resignation, and meet torture with stoical contempt. Besides, there is no hope left him. No inscription appears over Ti Yuk portals such ns Dante writes over the gates of Hades: ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here.’ The Buddhist system is purgatorial and remedial. Dante's Inferno, like the Chinese Yam-kan, is placed under the earth. It is also a singular fact that Dante speaks of ten pits or valleys of torture; but as these belong only to the eighth circle of the Inferno, it is doubtful if they can be made to correspond with the ten kingdoms of the Buddhist purgatory. The first kingdom with its Hall of Judgment is presided over by King Tsung Kwong, who is seated on his throne clad in regal robes. Behind him are attendants with huge fans.

for this is evidently a hot place. Before him are arranged persons who have committed various crimes. The principal culprits are those who have committed suicide and brought miseryon others by their death. These are doomed to suffer like Tantalus, surrounded by food which they cannot touch, and ‘water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.’ Four times each month they are supposed to endure the same agonies as attended their acts of self-destruction. After two years their spirits are permit ted to return to the place of suicide, and an opportunity is given them to repent. If they are still obdurate, they are brought back for further castigation. Devils lead their wicked manes about in chains or heavy wooden collars; and hold up mirrors before them in which are reflected their crimes and the forms of Ix-asts and reptiles in which they are doomed to reappear in this world. One demon is seen holdings poor wretch by the queue about to hurl him upon a bed of spikes upon which others are already impaled. Wicked priests and nuns who stole

offerings for the poor and pocketed fees for masses and orisons that they have never said, or only partially so, are shut up in dark cells and condemned to read aloud from small type and with only a tiny taper's light, those Sutras they neglected during life. On the other side of Tsung Kwong’s throne are represented the good spirits who during life employed men to destroy obscene literature, to reverently gather up scraps of printed paper from the streets and so prevent the words of the holy sages from being trodden under foot. These come to this kingdom for the reward of their virtuous deeds. The second kingdom is under the presidency of King Cho Kong. It is situated under the Southern Sea, and has sixteen sub-hells within its territory. The criminals who come here are priests who have inveigled children away from their homes to make them monks and nuns; men who

have decoyed children from their parents and sold them into bondage; persons who have defamed their neighbours or brought evil upon them by false accusation; men who have carelessly maimed others and made no reparation; ignorant physicians and quacks whose malpractice brought their patients to an untimely grave; masters and mistresses who have refused to manumit their slaves when adequate redemption was offered, or who have held marriageable servant girls in bondage beyond the customary age; villainous marriage brokers who have deliberately arranged alliances between healthy persons and those afflicted with leprosy- or other incurable diseases; fraudulent trustees anil guardians who have squandered •estates and deprived their wards of their property. These are cast naked upon the Hadean ice fields, or thrown into the ‘black-cloud sand'—a quicksand in which they are slowly engulfed. Rapacious and extortionate officials are thrust into iron cages, unable to move their limbs or stand erect, and wheeled round by hideous

fiends. After centuries of torture they will repent- and be allowed to return to the earth in the bodies of loathsome reptiles. The virtuous who come to this court for reward are men of humane sympathies—those who have brought and distributed religious tracts, those who have given alms to the poor, medicine to the sick, shelter to the outcast, and the man who often trod aside

to spare the worm that crawled along the public path. These are delivered from purgatory and brought back to life in human form. Women who have spent their days in charitable deeds have the unutterable joy of being born again as men—a privilege which is highly appreciated by the fair sex in far Cathay. The third kingdom of purgatory is under the direction of King Sung Tae. It is said to be situated at the bottom of the ocean, under the south-east corner of the Yuk Chin Rock, and contains sixteen prisons. Here are brought the disloyal, the contumacious, the unfaithful and disobedient; ministers of State whose treason endangered the government and brought trouble to the State; saucy wives and concubines who defied the authority of their lords; undutiful children, disobedient servants and mutinous soldiers; shopmen who cheated their employers: gaol-breakers and runaway convicts, whose escape from punishment involved their guards and wardens in trouble; geomancers who cheated their clients and chose un-

lucky sites for graves; gravediggers who. like Hamlet’s clown, disturbed people’s graves and cast up dead men’s bones to make room for another’s sepulchre; men who neglected their families and forgot where to find the tombs of parents and ancestors; busybodies who spread scandal, stirred up strife and provoked litigation: scribes who forged or altered deeds and tampered with accounts. All these stand trembling, guilty and accursed before the inexorable judge. A legion of foul fiends encircle them about, ready to drag them to the hells where other victims are already writhing in agony. Some are cast into cauldrons of boiling oil, others impaled on spikes. Some are torn by tigers and wild beasts, yet never devoured; others are pierced with arrows, yet never slain. Women who killed their husbands are chained to iron posts and disembowelled; others are slashed with knives, moaning piteously- for death which comes not to their relief. Traitors and rebels are bound to red-hot. furnaces on

wheels and drawn about by fiends, 'burning' continually, yet uneonsumed; dying perpetually, yet never dead,’ and ever cursing and gnashtheir teeth because they cannot end their miserable lives. Under the shadow of Sung Tae’s throne are the virtuous who come to his court for reward. They are the spirits of those who in life spent their fortunes repairing public highways, erecting bridges, and assisting in other public works, and who are soon to return to the world to fulfil exalted positions in life. The fourth kingdom of purgatory is presided over by King Ng Koon. It is said to be situated under the ocean, on the eastern side of the Yuk Chin Rock. Under Ng Koon's jurisdiction are sixteen prisons where the punishments fit for crime . Here come traders guilty of using light weights and false balances, of selling adulterated food, marketing sham fabrics, and passing counterfeit coin; physicians who administer inferior drugs; niggards who hoarded up a specific which might have cured a suffering neighbour; ruffians who pushed aside the gaed and weak; the rascals who plundered their richer neighbours, and the rieh who neglected the poor; the thief who stole oil from the street lamps; the man who cast refuse, dead animals and' broken glass and pottery on the public highway; the blackguard who uttered loud-mouthed eurses and blasphemies and committed other nuisances on the public streets all receive sentence in this court and are dragged off to the caves of perdition. The trader who sold by short measures and light weights is met by a hideous demon with a huge steelyard.who thrusts a huge hook into the fleshy part of the body, adjusts the weight and holds the culprit suspended in mid-air till he has expatiated his offences. Those who have sold adulterated goods ate thrown into a huge mortar and pounded by foot pestles worked by fiends. One scene represents a poor wretch who had stolen food to save his family from starvation. He too is thrown into the mortar.. He appeals to heaven. His cries are heard by the Goddess of Mercy. Kwan Yum—all compassionate is she —appears in the clouds and rains down lotus flowers that so completely the man’s body as to protect it from the crushing blows. Swindlers are doomed to wear ponderous wooden collars, in which it is impossible to lie down to rest. Thieves are dismembered, dragged over rows of spikes, or submerged in ponds of blood. When their term of punishment has expired, they are allowed to return to earth in the form of beasts, reptiles or insects.

The virtuous who come to this court are those w"ho have provided coffins for the poor, and borne the expense of their funerals. These are re-born as men and enjoys a life of affluence and dignity. The fifth kingdom of purgatory is in charge of King Yim Loh. This is the Chinese Pluto, who once had the presidency of the first kingdom. The pearly emperor, to whom the kings of Hades hold allegiance, degraded him to the fourth place for permitting the ghosts of suicides, whom oppression had goaded to self-destruction, to ret urn to the earth and take vengeance on those who had done them wrong. Sixteen hell prisons are under his jurisdiction, where are found racks, stocks, mills, and other implements of torture. Unbelievers in the doctrines of Buddha, revilers of the virtuous, inconoclast. and incendiaries, men who have broken open sepulchres, or stopped wells and watercourses are dragged into these chambers of retribution. At first these culprits are taken to the top of a pagoda, 490 feet high, from which lofty height they are permitted to view afar off their village homes and the scenes of their happy childhood. All the past delights of home, the companionship of wife, children and friends rise up before their vision, and as they gaze upon loved ones so near and yet so far, and behold familiar scenes to which, alas, they can never, never return,- tears flow from their eyes, bitter laments escape their lips, vain regrets for the irreparable past, and tearful longings for the happy days that are no more. In the midst of their wails and sobs they are dragged down to the chambers of torture. Some are disembowelled and their viscera devoured by dogs and serpents that bark and hiss at their feet. Some nre sawn asunder. Others are compelled to grovel in fire

and pick up and swallow red-hot pills of iron. At the end of their torments they are metamorphosed into the bodies of birds, dogs and other animals, and sent into the world to commence life afresh. The virtuous are those who have spent their days in almsgiving and charitable deeds, and are escorted by the king’s officers to the tenth kingdom to receive the reward of a virtuous life and promotion to some higher state of existence. Beneath the Northern Sea lies the sixth purgatorial kingdom under charge of King Pin Shing. Here gather the blasphemer, the profane, the inconoclast and the ungodly. Here are found men who have reviled heaven and earth, murmured against Providence, grumbled at the weather and irreverently uttered the names of the gods. At the bar of justice stand those who have committed sacrilege, injured temples, removed images, broken open the bodies of idols to steal gold and jewels. placed filth in a temple, or offered some unclean thing to the gods. Here, also, are found dealers and readers of obscene literature; men who have shown disrespect to written paper, or who have torn and defaced the writings of the holy sages; men who have eaten the flesh of the ox and the dog. and those who have wasted vegetable food. Merchants who have made a corner on rice and increased the cost of this and other necessaries of life are disem-

bowelled. The sacrilegious thieves, who have robbed temples are impaled on beds of spikes. Destroyers of good books are hung from the arm of a cross and flayed alive. Blasphemers, defamers and liars have their tongues cut out. The thief is bound hand and foot and made to crawl over red-hot iron filings, while they who have murmured against heaven are bound within two heavy slabs of wood and sawn asunder by two fiends. The virtuous who come to Pin Shing’s courts are they who have spent Buddhist holy days in fasting, prayer and self-denial, or those who have built, repaired and endowed temples, monasteries and convents. Blessed are these, and blessed are. their posterity. The seventh region of purgatory is in charge of King Tai Shan, under whose jurisdiction are sixteen cells. Those who have used human bones and other portions of the body for medicine, and human flesh for food, or stolen gold and silver from coffins come to this realm. These are bound hand and foot and cast hy devils armed with pitchforks into a burning fiery furnace. Here, also, is found the kidnapper of children, those who have sold betrothed maidens into slavery or concubinage, parents who have destroyed their female offspring, and women who have procured abortion to cover other crimes. These are thrown into dens to be gnawed by wolves and dogs. Another group of culprits are those who have traduced good men, men whose cruel slanders have destroyed the peace of households and separated husband and wife; others who tell obscene stories, sing lewd songs, and whose conversation ever turns upon women, are bound to a stake, while a fiend tears their tongues out by the roots. Men who have cruelly oppressed their fellow-men. the master who tortures the slave, the strong who crushes the weak and terrorises over those who are at their mercy, are brought to a cauldron of boiling oil. One fiend binds them and easts them in, another stirs the soup with a spoon, while another pokes the fire and blows the bellows. Men in life are exhorted to repent of these misdeeds and atone for them by purchasing the freedom of captive birds ami by buying coffins for paupers.

The virtuous who come here are those who gave up their lives to save their parents’ lives, or those who submitted to be bled that a feeble and aged father or mother might be preserved by medicine made from their blood.

The eighth purgatorial kingdom is under the presidency of King Tow Shi. Before this awful Rhadamanthus uppear crowds of undutiful sons, who have neglected their parents' support and whose heartless ingratitude and cruel abuse made their parents prematurely old and brought their grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. These are trampled down by the hoofs of horses, crushed by heavy chariot wheels, and speared by fiends. Men with covetous hearts, extortioners, foul-mouthed cursers. drunkards, adulterers, seducers, gluttons, gamblers and loafing vagabonds are assailed by fiends, armed with spiked cudgels, and driven to a bridge from which they are cast headlong into a river of blood. In this foul stream they ever sink and rise. Their cries for help are answered by some horrid fiend who with a long trident strikes each rising head till down they sink again. The virtuous who come to this kingdom are those who have given alms to mendicant- friars, whose benedictions and prayers have procured their salvation from hell.

The ninth purgatorial kingdom is under the presidency of King Ping Tang, and contains sixteen prisons, surrounded by an iron network fence.

The court of this department is crowded with malefactors, convicted of capital erimes, and have eome down from the upper prisons for further torture. Here are found people who used spells, enchantments, drug’s and "devil powders’ to bring others under their power; men who have committed unnatural crimes; printers, vendors and readers of immoral literature; painters of obscene pictures; abortionists, and those who have administered aphrodisiacs to women and girls. These are enclosed in brass cylinders over red-hot furnaces, or roasted over slow fires. Those who have defrauded sanctuaries of the funds devoted to religious purposes or misspent money given to publish religious tracts, are east upon the hill of spears. Hunters and fishermen who have wantonly destroyed animal life, are speared by demons with long tridents. The birds they trapped and killed now come in flocks to peek out their eyes, and the fish they have so wantonly netted now wait in the ponds to feed on their viscera. Those who have sown discord in families, broken off marriages, and embroiled communities, are devoured by wild beasts or gored by wild boars. Havishers and seducers, swindlers of property and incendiaries are thrown into a mill and ground to powder, surrounded by a crowd of dancing, grinning fiends, who mock their every groan. There are those upon whom Ping Tang smiles with favour. They are the kind-hearted and charitable who. during the cold winter months provided the poor with hot soup, and gave refreshing tea to weary travellers in the heat of summer. Others provided medicine for the sick, while some have benefit-fed posterity by establishing free ferry boats' and bridges. These public benefactors are destined to ride in the sedan chairs of paradise, crowned with blessings and renown. The tenth kingdom is under the charge of King Chuen Lun. or the king of the revolving wheel. Criminals who have suffered punishment in the other hells are forwarded to this kingdom to be reborn into the world or otherwise disposed of. Some few are represented as still detained in the prisons of this depart-

ment. Here are those who have neglected their parents, abuse servants and slaves, or wantonly destroyed animal life. Here are found

lying side by side, crushed beneath huge rocks, the schoolmaster who neglected the instruction of his scholars, and the scholar who disobeyed teachers and heeded not the words of the wise. Witches, nuns, gypsies and old hags who have by their enchantments led astray young girls and lone widows, are cast into ponds to be bitten by water snakes and other reptiles. In this region all torment is brought to an end. The punishments endured in successive stages of purgatory are not eternal, but temporary and remedial. designed only to wash out all those stains of long-contracted filth that remain in the soul, to cure it of base animal cravings and love of life, so that at last, after long kalpas of time Buddha’s rest and peace are reached. •For this are various penances enjoin'd And some are hung to bleach upon the wind, Some plunged in waters, others purg’d in tires Till all the dregs are drain’d, and all the dross expires.' In this tenth region is found the mill of transmigration, the wheel of change that turns incessantly; and over against ‘the five quagmires’ of the world are the ’bridges of fate.' built of gold, silver, jade and wood, across which the souls emancipated from purgatory pass to be re-born into the world whether as man. beast, bird, reptile, fish or insect. Here .also. Chuen Lun determines the duration of each transmigrated creature’s life, its measure of this world's happiness and woe, and the fate of each. Upon those who spent their davs on earth reading the Sutras, these hells nave no power; their names are in the Book of Life; a higher sphere on earth awaits them, and their detention in purgatory is only brief. Before their re-birth, it is said, these souls are taken by the angel Mang to the Ku Mong pagoda, and there made to drink of the broth of oblivion. It is difficult to discover what, effect, this potion was supposed to have upon the transmigrating sold. Perhaps its analogue is to be found in the waters of Lethe described by Virgil in the passage: •Whole droves of souls are, by the driving god. Compelled to drink the deep Lethean flood In large forgetful draughts, to steep the cares Of their past labours and their irksome years. That unrememb’ring of its former pain. The soul may suffer mortal flesh again. But whatever joys await the soul in its loftier transportations, this life is not its goal. Buddhism taught that, human life is at its best a delusion, a curse and a bitterness. Till disenchantment came and desire was quenched there was no hope of salvation. Life's chains and trammels must one by one be broken off. The soul must be weaned from ephemeral joys and evanescent pleasures. And to escape this dizzy whirl of life’s ever-changing wheel, to find release from purgatorial hells, and from the dreary monotony of successive births and deaths.’ Buddhism showed but one way. It was to renounce the world, take refuge in 'the three precious ones’—Buddha, the Law and the Church, to spend one's life in rapt meditation and dreamy abstraction. So shall blessed tranquility come, the world and all unreal things shall fade away ami then comes the end. Just ns ’the dewdrop slips into the shining sea.' so life and being, personality and consciousness shall be absorbed in Buddha nnd swallowed up in Nirvana. •Dryden’s translation.