The institutes of Vishnu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1880)

XLIII, 45- HELLS. I43
37. Casting wistful glances upon the food and
drink of others, they receive blows from ministers
(of Yama), whose faces are similar to those of crows,
herons, cranes, and other horrid animals.
38. Here they are boiled in oil, and there
pounded with pestles, or ground in Iron or stone
vessels.
39. In one place they (are made to) eat what has
been vomited, or pus, or blood, or excrements, and
in another place, meat of a hideous kind, smelling
like pus.
40. Here, enveloped in terrible darkness, they
are devoured by worms and (jackals and other)
horrible animals having flames in their mouth.
41. There again they are tormented by frost, or
have to step through unclean things (such as excre-
ments), or the departed spirits eat one another,
driven to distraction (by hunger).
42. In one place they are beaten with their
deeds in a former existence, in another they are
suspended (by trees and the like, with a rope), or
shot with heaps of arrows, or cut in pieces.
43. In another place again, walking upon thorns,
and their bodies being encircled by snakes, they are
tormented with (grinding) machines, and dragged on
by their knees.
44. Their backs, heads, and shoulders are frac-
tured, the necks of these poor beings are not stouter
than a needle, and their bodies, of a size fit for a hut
only, are unable to bear torments.
45. Having thus been tormented (in the hells)
and suffered most acute pain, the sinners have to
43. The Garu</a-pura«a (p. 17) also mentions that in one hell
the sinners are thrown into machines like the sugar-cane.