ferior worlds it is stated that there are one hundred thousand
hells. These are provided for such as have been great criminals. The
Hindoos say, that those who have not been very wicked, can make an
atonement for their sins in this world. Should they neglect to do this,
they must suffer for it in another birth. They believe in what is called
the transmigration of souls, or the passing of the soul, after death,
into another body. The soul must suffer in the next birth, if not
purified in this. Hence it is asserted, that if a man is a stealer of
gold from a Brahmin, he is doomed to have whitlows on his nails; if a
drinker of spirits, black teeth; if a false detractor, fetid breath; if
a stealer of grain, the defect of some limb; if a stealer of clothes,
leprosy; if a horse-stealer, lameness; if a stealer of a lamp, total
blindness. If he steals grain in the husk, he will be born a rat; if
yellow mixed metal, a gander; if money, a great stinging gnat; if fruit,
an ape; if the property of a priest, a crocodile.

Those persons whose sins are too great to be forgiven in this world,
must be sent to one of the hells to winch I have alluded. Weeping,
wailing, shrieking, they are dragged to the palace of _Yama_, the king
of those doleful regions. On arriving there, they behold him clothed
with terror, two hundred and forty miles in height, his eyes as large as
a lake of water, his voice as loud as thunder, the hairs of his body as
long as palm-trees, a flame of fire proceeding from his mouth, the noise
of his breath like the roaring of a tempest, and in his right hand a
terrific iron club. Sentence is passed, and the wretched beings are
doomed to receive punishment according to the nature of their crimes.
Some are made to tread on burning sands, or sharp-edged stones. Others
are rolled among thorns and spikes and putrefying flesh. Others are
dragged along the roughest places by cords passed through the tender
parts of the body. Some are attacked by jackals, tigers, and elephants.
Others are pierced with arrows, beaten with clubs, pricked with needles,
seared with hot irons, and tormented by flies and wasps. Some are
plunged into pans of liquid fire or boiling oil. Others are dashed from
lofty trees, many hundred miles high.

The torment of these hells does not continue for ever. After criminals
have been punished for a longer or shorter time, their souls return to
the earth again in the bodies of men. Here they may perform such g