Chapter 198

“Yudhishthira said, ‘Tell me what description of hell is obtained by aReciter? I feel, O king, a curiosity to know this. It behoveth thee todiscourse on the subject.’

“Bhishma said, ‘Thou hast sprung from a portion of the god ofrighteousness. Thou art by nature observant of righteousness. Listen, Osinless one, with undivided attention, to these words resting onrighteousness as their basis. Those regions that are owned by thehigh-souled gods, that are of diverse aspects and colours, of diversedescriptions and productive of diverse fruits, and that are of greatexcellence, those ears again that: move at the will of the riders, thosebeautiful mansions and hells, those various pleasure-gardens embellishedwith golden lotuses, those regions that belong to the four Regents andSukra and Vrihaspati and the Maruts and Viswedevas and Sadhyas and theAswins, and the Rudras and the Adityas and the Vasus, and other denizensof heaven, are, O sire, spoken of as hells, when compared with the regionof the Supreme Soul. The region last spoken of is without any fear (ofchange for the worse), uncreate (and therefore, in its true nature),without pain of any kind (such as ignorance and delusion), without anyagreeable or disagreeable element, beyond the reach of the threeattributes (of Sattwa, Rajas, and Tamas), freed from the eight incidents,(viz., the five primal elements, the senses, the: mind, and theintellect), without the three (distinctions between the knower, theknown, and act of knowing); freed also from the four attributes (seeing,hearing, thinking, and knowing),[633] without the fourfold causes (ofknowledge), without joy and delight and sorrow and disease. Time (in hisforms of past, present, and future) arises there for use. Time is not theruler there. That supreme region is the ruler of Time as also of Heaven.That Reciter who becomes identified with his Soul (by withdrawingeverything into it) goes thither. He has, after this, never to feel anysorrow. This region is called Supreme. The other regions (of which I havefirst spoken) are hell. I have not told thee of all those regions thatare called hell. Indeed, in comparison with that foremost of regions allthe others are called hell.’