Page 178 - A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols BIG Book

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beings or as animals, according to their merits. Each hell has 16 sub-hells, which are
variously equipped to inflict different punishments. Some texts mention 18 sub-hells: but
sinners are inventive, we are told, and hell has to go on growing to accommodate new
cases. Thus, in the 19th century a special sub-hell was instituted for men and women who
indulged in dancing: the men had to stand on a glowing-hot dancefloor and embrace a
woman who turned into a skeleton.

The tortures of the damned in the sixth hell: blasphemers
are clamped between boards and sawn into strips

Each hell has its own judge and a staff of ruffians who are strictly organised in a
bureaucratic hierarchy. Conditions in these hells are described by people who have
visited them in a state of trance. Graphic pictures of scenes in hell are to be found on
temple walls (at least in Taiwan).
Legend has it that even living officials can be summoned to hell, to assist in
adjudicating difficult cases. On their return home, they have reported on conditions in
hell, where, they say, it is always dark, with no distinction between night and day.
According to other sources, however, night and day do alternate.
These notions of hell and infernal punishment came, it is most likely, from India along
with Buddhism. The Indians imagine an equal number of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ hells, but the
Chinese have only one hell in which sinners suffer cold as a punishment. Recent research
suggests that even before the arrival of Buddhism in China, the Chinese had some idea of
an underworld (as of a heaven) but nothing is known of what form punishment took
in it.