He saw before him the terrifying messengers of Yama, holding their dreadful nooses. In that moment, he watched himself seized by these beings and dragged away with great force. Overcome with distress, he cried out, “Alas, my mother, my father, today!” But his pleas went unheard, and he was cast into hell, plunged into a cauldron of boiling oil. There, he was cut apart with saws and razor-sharp blades. Tormented in blinding darkness, he was forced to eat pus and blood. For seven years, he saw himself as dead, existing as one of low status, and each day in hell he was burned; elsewhere, he was cooked. In other places, he was tormented, agitated, killed, and cut apart; scraped, burned, or struck by cold winds. Thus, for a hundred years, he endured torment day after day at the hands of the attendants of hell. Eventually, he was cast down to earth, born as a dog that ate excrement and vomit; burned by cold, he died after only a month. Then he saw himself as a donkey, an elephant, a monkey, a beast, a goat, a cat, a heron, a cow, a bird, and a worm. He became a fish, a tortoise, a boar, a hunting dog, a cock, a parrot, a mynah, immobile beings, a snake, and other embodied creatures besides. Day after day, he was born as various living beings, tormented by suffering, enduring this for a hundred years. In this way, a full hundred years passed for him in these degraded births. Once, during this period, the king saw someone from his own lineage suffering there. Even as he remained in this state, his kingdom was lost through gambling; his wife and son were taken from him, and he, left alone, wandered into the forest. There, he encountered a terrifying lion with its mouth wide open, coming to devour him, accompanied by a wild ox. He was devoured, and overcome with grief for his wife, he lamented, “O Shaivya, where have you gone now, leaving me here in misery?” Then, he saw his wife with their son, and she cried out, “Save us, Harishchandra! What has gambling done to you, my lord?” His son was in a pitiable state, along with Shaivya, but he could not reach them, though he ran after them again and again. Once more, the king saw, as if in heaven, his wife—her hair disheveled, distressed, and half-clothed—being dragged away by force. She cried out repeatedly in distress, “Save me!” Then, by the command of the Lord of Dharma, he witnessed another scene. He heard voices wailing in the sky: “Come here, O king! Yama has been informed by Vishvamitra for your sake.” With these words, he was dragged away forcefully with serpent-nooses, as Shraddhadeva had told, and by the doing of Vishvamitra. Even then, his distorted condition, born of unrighteousness, did not improve; all these states were shown to him in a dream. He experienced all these torments for twelve years. When the twelfth year had passed, the guards dragged him away with force. He saw Yama, who spoke to him, “This is the wrath of Vishvamitra, the great soul, which is impossible to resist. That Kaushika will even bring about the death of your son. Go now to the world of humans and experience the remainder of your suffering; once you have gone there, O king, it will be for your good.” When the twelfth year ended, the king, at the end of his suffering, was cast down from the sky by Yama’s messengers. Falling from Yama’s realm, he awoke, agitated by fear, thinking, “Ah, what misery!” He applied alkaline substances to his wounds, having seen great suffering in a dream whose end seemed unfathomable. He wondered, “What is this that I have seen in my dream? Have twelve years truly passed for me?” Anxiously, he asked those present—the outcastes—“Has it passed?” Some replied, “No,” while others said, “Yes, it has.” Hearing this, the king became distressed and sought refuge in the gods, praying, “May the gods grant well-being to me and to Shaivya’s child.” He offered salutations to the great Dharma, to Krishna the creator, to the supreme and the lowest, to the pure, to the ancient and imperishable, to Brihaspati, and to Vasava. Having spoken thus, the king engaged himself in the work of the outcaste. While collecting payment for the corpses, his memory was lost again; filthy, matted-haired, dark, carrying a staff, the king was bewildered. Neither son nor wife entered his memory; his enthusiasm destroyed by the loss of his kingdom, he dwelled in the cremation ground. Then his wife, weeping, came carrying their dead son—the child of the king, bitten by a snake. “Alas, child! Alas, son! O little one!” she cried again and again, emaciated, pale, distressed, her hair disheveled with dust. The queen spoke, “Alas, king! Today look upon your child, Soma, lying on the earth—once seen playing, now dead by the bite of a wicked serpent.” Hearing her lamenting voice, the king hastened there, about to become the one who covers the dead. He did not recognize his wife, who was crying, scorched by long separation, as if she were newly born. She too, seeing him with beautiful hair now matted, did not recognize the king’s son, resembling a dried-up tree. He, seeing the child wrapped in a dark cloth, afflicted by snake venom, bearing royal marks, fell into deep thought.