In that dreadful realm, thousands of sinners endured relentless suffering. All around them, showers of bones and stones fell from the sky, while clouds thick with blood drifted ominously overhead. Those condemned souls ran and swam desperately, their voices echoing with cries of, “Alas, I am slain!” The very directions were filled with their anguished wailing, lamentations rising and mingling in every corner. Some were bound tightly with thick cords, others tied in various cruel ways, their freedom utterly denied. Elsewhere in that place, I saw horrors so terrifying that even the memory of them could chill a person to the core. Thus concludes the chapter in the Śrī Varāha Purāṇa describing the forms of torment in the endless cycle of existence. Yet again, the Purāṇa speaks of the torments found in hell—those that are heated and even more intensely heated, in the dreadful realms known as Mahāraurava and Raurava. There is a hell called Andhakāra, a place of utter darkness, and beyond it, an even darker region still. In Andhakāra, darkness is single and unbroken; in the next, it is doubled, more suffocating. In the fifth hell, pain is fivefold; in the sixth, it multiplies six times over. In just a single day and night, the departed travel the path that leads to these dreadful cities of torment. Here, there is only suffering—no happiness at all. Misery is compounded by further misery. Though the dead are eventually released, the agents of death are rarely seen in these places. For the soul trapped here, there is no happiness, nothing at all to bring comfort. The very ground is covered with sharp, heated iron thorns, making every step agony. Hunger is overwhelming, and thirst is unbearably intense. When a tormented soul longs for water, the fierce demons lead him to a lake. Desperate to drink, he runs toward it, only to find that the demons bring forth cooked flesh instead. In the lake itself, countless fish devour all that enters. Drawn closer by hope, the soul falls, only to experience new torments. Whether sitting, moving, or running, it is as if the suffering falls directly upon his very head. There is also a pit filled with excrement, and the terrifying Kumbhīpāka hell, where the demons, with sharp claws, rip apart the sinners along a cruel and merciless path. There, too, lies the forest of sword-leaves, and another of pointed spikes, where the soul is burned, cut, pierced, and broken at every turn. Black and spotted dogs, fierce and impossible to approach, prowl these lands. Nearby stands the silk-cotton tree, its trunk bristling with hostile thorns. All the suffering and adversity of this place is reserved for the wicked-minded. If one desires cold, he is tormented by heat; if he longs for warmth, he is plunged into cold. The sinners are cut into hundreds of pieces, again and again, by thousands of sharp blades. A dreadful river flows there, filled with water and terrifying serpents—it is called Karambha-sand and stretches for a hundred yojanas. Beyond it lies the great river Vaitarani, its waters salty and bitter. The mud on its banks is deep, tearing skin, flesh, and even bones. There, monstrous owls, each the length of a bow and armed with diamond-hard tongues, break the bones of the damned. After crossing, with great difficulty, the yojana-long mire, the soul is beset by swarms of mice that devour him in countless ways. Yet, when the morning wind touches him, his flesh is restored, and so the cycle of torment continues unendingly.