Do you watch ”Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” ooh and ahh over the beautiful dresses worn by the ladies at the Lyric Opera Ball, or, heavens, admire Donald Trump? Would you do anything in your power to be just like such fancy folk?
If so, you could find yourself stabbed repeatedly through the heart with a nasty looking trident wielded by a monstrous, grinning brute.
When you were a student, did you slough off your homework and cheat on tests?
Too bad. You could end up being crushed with heavy stone tablets, likely inscribed with some of your undone lessons. And if your teacher was always off in the teachers lounge instead of tending to class, the same thing could happen to him or her.
Do you like to gossip, especially when you`ve got hold of some really hot stuff?
Sorry. Prepare to have your tongue tied with a string, yanked out of your mouth and sliced up with a knife.
These dreadful fates might sound like some of the more interesting provisions of the legal code (or lack of it) in Idi Amin`s Uganda or Saddam Hussein`s Iraq, or what might befall the unwary rider on the New York subway late on a Saturday night. But, as you may have guessed, they`re actually part of a vision of hell-specifically, the Chinese vision of hell.
Fire and brimstone loomed large in the writings of Dante and the preachments of the Spanish Inquisition and Salem`s not-so-fun-loving Rev. Cotton Mather, but in modern times, the sermons in Christian churches have tended to accentuate more the positive aspects of afterlife, presuming salvation and redemption.
Though the concept of hell came relatively late to China, spread through the teachings of Indian Buddhism in the 1st Century A.D. and mingled with Taoism and Confucianism, it has figured prominently in Chinese popular culture and folk art well into this century. Ornate scrolls illustrating in rich, fiendish detail the horrors that are to follow the unvirtuous life are still to be found in Taiwan and have long been used as a means of regulating social conduct.
Neal Donnelly, an American diplomat serving some years ago in the Republic of China, collected two rare sets of Chinese scrolls depicting the 10 chambers of hell, the underworld kings who lord over them, and the dreadful punishments they mete out.
Donnelly, who now lives in the Washington area, donated the scrolls to the Smithsonian Institution`s National Museum of Natural History, where they are on display through Dec. 28.
To say the least, they`re considerably more fearsome than the museum`s famed dinosaurs.
”No one knows for certain who was the first Chinese artist to paint scenes of hell,” noted Donnelly, ”but there are many references to Wu Tao Tze, a T`ang painter whose portrayals, probably temple murals, were said to be so moving that a certain butcher (whose occupation naturally depended on the slaughter of innocent animals) gave up his livelihood to pursue a less sinful profession, one more acceptable to the 10 terrible kings and more conducive to gaining and storing merit for use in the afterlife.”
The killing of animals, even ants, is not treated lightly in the afterlife. In one of the 18th Century Hsin Chu sets of scrolls, a man is seen being punished for ”having gone into the mountains to hunt with a bow and arrow, (and) for having descended into the water to fish with a net.” He`s shown being pecked and plucked to pieces by large birds who resemble rather mean-spirited Daffy Ducks.
But readers of Sports Afield magazine are not the only ones who should beware. Terrible fates await the kind of people you often see on Geraldo Rivera, Phil Donahue and Joan Rivers, as well as those portrayed on TV soap operas and shows like ”Divorce Court.” In fact, judging by the scrolls, you run a great risk just trying to get through everyday life.
”Disrespect for the written word, inattention in class, and being so unfilial as to side with one`s wife against one`s mother in a family quarrel rate punishment equal to, or at times more horrifying than, that for murder and rape,” Donnelly said.
One man who valued his wife above his parents is shown getting his head bashed in with a huge knout.
The variety of punishments seems almost infinite. One king warns as you enter his chamber: ”Burning, freezing and torturous grinding are administered by me.”
There are also such niceties as ”the pool of dirty blood,” to which sinners are sent for any shedding of blood (including, for a brief time, women who experience childbirth), and the Hell of Excrement-no explanation needed.
Infinite, too, are the number and variety of sins deserving of punishment. We`ve already noted the fate befalling gossips-including, one presumes, the editors of the National Enquirer-but those who simply listen to gossip can find themselves clubbed and stabbed and thrown into the aforementioned ”Hell of . . .”
Woe be also unto those whose behavior prompts the gossip. For ”having destroyed marriages” (you`ll recall Liz Taylor, Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, not to speak of Marla Maples, Donald Trump and Ivana), women sinners are seen in the scroll of King Sung Ti being strung up naked (in one case, upside down) and filleted by a righteous knife-wielding fiend.
Trump, in fact, could be in double jeopardy. King P`ing Teng, whose chamber is called ”this place of a thousand tortures,” cages people ”who in life owed money but failed to repay it completely” and turns them into animals-pigs, goats and asses seeming to predominate.
Couples who have ”illicit relations out of doors” (you`ll recall Warren Beatty in ”Splendor in the Grass”) can be tossed into a pit of spikes, the same fate accorded those ”who had riches, but not humanity, who were so stingy that they would not contribute half a cent to charity and who hoarded money in vain to leave to their descendants.”
There are similarly dreadful punishments for people who wear dirty clothes at religious ceremonies, curse their mothers-in-law or children, admire the wealthy and despise the poor, indulge a wicked wife (poor Harry Helmsley) and cheat with scales.
Indeed, there seems to be some justice in the 10 kingdoms of hell. Letter carriers who deliver mail late, corrupt officials ”who didn`t distinguish between the crooked and the straight, but who only wanted money,” and writers of confusing and misleading books all come in for it in unpleasant ways.
One of the worst punishments, according to the scrolls, involves being taken to a place where one can observe still-living relatives, friends and acquaintances happily going about their days in one`s deathly absence.
It helps little to repent at the end of one`s life, or leave a big bequest for one`s church. The good and evil one has done is all recorded and carefully weighed and balanced to determine the requisite punishment, from which few apparently are spared.
The neat thing about Chinese hell is that, except in a few cases involving the most egregious sins, it`s temporary. Eventually, one reaches the 10th and final court, domain of King Chuan Lun and the Wheel of Life and Death, where one is delivered from hell and sent on to one`s next life, either as another human being (a noble, if one has been fairly virtuous) or as an animal (as in Archy the cockroach in ”Archy and Mehitabel”).
Before you leave hell, a huge brute gives you a powerful potion that makes you forget your hellish experiences and your previous life.
You`d better drink it.
It beats another round of the Hell of Excrement.
