|
The Bloody Ten Courts of Hell
The entrance to the 10
courts of hell is at the mouth of the dragon. Dare you come in?
The Horse-face and
Ox-head, fierce guardians of Hades; their duty is to chase spirits
into hell.
It is believed when one first dies, these two guardians will come to
take your soul to hell.
A Horror Exhibition
If tourist sights had a ratings system, the 10 Courts of Hell at Haw
Par Villa would be rated R. While you don't expect hell to be a happy
place, this version of the netherworld is a slaughterhouse of
dismemberment and disembowelment. It is also, strangely enough,
a popular family attraction.
But on this wet day, few families are passing through the ornate
granite arch that marks the entrance to Haw Par Villa. Rain is falling
so heavily that the massive dragon on the hill above the vacant ticket
office is obscured by haze. The taxi driver says I should count the
downpour as a blessing - on a sunny day, the place can be like a
concrete frying pan. Haw Par Villa is promoted as a theme park
but it is actually a sculpture garden where hundreds of statues and
tableaus in brilliant reds, blues, greens and gold depict Chinese
mythology and heroes.
For example, you will get to see a tableau about friendship, involving
a hungry bear and two boys, forgoes subtlety to convey its message. If
you betray your friends, you betray yourself, it warns; unspoken is
the threat that betrayers will also be eaten by a bear, causing me to
wonder whether the Brothers Grimm had a Chinese relative.
If the tales about children being eaten by bears are the appetizer at
Haw Par Villa, the 10 Courts of Hell are the main course.
My alarm at the graphic violence set in stone is
equaled only by my alarm at seeing young children popping from court
to court inspecting each form of torture.
The courts, which judge a person's past life before he or she is
reincarnated, are thought to be derived from an Indian Buddhist legend
that spread to China during the Tang Dynasty. Each court is presided
over by a yama, or emperor, who determines the punishment or reward
for those brought before him.
Before you enter the Ten
Courts of Hell, there is a cluster of statues showing very suffering
expression in waves.
They are the examples warning us not to commit sin. The pair of
words craved on the stone say:
"There is no end to suffering in here; Stop sinning before its is too
late."
1. After the sinners
died, they are sent to repent before the Mirror of Retribution and
then taken to a court of hell for punishment
2. SPI tried to look at the Mirror of Retribution (the one on the
right), but saw nothing. Isn't this a blessing? :)
3. The good guys (saints?) can cross over a golden and silver to
paradise. Then the bad guys will be harshly punished.
The Legend of Hell
Here goes the legend about the 10 Courts of Hell.
Buddhists believe that reincarnation is a form of reward a retribution
on their journey to Nirvana. The Ten Courts of Hell are
purgatory where a person is sent to be punished for the sins and
misdeeds of their past life. A sinner must go through all Ten
Courts and in the tenth, final judgment will determine his form of
reincarnation.
The legend of the Ten Courts of Hell tells of the punishment that
await sinners after their death but before reincarnation is
determined. The sinner is sent to 'hell' where he will be
tormented by demonic-looking 'Yama attendants' for the misdeeds he has
committed in his past life.
In purgatory, the Ten Courts of Hell are a labyrinth of infernal
dungeons, each presided over by a judge who is known as the
'President' and a Registrar of Life and Death. The Presidents
are recognized by their long black beards and square flat hats from
which hang strings of beads. Registrars record the details of
the punishment and hold a brush and set of documents.
The sinner will go through nine courts before judgment is finally
reached. In each of the nine courts, he is punished for the
particular sin that he has committed.
In the First Court of Hell, the virtuous are
led over a golden bridge to paradise. The silver bridge to
paradise is for those whose good deeds during their life outweighed
the bad. Evil doers - the ones we have really come to see - are
sent to repent before the Mirror of Retribution (where
all their past sins are revealed to them) and then taken to a
court of hell for punishment.
|
First Court
of Hell |
|
Crime |
Punishment |
|
Violating the code of filial piety |
Put under heavy slabs and boulders or squeezed in
the middle of the grinder |
|
Second Court
of Hell |
|
Crime |
Punishment |
|
Gossiping |
Having your tongue pierced |
|
Stealing |
Made to kneel on steel granules |
|
Wickedness |
Boiled in a cauldron, disemboweled, and put in a
volcanic chamber |
|
Third Court
of Hell |
|
Crime |
Punishment |
|
Corruption and greed |
Handcuffed and beaten |
|
Disobedience and disrespect to elders |
Have your ribs pierced, body grilled, your lungs,
heart, liver, intestines and eyes torn out |
|
Violating and state a Confucian principles or
being an unjust official |
Have your heart removed, knees crushed and face
scraped by a mental instrument |
|
Fourth Court
of Hell |
|
Crime |
Punishment |
|
General Sins |
Hurled into a torrential river, made to kneel on
bamboo spikes, boiled in oil, head struck open |
|
Cheating or evading income taxes |
Drowned under a heavy stone |
|
Stealing |
Have your hands sawn off |
|
Breaking promises |
have your lips split |
|
Fifth Court
of Hell |
|
Crime |
Punishment |
|
Cruelty to animals and friends |
Have your heart torn out with hooks or thrown
onto protruding swords |
In this Sixth Court of Hell, those who have already been punished but
are still unrepentant, are punished further. This includes all
crimes against any deity or Buddha or breaking any Buddhist or
Confucian laws.
|
Sixth Court
of Hell |
|
Crime |
Punishment |
|
Stealing from temples committing blasphemy |
Made to kneel on iron nails, sawn in two, gnawed
by rats |
|
Killing animals |
Have your body chopped in half |
|
Seventh Court
of Hell |
|
Crime |
Punishment |
|
Rebelling against authorities |
Torn apart by dogs |
|
Spreading false rumours |
Have your tongue pulled out |
|
Using drugs, causing quarrels |
Thrown into a pot of boiling water |
|
Eighth Court
of Hell |
|
Crime |
Punishment |
|
Committing crimes against Confucianism and
operating houses for immoral purposes |
Crushed under carriage wheels, sliced,
disemboweled, struck by lighting, and having tongues, arms and
legs cut off |
|
Ninth Court
of Hell |
|
Crime |
Punishment |
|
Smuggling, committing arson |
Attacked by snakes, stung by bees, tortured or
trafficking drugs in boiling oil |
|
Writing or painting erotic literature or scenes |
Flattened between two planks, have your head
crushed in an iron ring, skull steamed, bones scraped and
tendons pulled out |
In the Tenth Court of Hell, the President passes his final judgment
and the sinner goes through one of the seven-ways in the Wheel of
Reincarnation. Shaped like a wheel, wind and clouds billow out
from the circle in the centre and the six other circles surrounding
it. Depending on the sinner's past life, he will enter a
particular way which will determine how he will be reborn.
|
Tenth Court
of Hell |
|
The sinner will be reincarnated as: |
|
First Way |
Wealthy and powerful human |
|
Second Way |
Birds |
|
Third Way |
Farmers and labourers |
|
Fourth Way |
Working class folk |
|
Fifth Way |
Dragons, fish, crabs, insects or sea creatures |
|
Sixth Way |
Lions, tigers, horses, deer, elephant or other
four-legged animals |
|
Seventh Way |
Poor, lonely and the destitue |
When the reincarnation is decided, the sinner is usually shown with
his future reincarnation (for example, the kind of animal), on his
back. The sinner is then brought to a 'Pavilion of
Forgetfulness' or 'Hell of Oblivion' where an old lady hands him a cup
of magic tea that when drunk, make him forget his past life. He
is then directed across one of the six bridges leading to 18,000
roads, each of which leads to some part of the world and to his
particular form of reincarnation.
Some children and I exit the 10 Courts of Hell together through the
dragon's tail. They run to another tableau on filial piety - this one
dealing with an orphan who nearly freezes to death trying to catch a
fish for his unloving step-mother. I go in search of my own Pavilion
of Forgetfulness.
1-3. Each court is
presided over by a yama, or emperor, who determines the punishment or
reward for those brought before him
4. Those who died by mistakes or suicide are put in the second court;
Here also, the Kidnappers, incompetent physicians and matchmakers are
soaked in ice and stricken with extreme thirst and hunger.
1 & 2. One hapless soul, impaled
on a toasting fork, is dipped into a volcano, and another is forced to
bathe in a pond of filthy
blood,
but the corrections seem piddling when compared with the courts three
to nine.
3 & 4. King Songdi
presides over the third court, judging prison escapees and those who
disrespect their elders (all have their hearts cut out),
drug addicts and tomb raiders (grilled on a red-hot copper pillar).
1 - 3. In the fourth
court, tax dodgers, fraudsters and rent evaders are pounded by a
mallet,
while those who lack filial piety or are disobedient to their siblings
are ground into a gruel of flesh and gristle.
4. Prostitutes were thrown into a sea of blood filled with other
drowned people.
We did not find what punishment to be given to men using them
1 & 2. Each court is more
horrific than the one b4: by the sixth court, cheats, cursers and
abductors dangle limply from a tree of knives
3 & 4. Anyone who has ever left brussel sprouts on a dinner plate
(waster of food) has been sawn in two,
sometimes vertically, sometimes horizontally.
Courts eight and nine,
dealing with the most wretched of the sinners, dismember, disembowel
and behead,
all with lashings of blood and gizzards.
1. t the 10th court, it
contains the Pavilion of Forgetfulness and the Wheel of Reincarnation,
or Samsara.
Yama decides whether the punished sinners (or what's left of them)
will be reborn as a human or an animal into a life of ease or
suffering.
2. The images of their destined new born life will be shown on their
back.
3. Magic tea consumed in the Pavilion of Forgetfulness helps people
forget their past life and they leave for a new life through the
Samsara.
4. Our thermal sensor recorded some places that have very cold spots.
Looking up the giant air-conds and the poor ventilation, we know
why...
Main Menu
Table of Content
<< Previous
1 2
3
4
5 6 7
8
9
Next >>
|
