Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/443

Rh en throne, ascends to the kingdom of the good. In a contrary case, it descends to be purified in another kingdom, which is divided into thirty-six sections. The inhabitants of this kingdom remain there five hundred years at least, and every day of these years is equal to one of our months. The souls here undergo pains more or less severe, according to the nature and the degree of their crimes. Thus, cruel chiefs and homicides are condemned to swim without rest in a sea of blood; misers, transfigured into monsters, having a mouth as small as the eye of a needle and a throat as fine as a thread, have nothing but flames upon which to feed and blood to drink. These poor damned continually rove over a desert plain, seeking in vain some nourishment. They sometimes perceive trees full of delicious fruits, but scarcely do they happen to approach them than the trees disappear, and the unfortunates behold themselves again abandoned to their punishment in the midst of the desert.

The punishments practised in the kingdom of eternal pains are still more terrible. Situated at 200,000 miles below the earth, it is divided into sixteen sections. In the first, the damned, half dead, are continually cast from knives to knives; and this punishment endures for 500 years, of which each day further equals 9,000,000 years. In the second section, the condemned are continually sawn. In the third, they break them in an iron press, and every time they revive they are bruised again. In the fourth and fifth sections, the condemned are roasted by the fire. In the sixth, they are boiled. In the following, they are frozen to the degree that their skin is covered with blisters, their lips split into shreds, etc. Not only men, but animals also, are condemned to undergo different pains. Thus, some are condemned to bear different burdens; others to run without rest, and to be torn in pieces by ferocious animals.

Just as the punishments of hell are terrible, so also the enjoyments of paradise, prepared for the just, are delicious. The paradise of the Buddhists is divided into five regions, each of which bears the name of one of the principal idols. The first kingdom is full of trees of silver, with branches of gold, which bear, in the place of fruit, stones the most precious. Streams of living water irrigate this miraculous country, in the midst of which is found a delightful forest, in which the spirit, surrounded by the just, reposes upon a throne, which is supported by a peacock and a lion.

The chiefs of the Buddhist clergy are the Dalai-Lama and the Bogdobatsin. They both reside in Thibet. Formerly Dalai-Lama exercised the civil and spiritual power in the whole of Thibet. But since 1703, that is, since that country has passed under the power of China, Dalai-Lama has not only lost his civil power, but he has been obliged to divide with Bogdobatsin his spiritual power also. Notwithstanding, Dalai-Lama always exercises an enormous authority. He inhabits the palace which is constructed of stones proceeding from a sacred