NO. 2 FOLK RELIGION IN SOUTHWEST CHINA — GRAHAM 183 



HEAVEN AND HELL 



The universe is divided into the land of living beings and the land 

 of the deceased spirits, and these have different names. Everything 

 is yang or yin, and these are no exceptions. The world of living 

 beings is yang chieh, and that of the spirits of the dead is yin chieh. 

 The yang chieh is lighter and more desirable than the yin cliieh, which 

 is dark and shadowy. 



The Ch'uan Miao regard the land of the departed spirits as a place 

 where conditions are much the same as those under which the ances- 

 tors of the Ch'uan Miao lived during prehistoric times. There are 

 forests, and the souls of the dead live partly on wild berries and 

 wild fruit. The Chinese conception of yin chieh has come down from 

 past millennia, but during recent centuries has been modified by the 

 Buddhist doctrines of karma, transmigration, hell, and heaven. Offer- 

 ings to deceased ancestors must be kept up for at least three genera- 

 tions. It is not too clear what happens to the souls of the ancestors 

 after that, but one idea is that they dissolve or cease to be. 



The Buddhists have contributed to the religions of China the con- 

 ception of a hell with lo courts, each court presided over by a god 

 called a king, and each court subdivided into as many as i6 dungeons 

 or pits where sinners are punished according to the nature of their 

 crimes. Each god who presides over a court has as assistants lesser 

 gods, lictors, and devils. Some of these have human bodies and heads 

 of horses or cows. The largest number appear to be devils, who 

 administer punishment. 



The loth court is that of reincarnation. Those whose good deeds 

 and merit outweigh the bad go directly from the ist court to the 

 loth for a happy reincarnation, but the others must first endure pun- 

 ishment in one or more of the other courts. All before reincarnation 

 have to cross a bridge where two demons try to seize thcni and throw 

 them into the water. 



Among the many punishments arc the following, often seen in 

 Buddhist hells portrayed by lifelike images in lo hells: Being im- 

 mersed in an icy pool of water, chewed by dogs, tied to a hollow 

 metal pillar inside which there is a fire, skinned alive, hung up by the 

 feet and tortured, having the head, the arms, and the legs cut off, 

 falling onto sword mountain where several swords pierce one's 

 body, having the scalp cut off the front part of the head, being 

 pierced by a trident, having the eyes gouged out, the body cut in two 

 near the waist, the heart torn out, the intestines pulled out, the body 

 sawn in two lengthwise, being pounded on the head, boiled in a 



