Andhatāmisra
Andhatāmisra · andha-tāmisra, “blinding darkness”
Andhatāmisra is a terrible, hard-to-cross naraka. In the Brahma Parva of the Bhavishya Purāṇa, Brahmā tells Bhagavān Vishṇu what a kiṅkara (servant) of Yama said to the jīvas suffering there, and teaches that one who offers lamps to Bhagavān Sūrya never sees it.
Never seen by the giver of lamps
Brahmā tells of the fruit of lighting a lamp in a Sūrya temple in the month of Kārtika: remembrance of one’s former birth, keen intelligence, wide fame and strength of the senses. Such a one always has good sight and shines with wisdom, and even if he goes to naraka, he does not see Andhatāmisra.
Source: Bhavishya Purāṇa, Brahma Parva, Chapter 118
The kiṅkara of Yama in Andhatāmisra
Once a kiṅkara of Yama spoke to the jīvas who had fallen into Andhatāmisra and were crying out in torment. “Foolish jīvas, enough of lamenting,” he said. “Under the sway of delusion and carelessness you neglected the ātmā. The body lasts only a short while, and its pleasures are frail. A being gains a human birth only once in a thousand births, yet even then he runs after the senses and strives only for wife, sons, house and fields, knowing nothing of the good of his own ātmā. What burden is it for the tongue to chant the names of Bhagavān Sūrya? The wick and the oil of a lamp, by whose offering one gains amṛta, cost little. While body and prāṇa are together, right action is a binding duty. Only what one has given comes back to one. Even if the mind has strayed into pāpa, constant ārādhana of Sūrya destroys the pāpa gathered.”
Hearing him, the dwellers in naraka, their throats wasted by hunger and their jaws split by thirst, asked what deed had brought them there. The kiṅkara answered: “Long ago, maddened by youth, without discernment and lost in play, out of greed for ghee you stole a lamp from a Sūrya mandira. For that, split by this fierce cold wind and tormented by hunger and thirst, you have fallen into this terrible naraka.”
Brahmā concludes that a lamp offered anywhere is praiseworthy, and most excellent of all in the mandira of Bhagavān Sūrya, the creator of the world.
Source: Bhavishya Purāṇa, Brahma Parva, Chapter 119
Sources
- Bhavishya Purāṇa, Brahma Parva, Chapters 118–119