Śālmala (Naraka)
Śālmala, “the silk-cotton tree”
Śālmala is one of the narakas, the places of torment ruled by Yama, into which those who have done pāpa (wrong deeds) are cast after death. The Brahma Purāṇa describes it as filled with fiery thorns: a woman who goes with many men must embrace it. It is not Śālmala-dvīpa, the third of the seven dvīpas, which bears the same name.
The naraka of fiery thorns
Vyāsa tells this to the munis when they ask him, addressing him as Tapodhana, how those who have done pāpa go along the southern road to Yama. After the road, the court of Yama and the words of Citragupta, he says: “Hear the terrible form of the narakas and their measures,” and names them one by one, each with the deed that leads there.
Śālmala comes after Jayantī, a stone floor spread with steel, where one who goes with another’s wife falls and is boiled. Śālmala is filled with fiery thorns, and a woman who goes with many men embraces it. After it Vyāsa tells of the torments of those who speak untruths that strike at others’ vital points, whose tongues are pulled out and cut with saws, and of those who look at another’s woman with glances of passion, whose eyes are pierced with arrows.
Vyāsa closes his account of the narakas with these words: those who turned away from dharma in mind, speech, body and deed must suffer sorrows in the very dreadful torments of Yama-loka for thousands, lakhs and crores of years.
Source: Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 215
Sources
- Brahma Purāṇa, Chapter 215