The Heavens and Hells (c.60 m long).
The beginning of the relief shows three different superimposed registers. Inscriptions indicate that the upper two are leading people to the heavens while the lower one leads to the hells. In the upper two there is a procession of noble people carried on palanquins by their slaves, ladies (159) and noblemen (160), while the commoners walk along quietly, some with their children.
The people in the heavens live in the peace and serenity of celestial palaces supported by Atlases and Garudas (161), while in the sky apsaras are dancing(162).The 19 men sheltered in heaven may represent the 19 ministers seen in the Historic procession.
Those condemned to hell are made to parade before Yama, the god of time and death. who brandishes clubs in his many arms, and is seated on a buffalo (65, page 55). It is he who delivers judgement, but it is Dharmma (in royal attire) who pronounce the sentences, assisted by Citragupta(66, see page 55), rewarding the good, and punishing the bad by throwing them into different hells which are at the base of the panel. the reliefs present a series of tortures of refined cruelty and unbelievable diversity (68-70, page 56 and 163, 164). Below are mentioned a few of the 32 tortures that the sculptors conjured up with their sadistic and perverse imaginations.
Each torture is indicated by an inscription revealing the sin of the victim. Crooks and thieves have their tongues pulled out with tongs by the demons who also put their feet into their own mouths, and then throw them into a raging, foetid river(since 12 different hells are reserved for them, theft must have been very common’.).
In the ‘hell of weeping those who are guilty of injustice are chained, beaten, and slashed by great two-edged swords; false witnesses are skinned alive, suspended from trees and then ground in a mortar. those who have harmed somebody, or taken the possessions of others are plunged into a basin of molten lead and tin. In the ‘hell of the breaking of bones. the bones are really broken by blows with a club. For those who have destroyed the gardens. houses and ponds of others. stakes are stuck in their throats. People who have furtively seduced another’s wife (reference to love philters). or those who approach spouses of second rank. are torn to pieces by birds of prey and thrown into a lake of liquid sticky pus. The women who indulge in licentiousness are dragged by the hair and hurried down a lake of marrow (meaning): the inscription explicitly indicates that this concerns women with flaccid hanging breasts implying thus that the punishment will reduce their seductive power. State servants who abuse their position to steal the goods of others, are thrown. head first, into cauldrons. Those who cut down trees where they should not, or those who defile sacred places are sent into the forest of spik palm trees’ (cactuses) where they have their neck held tight in a vice:others are bound up upside down in ropes. Those who steal flowers or disrespectfully pick flowers from sacred gardens, are tied to a tree, and demons hammer nails into their heads with great blows, or they are devoured by dogs or by birds of prey - a torture quite similar to that reserved for the great criminals. Finally, the special torture reserved for thieves, that of the cold hell where the damned are plunged into cold water and, shivering, keep their arms tight around the chest. All these descriptions certainly provide a colorful picture of life at the time of Suryavarman II.
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