Translation
Above the bench: Not respecting one's in-laws
Below the bench: Not respecting both parents
Appearance in a Taiwanese visit to hell
For a description of limb removal from a Taiwanese spiritual medium who had engaged in a series of hell tours between 1976 and 1979, see Voyages to hell, Chapter 50.
A second example of limb removal from another hell scroll (E4).
This torture scene resembles a butcher shop, and the famous Song Dynasty poet Su Shi in 1084 wrote this poem about early hell paintings by Wu Daozi in the early ninth century suddenly making people repulsed by animal slaughter (Beata Grant, trans.):
I have heard that when Wu Tao-tzu
First painted his "Scenes of Hell,"
People were so frightened of retribution,
That for two months they slaughtered no animals!
This was a mere painting, not the real thing,
Brush and ink uniting to create an illusion.
Those people had enough to eat and drink,
What caused them to sweat with fear?
But if one understands the Buddha realm,
One knows it is but a creation of the mind.
If people could just understand these words,
The hells would shatter of themselves.
