Translations
On side of building (not pictured here): The wheel-turning platform
Signs over doors (from right to left):
- Transformation birth gate
- Egg birth gate
- Officials, farmers, artisans, merchants
- Dukes, marquises, generals and prime ministers
- Womb [birth gate]
- Damp birth gate
Banners of directors at each gate: By order
The Buddhist poet Hanshan from the seventh or eight century wrote of the six paths to rebirth, and Robert G. Henricks translates his warning verses as follows:
Frightful! The bitter pain of samsara;
We go and return, like dust blown in the wind.
An ant going 'round a bracelet's edge never stops;
The 'Six ways' - chaotic, in great disarray.
You can change your head and get a new face,
But you'll not get away from the person you were before.
Quickly! Be done with the darkness of Hell;
Don't let your mind and your nature be confused.
The wheel-turning platform from a less-damaged scroll apparently originating from the same workshop as the "A series" (S7).
A second example of people donning their new animal skins and hats about to be reborn, found on another hell scroll (S8).
In a Taiwanese account of hell
For a description of assigning one's rebirth animal skins, hats, tools and so forth as depicted by a Taiwanese spiritual medium who had engaged in a series of hell tours between 1976 and 1979, see Voyages to hell, Chapter 56.
At the end of the torture tour in Fengdu, the City of Ghosts, visitors are allowed to choose their own exit.