While most textual and visual sources agree that there are ten hell courts, there is no actual consensus as to how many hells there actually are. Many texts and scrolls (including S10) refer to a standard number of eighteen hells, but that only seems to be the beginning. For example, the Sutra of the past vows of Earth Store Bodhisattva has Dizang listing them as follows:
There is a great hell there called Uninterrupted, and another called the Great Avici. There is also a hell called Four Pointed, a hell called Flying Knives, a hell called Flying Arrows, and a hell called Squeezing mountains; a hell called Piercing Spears, a hell called Iron Carts; a hell called Iron Clothing; a hell called Thousdand Blades; a hell called Iron Asses, and a hell called Molten Brass; a hell called Embracing Pillar; a hell called Flowing Fire; a hell called Plowing Tongues, and a hell called Head Chopping; a hell called Burning Feet; a hell called Eye Pecking; a hell called Iron Pellets, and a hell called Quarreling; a hell called Iron Ax, and a hell called Much Hatred.
But then Dizang points out those are just the inner hells, and there are still others called Dung and Urine, Fire Elephants, Blood Drinking, Pulling Tongues and so forth. Still other sources contend that, as hell is a creation of the sinner's own psyche, there are just as many hells as there are sinners.
Thus it is perhaps not surprising that the A series did not include all the possible environmental tortures. The most common hell not found here is the Hell of Frozen Ice (see above from scrolls S16 and E04), and here I will only list a few others found on other scrolls.
Monks were regularly hired to recite sutras and prayers on behalf of patrons such as at funerals and memorials, but there was a constant anxiety that the monks were slipshod and lazy in their recitations, often making mistakes or skipping through the text. As a lengthy inscription from a Donnelly scroll (p. 95) records: "All monks and Taoist priests who in reciting sutras for others left out passages and monks who cheated people by accepting money for indulgences and then failed to recite the sutras, after death must come here to make up those prayers. After making them up they will be dragged outside this hall and judged again. They will be punished according to the sum total of their good and bad deeds." This Place of re-reciting the sutras (here from scroll I05) was also said to be extremely dimly lit, making it near impossible to even see the sutras.
