Swallowing superheated metal pellets

Translation

Wild talk and foolish chatter

Appearance in a Taiwanese visit to hell

For a description of wedging iron balls into the mouth 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 39.

We already find the forced swallowing of hot iron balls in Hindu accounts of hell such as in the Vamana purana where it is a punishment for frivolously eating milk, sesamum and meat. The "Devaduta sutta" of The middle length discourses of the Buddha (Bhikkhu Nanamoli, trans.) states, "Next the wardens of hell pull [the damned] out with a hook and setting him on the ground, they ask him, 'Good man, what do you want?' He says: 'I am hungry, venerable sirs.' Then the wardens of hell prise open his mouth with red-hot iron tongs, burning, blazing, and glowing, and they throw into his mouth a red-hot metal ball, burning, blazing, and glowing. It burns his lips, it burns his mouth, it burns his throat, it burns his stomach, and it passes out below carrying with it his intestines and mesentery. There he feels painful, racking piercing feelings. Yet he does not die so long as that evil action has not exhausted its result."