The standard punishment found in the majority of texts is for the wicked to be fed fetid and putrid things while waiting thousands of years in the company of demons until the final resurrection. However, the Book of Arda Viraf elaborates on all manner of punishment, which are so disgusting that E. W. West’s translation in Sacred Books of the East broke off midway, explaining: “From here onward the pictures of the tortured souls become too nauseous to follow.”
Indeed, they may also be forced to ingest and devour horrid things (their own corpses, flesh and excrement, menstrual fluids and semen, blood and brains from skulls of the dead and their own children). Other punishments may be even more gruesome, including hanging (particularly upside-down), dismemberment, decapitation, laceration, mutilation and self-mutilation by cutting, gnawing, devouring, gnashing, piercing, beating, tearing, trampling, stinging and dragging. The wicked are stabbed and pelted, and stretched on racks; they are forced to bear enormous burdens, perform painful and fruitless tasks; are burned and cooked in ovens, cauldrons and frying-pans; are cast down into heat, cold and smoke, snow and stench. They endure hunger and thirst; and they are forced to lick hot things or to defecate and masturbate continually; they are submerged in mud and turned into serpents; and also oddly bombarded with hedgehogs (a small spiny animal, native to Iran and popular as a pet among ancient Zoroastrians). In particular, the sense organs of the wicked are attacked: their eyes gouged out and their tongues pulled out; putrid substances are forced into their noses, eyes and mouths. Their sexual organs are also assaulted: their penises are gnawed and their breasts are gnashed and cut off.
While demons are often mentioned in these descriptions, the Book of Arda Viraf again outstrips the other texts by including khrafstars (a general term for demons and demonesses), serpents, worms, snakes, frogs, ants, scorpions, flies; as well as cattle, dogs, the aforementioned hedgehogs, and various animals with horns.
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