Dear Yong Peng,
thank you for reminding us that they are bahubbiihi compounds.
I like your concluding remark that torture in any form is outlawed
under the UN Convention Against Torture.
A King who inflicted such punishments committed grave akusala kamma.
This makes me think of the Muughapakkha Jaataka which is also
referred to in the Co. to the Cariya Pii.taka:

<When the young prince was one month old the wetnurses brought him to
the king and the king placed him on his hip. Now at that time four
robbers were brought before him to be sentenced. One of them was
sentenced by the king to receive a thousand strokes from whips barbed
with thorns, another to be imprisoned in chains, the third to be
smitten with a spear and the fourth to be impaled. When the
Bodhisatta heard the verdict spoken by his father, he became
disenchanted, because he was afraid of committing grievous acts which
would result in rebirth in hell.
The next day the wetnurses laid him on a bed under a white umbrella,
and after a short sleep he opened his eyes and saw the white
umbrella. He pondered, �From whence have I come into this palace?� By
his recollection of former lives he remembered that he had once come
from a heavenly plane and then, while he recollected the life
previous to that one, he remembered that he had suffered in the
�Ussada Hell�. When he recollected his life before that one, he
remembered that he had been the king in this very city. The following
thoughts occurred to him: �I do not need the kingdom. How can I
escape from this house of robbers?�
Then a goddess who dwelt in the umbrella and who had in a previous
life been his mother, was seeking his benefit and she advised him to
pretend to be dumb, cripple and deaf, so that he could escape from
becoming the king.>

Reading about all these tortures is almost too much, but, the
tortures in hell are much worse. This sutta reminds us of the danger
of akusala kamma that can have a bad result in this life and even
more so in a future life. This is not in order to frighten us, but to
exhort us not to waste this precious time that we are in the human
plane where we can develop understanding of the phenomena of our life
and perform kusala kamma.
Nina.
P.S. I solved your puzzle (also my puzzle) of yathaaruupa (nowhere to
be found), looking up: tathaaruupa: such, like this or that. It took
me a while, but when we see a relative like yathaa we can look at
tathaa. In a few days I shall continue with part 3.
Op 24-feb-2007, om 4:10 heeft Ong Yong Peng het volgende geschreven:

> most of the terms in the sutta for the forms of torture
> as Bahubbiihi compounds

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