ColossiansOne

infernal hierarchy

The Ten Courts of Diyu

The Chinese underworld is a bureaucracy, and not as a metaphor: ten courts, each handling a category of offence, with magistrates, clerks, registers, fixed terms and the possibility of appeal. Souls are processed and returned to rebirth.

The Scripture of the Ten Kings · 9th-10th c. CE

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  • 25–491

1 of 7 nodes link to a profile; the rest are structural labels from the source text.

7 nodes

the whole structure as one tree

The Ten Courts of DiyuThe Ten Courts of DiyuThe presiding magistrateThe presiding magistrateYanluo WangKing of the fifth co…Yanluo Wang — King of the fifth court, and the best known of the ten.The procedureWhat distinguishes this from a…The procedure — What distinguishes this from a Christian hell is that it terminates.Registers of deeds and a…Checked on arrival, like a cas…Registers of deeds and allotted span — Checked on arrival, like a case file.Assignment to a court by…Each court has a jurisdiction.Assignment to a court by offence — Each court has a jurisdiction.A fixed term, not eterni…Sentences run out.A fixed term, not eternity — Sentences run out.Return to rebirthThe exit that Christian hell d…Return to rebirth — The exit that Christian hell does not have.

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Nodes with a coloured dot and an underline link to a full profile. Structural nodes — spheres, ranks, offices — are labels from the source text itself and have no separate entry. Where a figure appears in more than one hierarchy, its profile lists every placement.

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