Different Types of Sins

Sanatkumara said

Minor sins are these: stealing a brahmana's possessions; violating the principles of compassion; excessive pride, anger and insolence; ingratitude; extreme attachment to material things; miserliness; jealousy of the virtuous; sex with another's wife; defiling a virtuous maiden; becoming a younger brother married before the elder or the reverse, giving daughters to either and engaging them for sacrifices; destroying trees and flowers in Shiva's lovely hermitage; causing the least trouble to those who live there; stealing servants, followers, animals, grain, wealth or metals, or spoiling crops, animals and water; selling sacrificial pavilions, groves, water bodies, wives and sons; selling rites connected with visiting tirthas, fasting, vows and the sacred thread; earning a living through women; being too subservient to women; not protecting women; using deceit to have relations with women; not repaying a debt when due; charging interest on lent grain; accepting riches from the condemned; earning a living by trading in condemned goods; constantly using a bull as a mount in a forest or on rough ground; black magic for suppression and harm; accepting grain as a gift; selling services as a physician; starting good rites only for the palate, desire or enjoyment; studying only the root texts of the Vedas and not the knowledge in them; abandoning vows meant for brahmanas and others and adopting other conduct; following wicked texts; indulging in dry debates; criticising the gods, fire, guru, the virtuous, brahmanas and, directly or indirectly, the king and his officers; abandoning worship of gods and ancestors or one's own duties; wicked conduct; being a non-believer; constantly sinning; lying; relations on parva days, by day, with animals or with a woman in her period; depositing seed in water or anywhere but the proper place; shattering the hopes of wives, sons and friends who come; saying disagreeable things; cruelty; breaking contracts; destroying ponds, wells and stores of juices; and serving different foods to people seated in one row. Men and women who do these are sinners.

There are other such sins too. Men who harm cows, brahmanas, maidens, their master, friends and ascetics go to hell. So do those who oppress others' wives, covet others' goods, steal, and always use false weights; those who cause brahmanas misery by striking them or uprooting them; brahmanas who are slaves to desire, drink liquor and serve shudra women; cruel men who love violence and are addicted to sin; those who use rites like gifts and sacrifices to make a living; those who pass urine and excrement in cow pens, in fire, in water, in tree shade, gardens and temples; those who drink liquor shamelessly in hermitages and palaces; those who, like snakes, look for others' weak points; those who use bamboo, bricks, wood blocks, horns and stakes to obstruct a path or cross others' boundaries; those who rule by deceit and do deceitful acts; those fraudulent in cooked food and garments or in legal disputes; those who buy and sell bows, weapons and stakes; those very cruel to servants and animals; those who listen softly to spoken lies; those fraudulent, fickle and deceitful who harm masters, friends and gurus; those who do not offer food to wives, sons, friends, children, the aged, the emaciated, the afflicted, servants, guests and relatives but eat themselves; those who eat sweet food themselves without giving it to brahmanas, whose cooking is in vain and censured by those who know brahman; those who take vows themselves but drop them because they cannot conquer their senses; those who take sannyasa but go back to householder life; those who disfigure Hara's image; cruel ones who strike cows and repeatedly crush them, never sparing the weak and underfed, using them as mounts, loading them heavily, yoking them without food and not unyoking them. Cows and bulls wounded from bearing burdens and afflicted by hunger, whom men do not care for, make such men killers of cattle who go to hell. There are sinners who castrate bulls and others and use young cows as mounts; these great sinners go to hell. A guest may come to the house suffering hunger and thirst and full of hope, and others too may come on their own, dejected, wanting food, young, old, emaciated and distressed; a foolish person who shows them no compassion goes to the ocean called hell. As relatives return from a cremation ground, the house's possessions return, but a person's good and bad deeds follow him wherever he goes. The worst of brahmanas is one who rears goats, sheep and buffaloes, lives by astrology, or is the husband of a low-born woman; he is like a shudra. One who adopts the livelihood laid down for a kshatriya also goes to hell. Princes who become artisans, blacksmiths, physicians or goldsmiths, and deceitful servants, are said to go to hell. A king who wilfully imposes improper, excessive taxes, and a man who loves imposing punishment, are cooked in hell. If a king's subjects suffer from bribery, nepotism, favouritism and theft, the king is cooked in hell. If brahmanas accept gifts from a king who does not follow the law, they will certainly go to a terrible hell. A king who illegally seizes brahmanas' property and gives it to his subjects is also cooked in hell. Those who lie with others' wives and terrible thieves are sinners, and so is a king who is always with others' wives. A king who cannot tell a thief who does not look like one, and takes a non-thief for a thief and kills him, goes to hell. Even if a person steals a small quantity of the following, to enjoy it himself out of greed, he is sure to go to hell: ghee, oil, food, drink, honey, flesh, liquor, fermented drinks, molasses, sugarcane, vegetables, milk, curd, roots, fruits, grass, wood, leaves, flowers, herbs, footwear, an umbrella, a cart, a seat, a water-pot, copper, tin, lead, weapons, conch shells and other products of the water, medicines, bamboo, other household articles, wool, cotton, silk, yarn, threads, coarse and fine garments and many similar things. Men who steal others' possessions, even as small as a mustard seed, certainly go to hell.

A man who commits such sins afterward crosses over and suffers bodily hardships for all he did. By Yama's command he goes to Yama's world in his physical body. Such men are miserable as Yama's terrible messengers take them there. Dharmaraja is the chastiser for gods, lower species and humans who commit adharma, imposing many kinds of terrible punishment. Those who keep rules and good conduct but transgress a little because they were distracted are, the learned say, given expiation by the guru, not by Yama. The king is the chastiser for those who lie with others' wives, for thieves and for those who break the law; for those who are hidden it is Dharmaraja. So for every sin one should perform expiation. If it is not suffered it will not be exhausted even in hundreds of crores of kalpas. If one has done the act oneself, or approves when others do it, whether in thought, word or deed, one must reap the fruit of the sin.