Preta

The hungry ghost of the Sanskrit and Pali traditions, recorded in the Pali *Petavatthu* (Book of Stories of the Departed) within the Khuddaka Nikaya. The figure was given a tiny mouth, a needle-thin throat, and an enormous belly that could not be filled. Crooke's *Popular Religion and Folk-lore of Northern India* (1896) documents the figure in continuous folk tradition, named as the soul of one whose post-funerary *Śrāddha* rites were not performed and who therefore did not pass to the next condition. Hearn records the same figure under the Japanese transmission *gaki*, with offerings made to the *gaki* in the Buddhist temple-feast of *Segaki*.

The preta exists at the boundary of folklore and doctrine. In the Buddhist scheme the figure is a being of one of the six realms, born to that condition through past action. In the household tradition the figure is the named relative who did not receive what was owed. The two readings co-exist across South and East Asia without contradiction.