Preta
प्रेत pretaThe restless, in-between state of the newly dead, before the departed is settled into its next condition. Funeral and shraddha rites help move the deceased from the vulnerable preta state to the honoured state of a pitri, an ancestor.
Where this term appears
- What happens after death in Hinduism? Essentials
…pass through a vulnerable, in-between state, sometimes described as a preta , a restless spirit not yet settled into its next condition, and that the living have a duty to help.
- Why do Hindus cremate their dead? Essentials
For the tradition holds that the newly dead person is, at first, a preta , a vulnerable, unsettled, in-between being, no longer among the living but not yet secure among the ancestors.
- Cousins Across Cultures Treatise
The preta is not a fixed species of ghost; it is a human being in transition, who will become an ancestor.
- The Beings of the Dark Treatise
A road back from the dark Now the most humane and characteristic move of all, and it concerns the preta — the ghost of the newly dead.
- The debt to the dead Treatise
In the ten days after a death, the Garuda Purana , in the book it devotes to the departed, the Preta Khanda , teaches that one pinda offered each day builds, limb by limb, a new subtle body for the deceased.
- The saw of liberation Treatise
…f release: the very fate the whole tradition dreads, the state of the preta , the restless, unhoused, suffering ghost, cut off from the crossing rather than carried across it.