The Pret.
The Hindu notion of the state of the soul between death and the performance of the prescribed funeral rites agrees exactly with that of the older European races. They wandered about in a state of unhappy restlessness, and were not suffered to mix with the other dead. The term Pret or Preta, which simply means “deceased” or “departed,” represents the soul during this time. It wanders round its original home, and, like the Bâlakhilyas, who surround the chariot of the sun, is no larger than a man’s thumb. The stages of his progress, according to the best authorities, are that up to the performance of the ten Pindas the dead man remains a Preta, through the Nârâyanabali rite he becomes a Pisâcha, and by the Sapindikarana he reaches the dignity of the Pitri or sainted dead. The term Preta is, however, sometimes applied to the spirit of a deformed or crippled person, or one defective in some limb or organ, or of a child who dies prematurely owing to the omission of the prescribed ceremonies during the formation of the embryo. Here it may be noted that there are indications in India of the belief which is common among savages, that young children, apparently in consequence of their incomplete protection from the birth impurity, are under a taboo. Thus in India a child is regarded as a Bhût until the birth hair is cut. Some of the jungle tribes believe that it is unnecessary to protect a child from evil spirits until it begins to eat grain, because up to that time it is nothing more than a Bhût itself. Under the old ritual a child under two years of age was not burnt, but buried, and no offering of water was made to it. We are familiar with the same idea in England regarding unbaptized children, whose spirits are supposed to be responsible for the noise of Gabriel’s Hounds in the sky, really caused by the bean geese in their southern flight.
The Pret is occasionally under provocation malignant, but as it partakes to some degree of the functions of the benign ancestral household spirit, it is not necessarily malicious or evil-disposed towards living persons. The Pret is specially worshipped at Gaya on the Hill, known as Pretsila, or “the rock of the Pret,” and a special class of Brâhmans at Patna call themselves Pretiya, because they worship the ghost of some hero or saint.[31]