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]
The Pisâcha.
Next comes the Pisâcha, which, as we have seen, is by one account only a stage in the progress of the soul to its final rest. But more properly speaking it is an evil spirit produced by a man’s vices, the ghost of a liar, adulterer, or criminal of any kind, or of one who has died insane. But his attributes and functions are not very clearly defined, and he merges into the general class of Bhûts. In some cases he seems to have the power to cure disease. Thus we read in Somadeva, “Rise up in the last watch of the night, and with dishevelled hair, and naked, and without rinsing your mouth, take two handfuls of rice as large as you can grasp with the two hands, and, uttering a form of words, go to a place where four roads meet and there place the two handfuls of rice, and return in silence without looking behind you. Do so always until that Pisâcha appears and says, ‘I will put an end to your ailment.’ Then receive his aid gladly, and he will remove your complaint.”[32]
The Râkshasa.
The Râkshasa again, a word that means “the harmer” or “the destroyer,” is of the ogre-vampire type. He goes about at night, haunts cemeteries, disturbs sacrifices and devout men, animates dead bodies, even devouring human beings, in which capacity he is known as Kravyâda, or carnivorous, and is generally hostile to the human race. He is emphatically a devourer of human flesh, and eats carrion. He is often represented in the folk-tales as having a pretty daughter, who protects the hero when he ventures perchance into the abode of the monster. Her father comes in, and with the cry of “Manush gandha,” which is equivalent to the “Fee! fo! fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman!” of the Western tale, searches about, but fails to find him. When Hanumân entered the city of Lanka in the form of a cat, to reconnoitre, he saw that the Râkshasas who slept in the house “were of every shape and form. Some of them disgusted the eye, while some were beautiful to look on. Some had long arms and frightful shapes; some were very fat and some were very lean; some were dwarf and some were prodigiously tall. Some had only one eye, and others had only one ear. Some had monstrous bellies, hanging breasts, long projecting teeth, and crooked thighs; whilst others were exceedingly beautiful to behold and clothed in great splendour. Some had the heads of serpents, some the heads of asses, some of horses, and some of elephants.” The leader of them was Râvana, who is said to have been once a Brâhman and to have been turned into a Râkshasa, “with twenty arms, copper-coloured eyes, and bright teeth like the young moon. His form was as a thick cloud or as a mountain, or the god of death with open mouth.”