Mahamaudgalyayana (Mulian in Chinese) was retold
in popular entertainments and enacted in a wide range
of operas sung in local dialects. Storytellers and artists
were especially interested in his tours of the various
compartments of hell and in his mother’s misdeeds.
Focusing on a boy’s devotion to his mother, the myth
was part of the emerging Buddhist discourse about
GENDER, female pollution, and the special forms of sal-
vation required for women. The Daoist religion devel-
oped its own analogue to the festival, celebrated on the
same day, in which offerings to the Daoist deity known
as “Middle Primordial” (Zhongyuan) brought salva-
tion to the ancestors. The mythology of Mulian be-
came part of the Daoist celebration and worked its way,
in both Buddhist and Daoist guises, into funerary rit-
uals performed by local priests all over China.
The Yulanpen jingand its associated rituals were
carried to Japan by the seventh century, when the state
sponsored the chanting of the text by Buddhist monks.
Beyond the reaches of government and monastic con-
trol, the festival of Obon later became an expression
of Japanese local culture. In modern times many com-
munities sponsor local troupes who perform dances.
In both urban and rural Japan most people still return
to their family home to observe the holiday, visiting
gravesites, honoring spirit tablets, and taking part in
festivities.
See also:Ancestors; Daoism and Buddhism; Death;
Ghosts and Spirits; Hells; Intermediate States
Bibliography
Cole, Alan. Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism.Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.
Glassman, Hank. “The Tale of Mokuren: A Translation of
Mokuren-no-soshi.” Buddhist Literature1 (1999): 120.
Johnson, David, ed. Ritual Opera, Operatic Ritual: “Mu-lien
Rescues His Mother” in Chinese Popular Literature, Papers
from the International Workshop on the Mu-lien Operas.
Berkeley, CA: Institute for East Asian Studies, 1989.
Mair, Victor H., trans. “Maudgalyayana.” In Tun-huang Popu-
lar Narratives.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1983.
Teiser, Stephen F. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China.Prince-
ton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Weller, Robert P. Unities and Diversities in Chinese Religion.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987.
STEPHENF. TEISERGHOSTS AND SPIRITSBy the time of the Buddha, around the fifth or sixth
centuries B.C.E., there already existed the Brahmanic
notion of a deceased person spending one year as a
troublesome, disembodied spirit, or preta, wreaking
domestic havoc to coerce still living relatives into per-
forming the s ́raddha rites that would provide the de-
ceased with a new body suitable for joining ANCESTORS,
as a pitr,in heaven.
In early Buddhist scriptures, the figure of the peta
(a Pali equivalent of both Sanskrit pretaand pitr) is re-
tained, but is transformed from an intermediary, dis-
embodied stage into a fresh rebirth in its own right,
though one in which the petais still dependent upon
sacrificial assistance from living relatives.
In the Petavatthu(Peta Stories), the canonical text
dealing exclusively with the peta,some petasare said
to endure an existence of total and continual suffer-
ing, in which they sustain themselves, if at all, on im-
purities. They exhibit a wretched appearance, and they
are frequently found dwelling in such places as the la-
trine of a former monastery, at doorposts and cross-
roads, in moats, in forests, or in cemeteries where they
feed off the flesh of corpses.
In the MAHAYANAtradition, the preta is frequently
depicted as a “hungry ghost,” a creature with a huge
belly, but with a needle-shaped mouth through which
it is impossible to pass sufficient nutriment to assuage
the enormous pangs of hunger.
No such description is found in the Petavatthu,ac-
cording to which there are, in addition to those petas
already mentioned, other petaswho are said to resem-
ble devatas(inhabitants of the various heavenworlds)
of great psychic power, save for some deficiency that
prevents them from fully enjoying the benefits nor-
mally associated with their world. Most notable of
these are the vimanapetas(petasowning celestial man-
sions), who seem to be little different from other
vimana-owning devatas,except that their heavenly
bliss is interrupted at regular intervals by their being
devoured by a huge dog, or by their having to con-
sume the flesh they have already, as “back-biters,”
gouged from their own backs.
Though they often seem to dwell cospatially with
humans, petasbelong to a different plane, or dimen-
sion. This dimension clearly emerges to be the heav-
enworld associated with the Four Great Kings, whoGHOSTS ANDSPIRITS