police that world, which extends from the earth’s sur-
face to the summit of Mount Meru, with their troops
of YAKSAs, nagas, gandharvas,and kumbhandas.All
manner of other nonhuman creatures, such as pisacas,
bhutas,and eclipse-causing asuras, are assigned to that
world, as are lesser deities, such as household devatas,
tree devatas,guardian spirits of lakes, and so on. As
Buddhism spread further into Asia, the various local
deities and the like that Buddhism encountered were
also assigned to this world.
Despite the fact that rebirth as a deva and rebirth as
a petaare deemed discrete types of REBIRTH, the devata
and the petaseem to represent twin extremes of a
whole spectrum of nonhuman beings dwelling in the
heavenworld associated with the Four Great Kings.
They are differentiated solely by the degree to which
each is able to enjoy the pleasures of that world.
Individuals become petasdue largely to their failure
in a former life to show charity to enlightened mem-
bers of the SAN ̇GHA, or to demerit stemming from some
previously committed evil deed. In order to under-
stand the former, it is necessary to recall the earlier
Vedic practice of pouring an oblation into the sacrifi-
cial fire to create a sphere of personal well-being em-
bracing not only this life but also the life to come. In
the Buddhist period, the san ̇gha performs a function
similar to the sacrificial fire, in that, through donating
alms to the san ̇gha, one brings into being a counter-
part of those alms on the divine plane for one’s use af-
ter death. If one neglects to give alms, one naturally
finds, in the life to come, no source of sustenance.
Such postmortem deprivation of the Buddhist peta
echoes the inability of the Brahmanic preta to join the
pitrsdue to lack of a suitable body. And just as the lat-
ter’s predicament could be rectified by relatives per-
forming the s ́raddha rites, so could the petahave its
deprivation ameliorated through still living friends and
relatives offering a gift to the san ̇gha on the peta’s be-
half and then assigning the fruit of that donation to
the benefit of the petaconcerned. Whatever depriva-
tion the petahad been experiencing is immediately rec-
tified and the petais, henceforth, able to enjoy the
pleasures and comforts associated with the heaven-
world. This practice, wrongly referred to as a “transfer
of merit,” involves no transfer of merit whatsoever;
rather, the petais simply assigned the divine counter-
part of the alms offered to the san ̇gha on the peta’s
behalf.
There is, however, one proviso: If the reason for ex-
istence as a petais due to, or complicated by, previous
demerit, assistance cannot take place until that demerit
has been exhausted. Moreover, it is said that part of
such a peta’s plight is that living relatives forget that
he or she ever existed, and thus fail to offer alms on
the peta’s behalf. For this reason, modern Sinhalese
Buddhists, when bestowing alms, do so in the name of
any former relatives they may have overlooked.Although black magicians sometimes commandeer
petasagainst their will to do the magician’s bidding,
they more often enlist the more willing assistance of
other nonhuman beings, such as malevolent yaksas
and bhutas,to achieve their ends, just as some of the
latter have, on occasion, been transformed by power-
ful monks into Dharma-protectors.Although the ORDINATION of nonhumans is not
permitted by the Vinaya, it is nonetheless practiced
(e.g. in modern Thailand), and it is encouraged by cer-
tain Mahayana scriptures, such as the FANWANG JING
(BRAHMA’SNETSUTRA). In East Asia (especially in
Japan), ordination frees nonhuman beings from preta
status.A Buddhist festival known as the Ullambana is still
held annually in East and Southeast Asia. The festival
is aimed at assuaging the suffering of “hungry ghosts.”See also:Cosmology; Death; Ghost Festival; Hells;
Merit and Merit-MakingBibliography
Kyaw, U Ba, trans. Peta Stories,edited and annotated by Peter
Masefield. London: Pali Text Society, 1980.
Masefield, Peter, trans. Vimana Stories.Oxford: Pali Text Soci-
ety, 1989.
PETERMASEFIELDGUANYIN. SeeBodhisattva(s)GYONENGyonen (1240–1321) was a brilliant Japanese scholar-
monk of the Kegon school (Chinese, Huayan) who
lived in the great monastic center of Todaiji in Nara.
Born into the aristocratic Fujiwara clan, Gyonen en-
tered the priesthood at the age of sixteen and at eigh-
teen moved to the Kaidan’in (Hall of Ordination) atGUANYIN