Literally “those who have gone to the afterlife.” A synonym or interlinear gloss for preta; ghost in Transformation of Karma. Pretas are a class of sentient beings belonging to the “bad” or “unfortunate rebirth destinies” (Skt. apāya); see “animal.” In the commentary to the Petavatthu (the seventh book of the Khuddakanikāya of the Pāli Canon), the former term is explained as “having gone to the beyond or the afterlife” (Pāli paralokagata), which is effectively the same as Sanskrit preta and Pāli peta; departed, dead. The meaning of durāgata or dūraṃgama (“far-going,” “going here and there”) may refer to the belief that the ghosts of the deceased are able to move freely and quickly through space because they do not have physical bodies, and that the realm of the ghosts does not, in fact, exist in a fixed location but is everywhere. As the stories of the Petavatthu illustrate, the worlds of ghosts and humans often intertwine.

Introduction