Abstract

In Part I of this book, I argued that preta narratives participated in a larger world-building process that negotiated the contours of the Buddhist cosmos and, with it, the place of the departed. Through stories about encounters between humans and pretas, Buddhist authors explored the place of the departed in a karmic cosmological system, worked out how to best assist them, and advocated for the importance of the sangha in facilitating these offerings. These tales do not merely reflect the process through which the preta as a specific entity and rebirth category became distinguished from the ancestral departed, but also participated in this process. This illustrates the importance of viewing narratives, in Rob Campany's terms, as argumentative. Stories are not merely the distillation of more abstract doctrine but are sites for the construction of religious worldviews. This illustrates that religious cosmologies are not laid down fully formed in doctrinal treatises. They are cumulatively built over time, and "popular culture" can do important work in the aggregative construction of cosmologies.