Note 31 — Chapter V · WORSHIP OF THE MALEVOLENT DEAD.
Reading edition
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