The Living and the Dead: The Role of Ancestors in Hindu and Buddhist Nepal

Record summary

Nepali ritual studies describe ancestors, pretas, local deities, ghosts, and protective beings as participants in household, mortuary, and festival life. Such material matters for comparison because intermediary status may be produced through ritual transition: the dead can become dangerous, dependent, or protectively incorporated rather than fitting a fixed angel/demon binary. The lead should be anchored to a named ethnography and community, since Newar, Hindu, Buddhist, and highland traditions differ substantially. These are accounts of ritual and cosmological categories, not independent observations of spirits.