‹ Back to the text

pubbapetakathaṁ

pubbapetakathā

accusative singular feminine of pubbapetakathā, a feminine noun formed from the compound pubbapeta- + kathā

1. the story of the hungry ghosts in earlier (lives)
2. narrative of former hungry ghosts
3. the text/discourse on the rebirth of hungry ghosts

Built from

• pubba — root · former, previous
  A temporal adjective meaning 'earlier' or 'past', often used to indicate a previous rebirth or prior event in a narrative sequence.
• peta — root · hungry ghost, shade
  A supernatural being tormented by hunger and thirst, a principal class of wretched rebirth; from √prā 'depart, die', literally 'the departed'.
• kathā — root · story, discourse
  A narrative or account; in the Canon, kathā often denotes a formal category of teaching or tale, such as Jātakakathā (birth-story narrative).
• ṁ — ending · accusative singular
  The accusative ending -aṁ marks the direct object of a transitive verb or the goal of motion; here the entire compound is construed as a feminine singular noun in accusative case.

Analysis. pubbapeta-kathāṁ: pubbapeta (hungry ghosts of earlier/past lives) + kathā (story, discourse). Pubbapeta itself: pubba- (former, previous) + peta (hungry ghost, shade of the dead). The compound refers to a narrative category in the Pali Canon, often preceding the birth-story (Jātaka) in a suite of tales: an account of how a character met their fate as a hungry ghost before being reborn among humans.

Etymology. pubba < Sanskrit pūrva, earlier, former (related to English 'first' via Indo-European *per- 'forward, before'). peta < Sanskrit preta, the dead, a shade (from past participle of √prā 'to depart, die'). kathā < Sanskrit kathā, story, discourse (cognate with Greek katalegomai, 'speak', and Latin catulus, though the precise origin is disputed).

Meanings from the Digital Pāḷi Dictionary; morphology and etymology by Claude.

Lite mode — plain HTML for e-readers and old browsers. Full version