What the hill is
Pret Shila - the rock of the pretas, also called Preta Parvat - is a steep granite hill about eight kilometres north of Vishnupad, twenty to twenty-five minutes by road. Of all the vedis of the Gaya kshetra this is the one kept for a death that came before its time: an accident, drowning, fire, snakebite, a life ended by one's own hand, a death far from home, or one after which the observances were never completed. The tradition holds that such a soul has not yet taken its place among the pitru, and that the pind offered here is what gives it that place. Families with no such loss in the lineage do not usually come here at all.
What the Gaya Mahatmya says
The Gaya Mahatmya of the Vayu Purana counts Pret Shila among the tirthas of Gaya and gives its meaning in a single line: Dharmaraj - Yama - established the Preta Parvat on the left foot of the great Dharmashila that holds Gayasura down, with the Preta Kund beside it, and shraddh offered there frees the pitru from the state of preta. Rama and Lakshman are said to have bathed in Brahma Kund and offered pind for King Dasharatha here. The temple on the summit, to Yama as Pretraj, was rebuilt in 1787 by Ahilyabai Holkar of Indore - the same queen who rebuilt the Vishnupad temple.
The Dharmashila, and the sattu
At the top, in the open, stands the rock itself - a great grey boulder marked with sindoor, with carved deities set at its foot, as in the photograph above. Cut into it is the footprint the tradition calls Brahma's, with three lines across it, and a crack that the elders say runs down to Yamlok. Here the pind is offered in the departed's name, and then comes the one act that belongs to Pret Shila alone: the karta takes sattu mixed with black til and scatters it at the rock while circling it five times, with the words the pandas teach - 'उड़ल सत्तू पितर को पैठ हो', let the sattu that flies reach the ancestors. A house in sutak does not eat sattu, and a family carrying an untimely death is held to be in a sutak that never closed. The sattu given here is what closes it; the family eats sattu again only after.
Brahma Kund, and the vedis around it
At the foot of the hill lies Brahma Kund, where the family bathes and gives the first pind of the day before the climb. Ram Shila, Ram Kund and Kakbali are close by, and in the seventeen-day Pitru Paksha sequence these five - Pret Shila, Brahma Kund, Ram Shila, Ram Kund and Kakbali - are kept together on one day, early in the order, right after the Falgu tarpan and before the family comes to Vishnupad. The reasoning is simple: what is given here is understood to open the way, so that the pind offered later at the principal vedis is received for a soul no longer held back.
The climb, and when to go
From Brahma Kund it is 676 stone steps to the summit; a doli can be hired at the foot for elders. Start at first light. The vedi works with the sun - the pandas come down before dusk and nobody stays on the hill after dark. Carry water and a dry change of clothes for the kund. In Pitru Paksha the steps are crowded through the morning; the rest of the year the hill is quiet and the rite is done in a morning. Many families also leave a photograph of the departed at the feet of Vishnu in the temple before they come down.