Mahâ-Parinibbâna-Suttanta: The Book of the Great Decease

The funeral now being over, is followed by a feast; for though nothing may be cooked in a house or hut in which there is a corpse, yet plenty of food has been brought in from neighbouring tenements by the relations of the deceased. There is, however, yet another very curious ceremony to be gone through. Three or seven days--whichever, according to the rules of astrology, is a lucky day--after the deceased person died, an Unnânsê is duly invited to the house in which the deceased died. He arrives in the evening; reads bana (that is, the Word, passages from the sacred books) throughout the night; and in the morning is presented with a roll of white cloth, and is asked to partake of food, chiefly of course curries, of those different kinds of which the deceased had been most particularly fond. [1. Yathâ vârivahâ pûrâ paripûrenti sâgaram Evam eva ito dinnam petânam upakappati. Ito dinnena yâpenti petâ kâlakatâ tahim. Unname udakam vattam yathâ ninnam pavattati Evam, eva ito dinnam petânam upakappati. These verses occur in the Tirokudda-Sutta of the Khuddaka-Pâtha, but in a different order.] p. xliv This ceremony is called Mataka Dânaya, (Gift for the Dead), and the previous feast is called Mataka Bhatta (Feast in honour of the Dead): the two combined taking the place of an ancient rite observed in pagan, pre-Buddhistic, times, and then also called Mataka Bhatta, in which offerings were made to the Petas; that is, to the manes, or departed ghosts, of ancestors and near relations. Such offerings are of course forbidden to Buddhists[1], and it is a very instructive instance of a survival in belief, of the effect of the natural reluctance to make much change in the mode of paying the customary funeral respect to deceased friends, that the kind of food supposed to be most appreciated by the dead should still be used in the Buddhist funeral rites.