Preta, प्रेत (Sanskrit) or Peta (Pāli) or ཡི་དྭགས་ Yidak in (Tibetan) ) is the name for a type of (arguably supernatural) being described in Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, and Jain texts that undergoes more than human suffering, particularly an extreme degree of hunger and thirst. They are often translated into English as "hungry ghosts", from the Chinese, which in turn is derived from later Indian sources generally followed in Mahayana Buddhism. In early sources such as the Petavatthu, they are much more varied. The descriptions below apply mainly in this narrower context.

Pretas are believed to have been jealous or greedy people in a previous life. As a result of their karma, they are afflicted with an insatiable hunger for a particular substance or object. Traditionally, this is something repugnant or humiliating, such as human corpses or feces, though in more recent stories, it can be anything, however bizarre.

The Sanskrit term preta means "departed, deceased, a dead person", from pra-ita, literally "gone forth, departed". In Classical Sanskrit, the term refers to the spirit of any dead person, but especially before the obsequial rites are performed, but also more narrowly to a ghost or evil being. The Sanskrit term was taken up in Buddhism to describe one of six possible states of rebirth. The Chinese term egui (餓鬼), literally "hungry ghost", is thus not a literal translation of the Sanskrit term.

Preta Gil (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈpretɐ ˈʒiw], born August 8, 1974) is a Brazilian singer and actress. She is the daughter of Gilberto Gil, a famous musician and former Minister of Culture in Brazil.

In 1974, Preta Gil's father, the famous singer Gilberto Gil, went to a government office to register his daughter's name after his own mother's name. Upon arrival, the clerk informed him he was unable to register Preta as a name for his daughter. Gilberto Gil began to protest, "Why not? There's Bianca (White), Blanca (White), Clara (Clear) and Rosa (Rose) . . . why can't Preta (Black) be a name?". The clerk conceded, only if the child was registered along with a Catholic name. So Preta Gil was registered "Preta Maria".

Preta lived in Rio, and at the age of one, she moved to Salvador. Her mother, Sandra, soon after had another daughter named "Maria". Gil always believed it was lack of creativity. She had an older brother, "Pedro", who was born in London, at the time of her father's famous exile from Brazil during the Military Dictatorship, along with friend and singer Caetano.

Arnaldo Antunes (Portuguese pronunciation: [axˈnawdu ɐ̃ˈtunis], born Arnaldo Augusto Nora Antunes Filho, September 2, 1960), is a writer and composer from Brazil. He began as a member of the band Aguilar e Banda Performática in the late 1970s. For most of the 1980s he was a member of the rock band Titãs. After 1992 he had six solo albums. Since 1992 he has been an award winning poet, but he was first published in 1983. He is noted abroad for collaborations with Marisa Monte.

Arnaldo was born on September 2, 1960, to Arnaldo Augusto Nora Antunes and Dora Leme Ferre. He was the fourth of seven children they had. In 1967, he entered Luís de Camões school and studied there until 1972. In the next year, he went to the PUC SP Laboratory School, where he gets interested in artistic languages and starts to write his firsts poems. In 1975 he enters Colégio Equipe (where most of Titãs' members studied), and begins to compose with his classmate Paulo Miklos. In 1978, he begins to study Portuguese language and literature at USP.