The Nae Yaku, or Relative-Spirits, are the spirits of dead kin who become the tutelary guardians of their surviving family. They stand at the heart of Vedda religion, which is essentially a cult of the ancestral dead: they enter the shaman in trance, speak through him, and grant health, children and success in hunting to their descendants, who summon them through Indigollae Yaka and feed them with offerings of rice and game. A newly dead relative was believed to become a Nae Yaka within a few days of death, appearing to the living in dreams before being formally invoked.