garment-snatching demoness ［奪衣婆］ ( datsueba): A female demon said to dwell on the bank of the river of three crossings who strips off the clothes of the dead as they proceed from this world to the next. She hands the clothes of the dead to a male partner, called the garment-suspending demon. The garment-suspending demon then hangs the clothes on a branch of a tree and determines the weight of the offenses that the dead committed while alive by the droop of the branch. The dead are said to encounter these demons on the bank of the river of three crossings on the seventh day after their death. The garment-snatching demoness, the garment-suspending demon, and the river of three crossings do not appear in the scriptures of Indian Buddhism but are first mentioned in Chinese Buddhist texts. In Japan, belief in them became popular from the middle of the Heian period (794–1185) through the Kamakura period (1185–1333).