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The Tazaungdaing Festival, also known as the Festival of Lights, marks the end of the rainy season and the Kathina period in Myanmar. It was originally a Hindu festival honoring the god of lights, but Buddhists later associated it with the night Siddhartha's mother wove robes for him to become a monk. During the festival, fire balloons and lanterns are released, robe-weaving competitions are held, and families make traditional dishes like mezali phu thoke salad. Pagodas are filled with people worshipping Buddha and celebrating the full moon.

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Nyan Shin Min
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60 views5 pages

Bruh

The Tazaungdaing Festival, also known as the Festival of Lights, marks the end of the rainy season and the Kathina period in Myanmar. It was originally a Hindu festival honoring the god of lights, but Buddhists later associated it with the night Siddhartha's mother wove robes for him to become a monk. During the festival, fire balloons and lanterns are released, robe-weaving competitions are held, and families make traditional dishes like mezali phu thoke salad. Pagodas are filled with people worshipping Buddha and celebrating the full moon.

Uploaded by

Nyan Shin Min
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Tazaungdaing

Traditions, Origins, etc.

Presented by [Avengers]
Group members

Zaw Ye Phone
Thin Yanant Thwe
Htet Hmue Shin
Su Linn Lae May
Nyan Shin Min
The Tazaungdaing Festival, otherwise known as Festival of
Lights, takes place during the new moon on the 8th month of
the Buddhist calendar, which marks the end of the rainy season.
But it also marks the end of the Kathina period, when new
robes and alms are given to the monks as a means of merit-
making. The Tazaungdaing festival was observed in Myanmar
even before the spread of Buddhism. It was held in honor of the
God of Lights, and it marked the awakening of the Hindu god
Vishnu from his long sleep. During this festival, Myanmar
Buddhist people also celebrates offering ceremony of robes to
the monks and paying a greater attention to the needs of the
monks, and a robe-weaving competition to weave monk robes
is also part of the festival.
Myanmar Buddhist people later linked their own religious significance to the festival, saying that it was the night
that Siddhartha’s mother, sensing that her own son was going to abandoning the royal robes from his birth and
put on the robes of the monks that spent an entire night weaving the traditional yellow robes for him. Her sister
Gotami, the Buddha’s aunt, continued this tradition and offered new robes every year. To celebrate her
achievement, robe-weaving competitions to weave special yellow monk robes called matho thingan were also
held throughout the country, most notably in Yangon’s Shwedagon Pagoda. During these competitions, held for
two consecutive nights, contestants work nonstop from night until dawn to weave these garments.
The people release fire balloons and multicolored lanterns to the
sky to celebrate the day when Buddha returned from the visit of his
mother’s reincarnated spirit. The lights in the sky are said to
illuminate the path back to earth. The balloons are also released as
an offering to the Sulamani Pagoda in Tawadaintha Heaven, built by
the King of Celestials Beings, and enshrined relic of the Buddha’s
hair or released as a way to chase away evil spirits. The traditional
act of releasing balloons into the sky originates back to 1894, which
is when the British held the first ever hot air balloon competition in
Taunggyi, later after the annexing Upper Burma. The balloon
festival’s origin is also connected to Buddhism. Releasing fire
balloons symbolizes floating one’s sins and bad deeds away.
At night, you can see many hot air balloons of varying shapes and
sizes that are launched to the sky. In Myanmar, it is called “Mee-
Bone-Byan”. In every parts of the country, people send off flying
lanterns and it is a huge balloon made of way paper, Marajin Cloths
and plastic sheets. A very long time ago in the olden days, Waso
paper was widely used while in modern days plastic sheets are used
to make it. The balloons are filled with smoke from a grease-soaked
rag at an opening at the bottom, and after getting enough smoke, the
balloon slowly rises as everyone cheers, then floats upwards until
only a floating speck of light is seen. The people with more creativity
make balloons in different sizes and patterns in the form of tigers,
elephants, birds and other desired forms.
Candle-lighting of 1,000 candles at the same time
at temples is also practiced on full moon day.
Pagodas and temples are filled with Buddhists
coming to worship Buddha. In Burmese tradition,
during the full moon day of Tazaungmon, Burmese
families pick Siamese cassia buds and prepare it in
a salad called mezali phu thoke or in a soup. There
is a belief that a vegetable salad, Melzali bud
salad, has amazing medicinal benefits on Tazaung
Daing full moon night, so families prepare the
salad to enjoy at midnight under the biggest full
moon of the year. On this night, young men
celebrate a custom called “kyimano pwe”, by
practicing mischief on their neighbors, by stealing
or playing tricks on them.
THANK YOU
FOR WATCHING EVERYONE!

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