Then, let's introduce the basic information of this Tibetan Fairy Festival.
20 10165438+1October 23rd-1010 15 is the month of Tibetan calendar.
When is the fairy festival?
ceremony
Every morning on June 5th 10 in Tibetan calendar, the grass outside Lhasa was covered with frost, but Barkhor Street in the center of the city was crowded with people and smoked by mulberry trees.
On this day, women in Lhasa will get up early, dress up deliberately and make a collective appointment to go out to play. They will go to Barkhor Street to simmer mulberries, offer Bazin and wine to the goddess Bandan Ram, and of course, burn incense and pray in front of Balaam's statue, making good wishes for their future.
Women in Lhasa have deep respect for Ram, believing that this goddess can keep herself slim and beautiful. At the same time, it is said that the female wish made in front of Balaam statue on this day is likely to come true.
Among these legends containing happiness wishes, there is another saying: Women who bathe in the river this year will not catch a cold, but in the Tibetan calendar 10+05, women will catch a cold collectively.
Besides going to Jokhang Temple to pay homage to the goddess Bandan Ram, young girls in Lu Yu will flock to men for money, and men will be especially generous on this day and will not give them away in vain.
This day is the traditional Tibetan folk festival "Bai La Ri Zhu". For this festival, some people translate it into Bandan Ram Festival and some people translate it into Balaam Festival.
Banram's maternal legend
In the middle of the 7th century, King Songtsan Gampo of Tibet built Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, and specially invited the Indian goddess Auspicious Goddess to sit on the third floor of Jokhang Temple to be the protector of Jokhang Temple and Lhasa City. Tibetans gave this lucky girl from afar a Tibetan name: Bandan Ram.
In Jokhang Temple, there are three statues of Bandan Ram. In addition to the evil image of manic and fierce expression, there is another frog face image and a dignified and noble kind image.
However, in Tibetan folklore, the image of kindness and frog face has been transformed into Bharam, the youngest daughter of Bandan Ram, and Baba Dong Ze, the eldest daughter. In addition, Dong Sulan, who has been living in Su Xiang, Dong Zi, has also become the second daughter of Bandan Ram.
If the structure of these three daughters is systematically decomposed by anthropological methods, they only constitute the symbols of lust, material desire and spiritual desire, and the story that the three daughters have to obey their mother's wishes is the heritage of matriarchal society.
Whether the three statues of Bandan Ram correspond to her three daughters is also mentioned by Goldstein, an American Tibetan scholar, in an article about street songs in Lhasa. He believes that Tibetans have a tradition of randomly creating fairy tales, which makes the identities of many gods and their experiences confused and somewhat blurred by myths and fantasy stories.
If traced back to the source, Bandan Ram is a god who migrated from India to Tibet. In Indian folklore, she was born during the war between the gods and Asura, and later became the goddess in charge of fate, wealth and beauty in Hinduism and Brahmanism, and became the concubine of Vishnu, the mother of the goddess of love and the sister of the goddess of wealth.
/kloc-more than 0/000 years later, romantic Tibetans regarded her as a goddess, and people derived many secular legends from her: they created two firsts with their own identities while creating three daughters for her.
It is said that when people celebrate the Tibetan New Year, Balaam appeared among women carrying their backs and sang some songs condemning the times and predicting the coming year, thus producing the first Tibetan ballad;
It is also said that the image painted on the first Thangka in Tibetan history is Balaam. According to the Jokhang Temple Catalogue written by the Fifth Dalai Lama, Songzan Gambu painted the world's first image of Thangka Bailang with nosebleeds.
The relationship between the legendary Bandan Ram and her three daughters is a story in which matriarchal authority is challenged and defended by tough measures. In the story, Bandan Ram is an eccentric and unfriendly old Tibetan woman.
She stopped her eldest daughter's marriage and drove her son-in-law Zeng Zeng to the village of Cijiaolin across the Lhasa River. In a year, only daughters and sons-in-law are allowed to cross the river in Tibetan calendar 65438+ 10/5.
Because the second daughter was a little lazy, Bandan Ram drove her to Barkhor Street to beg for food. Her daughter Saint Balaam was punished for being lazy and crawling with mice.
The existence of the mouse god is a phenomenon of Hinduism: Hindus regard the mouse as a god and the mouse as the messenger of St. Ganez. At this point, it is consistent with the fact that Bandan Ram is from Hinduism.
The wine that protects the gods
On the day of "Bai La Ri Zhu", women in Lhasa will take their highland barley wine to worship Bandan Ram and her daughters.
The process of offering is to pour wine into the pot-bellied iron bucket in front of the frog face statue, and the wine flows out of the hose at the end of the iron bucket. The wine that flowed out was blessed by the goddess. Women who offer wine will pick up bottles and flagons that have just been emptied, and women who don't have flagons will take some in their hands, drink some and wipe the wine on their heads.
It is usually elderly women who pour drinks for Bandan Ram and her daughters. In addition to wine, they also brought bazin and barley grains and scattered these tributes in the mulberry stove.
After the worship in Jokhang Temple, the women who came out of the temple seemed satisfied with the wine blessed by the goddess and the white Hada tied to their chests.
They will simply gather on the street corner to bask in the sun and drink highland barley wine together. Once they are happy, they will sing Tibetan opera loudly like no one's watching. It is a remote and ancient Tibetan opera different from popular songs, and their pleasure is from the heart.
Festivals bring happiness to girls, not only wishing in front of the Statue of Liberty, but also more hopes to realize their wishes. Moreover, they will be in groups of three or five, asking men for money in Barkhor Street. Actually, it doesn't matter whether they can get the money or not. Ritual brings more happiness than money.
Folklore scholars say
Traditionally, "Bai La Rizhu" is a festival for women, so now some people call it "Women's Day" in Tibet.
However, Zhang Ying, a folklorist who has lived in Lhasa for nearly 40 years, said that in his impression, the word "Women's Day" was only born in recent years, and the custom of girls asking men for money in the street had never existed before.
An old woman told me: If you look carefully, you will find that the way of "white wax beads" is different between old women and girls. The content of the festival for the elderly is to get together with old friends and have a collective carnival, but girls' understanding of the festival still stays at the level of "joining in the fun" to a greater extent.
In addition, now many men will worship the goddess of membrane on this day, and they will also drink highland barley wine blessed by the goddess, and then have a carnival with women. Therefore, to a certain extent, this day has become a collective folk festival in Tibet.
You can also come here to feel the festive atmosphere here. The beautiful scenery here, coupled with the preferential policies for visiting Tibet in winter, is simply suitable for tourism!