A Guide to Tourism Destinations and Beyond
  Vol.6       No.2                      April - June 2007
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Thungran

By MaThanegi
Photo: Sonny Nyein

The Myanmar Water Festival falls in mid-April, preceding the New Year by four or five days according to the lunar calendar. It is called Thingyan, and other national races celebrate it as well. The Rakhine call it Thungran in their language which is similar to Burmese. They also have their own traditions regarding the celebrations, such as pouring fragrant wood paste on Buddha images. It is believed that when the Lord Buddha came to Rakhine and oversaw the casting of the Mahamuni bronze image, the ceremony of pouring fragrant paste was performed by the people when the image was completed and thus it became an annual ritual.
Everywhere in the country, people throw water on friends and strangers alike to en~er the New Year with no residual bad luck. The people have fun dashing water on everyone and making sweet desserts to distribute to others. On the day before the New Year, people will pay homage to and ceremoni- ously wash the hair of old people in the neighbour- hood, clean out their own household Buddha shrines with perfumed water, or go in groups to do the same at pagodas.
Pouring water scented with woodpaste on images                      Girls grind fragrant wood paste together
Pouring water scented with woodpaste on images                                          Girls grind fragrant wood
                                                                                                                               paste together


The Rakhine has a slightly different manner of celebrat- ing their 'Thungran'. In other places, the women stand on wooden platforms by the side of the road holding water pistols, hoses or bowls of water, as people, mostly men, pass by in open cars to be wetted down. There is also music and dancing as enter- tainment.

The Rakhine celebrate inside temporary pavilions where the young women line up along one side of a wooden skiff filled with water, and the young men approach from the other side. With the boat between them the girls dash water on the men.

Their way of paying homage at the pagodas during Thungran is also differ- ent. Before the first day of the water festival, every neigh-bourhood would wash and thoroughly clean their own houses and the monas- tery in their community.

The next evening, which is the 'Day of Welcoming Thungran', girls would carry their stone mortars used to grind the Thanakha bark paste make-up to a gath- ering place of a rest house or a tempo- rary pavilion. They would grind together fragrant woods such as Natha Hpyu or Natha Ni, white and red sandalwood (Santalum album Linn) and Ka'ra'met (Mansonia gagei Drummond). The young men sings and plays music from outside of the pavilion to enter- tain the girls as they work. The creamy and fragrant paste is collected in large jars and stored overnight.

At dawn the next day which is the 'Arrival of the First Day of Thungran', accompanied by walking musicians and led by older citizens of the commu- nity, everyone walks in a pa- rade to the monasteries car- rying the fragrant wood paste and offerings to be donated to the monks.

There, they would pay obeisance to the Abbot and the monks, offer the gifts, and take the Five Precepts of Buddhism that forbids killing, stealing, lying, taking intoxicants and committing adultery.

The young men would then wash the images in the monastery shrine with water and the girls pour the fragrant paste on the images: The ritual of welcoming Thungran is then complete.


Home ::  Our readers  ::  Thungran   ::  Potter-marks on Myanmar Glazed Ceramics  ::  Mandalay
The Maha Muni Image ::  It's Good to Know  ::  Hell Flower