Twelve Auspicious Rites Explained

The Twelve Auspicious Rites (my|လောကီမင်္ဂလာဆယ့်နှစ်ပါး, Burmese: လောကီမင်္ဂလာဆယ့်နှစ်ခန်း, and Burmese: လောကီမင်္ဂလာဆယ့်နှစ်ဖြာ) are a series of worldly rites of passage recognized in traditional Burmese culture, particularly by the Bamar and Rakhine peoples.[1] [2] [3] These are distinct from the Thirty-eight Buddhist Beatitudes described in the Maṅgala Sutta.[4]

In modern times, only four or five of these rites — the naming, first feeding, ear-boring, shinbyu, and wedding rites — are commonly practiced in Myanmar, especially in urban cities.[5] In pre-colonial Burma, Brahmins typically consecrated or led these rites. Today, masters of ceremony who specialize in abhisheka rituals, called beiktheik saya (ဘိသိက်ဆရာ), consecrate these rites. Beiktheik saya derive their skills from four Vedic scriptures, namely Sāmaveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda, and Rigveda, in addition to Pali scriptures.[6] The Twelve Auspicious Rites are believed to have originated in India, and were later spread throughout Southeast Asia by Buddhist missionaries. The rites are based on the teachings of the Buddha and are intended to promote moral and spiritual development, as well as to help individuals attain enlightenment.[7]

List of rites

  1. (Burmese: ဝိဇာတမင်္ဂလာ) – the successful delivery of a child
  2. (Burmese: မုခဒဿနမင်္ဂလာ) – the taking of refuge in the Three Jewels, worship of the Nandimukha nat, and paying of obeisance to a child's grandparents on the third day of a child's birth[8]
  3. (Burmese: ကေသစ္ဆေဒနမင်္ဂလာ) – the shaving of a child's hair on the 7th day of a child's birth
  4. (Burmese: ဒေါလာကရဏမင်္ဂလာ) – the first cradling of a child on an auspicious day[9]
  5. (Burmese: တမ္ဗူလဘတ္တမင်္ဂလာ) – the first ceremonial feeding of betel nut (flavored with catechu, licorice, and fennel seeds) to a child, on the 75th or 100th day of a child's birth[10]
  6. (Burmese: ရဝိန္ဒုဒဿနမင်္ဂလာ) – the first revealing of a child to the sun and moon on the full moon day of the first, second, or third Burmese lunar months following a child's birth, comparable to the Hindu nishkramana ceremony
  7. (Burmese: နာမကရဏမင်္ဂလာ) – the naming of a child based on a child's personalized horoscope (ဇာတာ) on the 100th day of a child's birth, similar to the Hindu namakarana ceremony
  8. (Burmese: ဘတ္တာဟာရမင်္ဂလာ) – the first ceremonial feeding of solid food (steamed rice) to a child, also commemorated with the donation of food alms to Buddhist monks, on the 6th month of a child's birth,[11] similar to the Hindu annaprashana ceremony
  9. (Burmese: ကေသာဗန္ဓနမင်္ဂလာ) – the hair-knotting of a child, after the hair is shampooed with traditional herbal shampoo made with soap acacia and Grewia elastica (Tayaw kinbun) on an auspicious day
  10. (Burmese: ကဏ္ဍဝိဇ္ဈနမင်္ဂလာ) – the ear-boring ceremony of a child an auspicious day, comparable to the Hindu karnavedha ceremony
  11. (Burmese: ပဗ္ဗဇ္ဇမင်္ဂလာ) – shinbyu, the ordination of a child into the Buddhist monkhood as a samanera on an auspicious day[12]
  12. (Burmese: အာဝါဟဝိဝါဟမင်္ဂလာ) – the wedding ceremony on an auspicious day[13] [14]

The scholar Aung Chein also identifies a number of auspicious rites outside of the twelve listed above:

  1. (Burmese: ဘူမျာကရဏမင်္ဂလာ) – the first touching of the ground by a child[15]
  2. (Burmese: မုတ္တသိရာမင်္ဂလာ) – the first parting of the child's hair by his or her mother
  3. (Burmese: မကုဋဗန္ဓနမင်္ဂလာ) – the wearing of the makuṭa crown
  4. (Burmese: ဂေဟကရဏမင်္ဂလာ) – the housewarming ceremony

See also

Notes

  1. Web site: လောကီမင်္ဂလာ (၁၂) ပါး. 2021-01-17. Yangon Style. my.
  2. Book: Spiro, Melford E.. 1982-05-27. University of California Press. 978-0-520-04672-6. en.
  3. Book: Worldmark encyclopedia of cultures and daily life . 1998 . Gale . 978-0-7876-0552-0 . Gall . Timothy L. . Detroit . Rakhines . Gale Research Inc.
  4. Book: Houtman, Gustaaf. 1999. ILCAA. 978-4-87297-748-6. en.
  5. Web site: မြန်မာတွင် လောကီမင်္ဂလာလေးမျိုးသာပြုလုပ်တော့ဟု ဗြိတိန်မနုဿဗေဒပညာရှင်ဆို . 2021-01-17 . 7Day News - ၇ ရက်နေ့စဉ် သတင်း . my.
  6. Book: Houtman, Gustaaf . 1990 . ILCAA . 264 . en.
  7. Book: Bischoff, Roger . Buddhism in Myanmar: A Short History . 1995 . Buddhist Publication Society . 978-955-24-0127-5 . en.
  8. Also called (Burmese: နန္ဒီမုခဒဿနမင်္ဂလာ).
  9. "" (ဒေါလာ) is sometimes misspelt (ဒေါဠာ).
  10. Also called (Burmese: တမ္ဗူလာဟာရမင်္ဂလာ). Now sometimes replaced with (Burmese: သိရောဒက), the child's first ceremonial hair-washing as betel nut has fallen out of common use.
  11. Also called (အာဟာရပရိဘောဂမင်္ဂလာ,) or (Burmese: ပဌမဘတ္တမင်္ဂလာ,).
  12. Also called (သာမဏေရပဗ္ဗဇ္ဇမင်္ဂလာ).
  13. Web site: 2017-09-29. အစဉ်အလာတွေထဲက မင်္ဂလာဆောင်အခမ်းအနား. 2021-01-17. The Myanmar Times. my.
  14. Typically combined with the (ဝိဝါဟမင်္ဂလာ), the rite wherein the daughter is led to her family home before the wedding.
  15. Book: သခင်အောင်ချိန်. ဆရာဖြစ်သင်ဘိသိက်မင်္ဂလာကျမ်း. ပညာအလင်း. 1978. my.

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