HAPPY MYANMAR NEW YEAR SONGS AND DANCES – II

This was one of the scenes of water festival in Yangon specially featuring Rakhine ethnic minority’s style of celebrating the water festival.

Rakhine state, where the ethnic nationality reside, lies in the coastal area in the country’s western part.

According to the Rakhine ethnic culture and custom, on request to the pandal supervisor ladies, the boys will choose the girl with whom they would like to play watering with.

The chosen girl then offers a bucket of water to the boy and he will start to play water, then the girl responses watering with her own bowl.

Other boys, while waiting their turn outside the pandal, will play music, songs or rhymes.

Such traditional style of water throwing of Rakhine nationality is unique among other nationalities of Myanmar, a pandal lady supervisor of the Rakhine Literature and Culture Committee, which organized the festival, told Xinhua Thursday in a festive trip interview.

The opportunity of watering each other in the pandals during the festive days is the affectionate and efficacious trust for boys and girls, she said.

It was seen that pandal, built of wood and bamboo and decorated with palm leaves and “padauk” flower, is placed with a long boat filled with water therein.

In fact, Rakhine national water festival is usually celebrated in three categories, namely, nantha grinding ceremony, nantha pouring to Buddha statues and water festival.

On the eve of the water festival, Rakhine people cleans the monasteries and its ordination building with water in every ward and village.

In that evening, Rakhine girls assemble at a pagoda platform or a hall bringing sandle woods of white and red. They grind the Nantha pieces or blocks on the face of Kyauk-pyin (round flot rock) to obtain the creamy sweet smelling Nantha.

At the same time, the young Rakhine men cheer and sing songs with the musical instruments to make the nantha grinding event into a competition.

The next morning, which is the first day of the water festival, the Rakhine people go to the pagodas and monasteries and do the cleaning and offering of the Nantha to Buddha statues, that is the gesture of welcoming to the Rakhine ethnic water festival.