Bodh Gaya celebrates traditional Buddhist New Year

Yahoo News ANI 2014-04-16

Bodh Gaya, Apr.15 (ANI): Buddhist monks from across the world converged at ancient temple in Bihar to celebrate traditional water festival, heralding the New Year for the community.

On Monday, Buddhist monks offered water at the statue of Lord Buddha in Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya and marked the traditional new year.

Water is offered. In our Buddhist society, people offer water to each other and seek blessings from each other. Today, we celebrated water festival which we generally celebrate on the arrival of New Year of Buddhist community. We had invited people on this occasion of Songkran (traditional New Year), which also marked the anniversary of Babasaheb Ambedkar (architect of Indian Constitution, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar) and we gathered over here. We also celebrated it as water festival, said caretaker of Bodh Gaya temple, Bhante Dinanand.

The area is sacrosanct to Buddhists all over the world since it was under the Mahabodhi tree that Lord Buddha attained enlightenment.

In the year 2002, the UNESCO had declared Mahabodhi Temple as a World Heritage Site. (ANI)

Songkran is also celebrated in Laos (called pee mai lao), Cambodia (called Chaul Chnam Thmey, Cambodian New Year), Myanmar (called Thingyan သင်္ကြန်), and by the Dai people in Yunnan, China (called Water-Splashing Festival). The same day is celebrated in South Asian calendars as well: the Assamese (called Rongali Bihu), Bengali (called Pohela Boishakh), Maithils (called Jood Sheetal), Oriya (called Maha Visuba Sankranthi), Malayali, Punjabi, Sinhalese, and Tamil New Years fall on the same dates, based on the astrological event of the sun beginning its northward journey. Songkran as such is similar to the Indian festival of Rangapanchami, Holi, with a lot of splashing of water as paints, colored dusts, and fragrances.

Songkran is similar to Jood Sheetal festival celebrated by Maithils in parts of Bihar and Nepal, also their new year, where water is poured on younger people's head, on plants, roads and everywhere possible. With putting water, one of the 5 constituents of life, on heads of youngers, elders bless them to be satisfied and never be longing for something unduly (Jiya Judal rahai in maithili). In Maithil villages, same age people pour water and mud on each other in celebration.

The traditional new year celebration in Sri Lanka also coincides with the Thai new year.

In Nepal, the official new year is celebrated on the 1st of Baisakh (Baisākh) according to astrological calendar Vikram Samwat and day often falls somewhere between 12–15 April.

Songkran occurs at the same time as that given by Bede for festivals of Eostre — and Easter weekend occasionally coincides with Songkran (most recently 1979, 1990, and 2001, but not again until 2085.^[7])

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