page_title: Thingyan
section_title: Thingyan Eve
hierarchical_section_title: Thingyan / Thingyan Eve
caption_attribution_description: English: Mandalay legendary Thingyan float Myo Ma arrives to perform in front of Mandalay City Hall in Mandalay, Myanmar on 12 April 2012.
context_page_description: Thingyan is the Burmese New Year Festival that usually occurs in middle of April. It is a Buddhist festival celebrated over a period of four to five days, culminating in the New Year. The dates of the Thingyan Festival are calculated according to the Burmese calendar. The dates of the festival are observed as public holidays throughout Myanmar, and are part of the summer holidays at the end of the school year. Water-throwing or dousing one another from any shape or form of vessel or device that delivers water is the distinguishing feature of this festival and may be done on the first four days of the festival. The New Year takes place at virtually the same time as the new year celebrations of many countries in South Asia like China, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Nepal, Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka.
  Thingyan is comparable to other festivities in the region such as the Songkran in Laos, the Songkran in Thailand, the Cambodian New Year, the Sinhalese New Year and the festivals like Vaisakhi, Puthandu, Vishu and Bihu in India.
context_section_description: The eve of Thingyan, the first day of the festival is called a-kyo nei (in Myanmar, အကြိုနေ့), and is the start of a variety of religious activities. Buddhists are expected to observe the Eight Precepts, more than the basic Five Precepts, including having only one meal before noon. Thingyan is a time when uposatha observance days, similar to the Christian sabbath, are held. Alms and offerings are laid before monks in their monasteries and offerings of a green coconut with its stalk intact encircled by bunches of green bananas (ငှက်ပျောပွဲ အုန်းပွဲ, nga pyaw pwè oun pwè) and sprigs of thabyay (Syzygium cumini) before the Buddha images over which scented water is poured in a ceremonial washing from the head down. In ancient times, Burmese kings had a hair-washing ceremony with clear pristine water from Gaungsay Kyun (lit. Head Washing Island), a small rocky outcrop of an island in the Gulf of Martaban near Mawlamyine.
  Nightfall brings music, song and dance, and merrymaking in anticipation of the water festival. In neighbourhoods pavilions with festive names and constructed from bamboo, wood and beautifully decorated papier mache, are assembled overnight. Local girls rehearse for weeks and even years, in the run-up to the great event in song and dance in chorus lines. Each band of girls are uniformly dressed in colourful tops and skirts and wear garlands of flowers and tinsel. They wear fragrant thanaka - a paste of the ground bark of Murraya paniculata which acts as both sunblock and astringent - on their faces, and sweet-scented yellow padauk (Pterocarpus macrocarpus) blossoms in their hair. Padauk blooms only one day each year during Thingyan and is popularly known as the "Thingyan flower". Large crowds of revellers, on foot, bicycles and motorbikes, and in trucks, will do the rounds of all the mandat, some making their own music and most of the women wearing thanaka and padauk. Floats, decorated and lit up, also with festive names and carrying an orchestra as well as dozens of young men on each of them, will roam the streets stopping at every mandat exchanging songs specially written for the festival including Thingyan classics, and performing than gyat (similar to rapping but one man leads and the rest bellows at the top of their voices making fun of and criticising whatever is wrong in the country today such as fashion, consumerism, runaway inflation, crime, drugs, AIDS, corruption, inept politicians etc.). Accidents and incidents from drunk or reckless driving in crowded streets, as well as drunkenness, arguments and brawling are problems that typically occur. Generally however friendliness and goodwill prevail.
caption: Mandalay legendary Thingyan float Myoma arrives to perform in front of Mandalay City Hall in Mandalay, Myanmar on 12 April 2012.
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