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Poson as a national New Year
By Prof. Dhammavihari Thera
The concept of any New Year celebration or festival, in reality, only marks
a date and a point of time from which a group of people of specific
identity wish to re-start another period of 365 or 366 days, with a new
awareness and a new determination to make their lives within this incoming
period better than what they have been.
Many cultures of the world, especially in India, made use of the movement
of the sun and the moon in the zodiac to determine these, thus giving us
the solar and lunar calendars. These implied a lot of planetary
conjunctions, 'nakkhatta' or 'nakat', yielding many moments which are
believed to be both auspicious and inauspicious for humans on earth.
Experts in the field, both monks and laymen in Sri Lanka, would offer you
unquestionable advice on these. These guide many people with a harmless
degree of credibility as to when to start and when not to start work, even
in their day to day life, avoiding for instance, the ill-foreboding
'ràhu-kàlaya' on every single day of the week. Many Sri Lankans of today,
we know for certain, wise and less wise, elite and less elite strictly
observe these.
The word festival implies some form of celebration which is either
religious or secular. But it is no secret that in Sri Lanka today, concepts
like religious and ethnic are taboo. It is the one or the other through
which the weapons used in the present conflict in Sri Lanka have been
forged and turned out. Until very recent times, we freely used to say
Sinhala and Tamil New Year, with the words Hindu and Buddhist being thrown
in with as much ease. Even with both parties concerned, the Hindus and the
Buddhists or the Sinhalese and the Tamils, sitting apart and eating and
drinking severally, let the dawn of a new year be adequately celebrated. It
is good for both men and women, young and old and even for those yet
unborn, to carry with them thoughts of goodwill and well-wishes to one
another.
Let me start with something very personal. The year was 1949 and that was
exactly 58 years ago when I was a young bachelor. The scene was set in
Wales, a part of the island cluster of what goes with great pride as Great
Britain. On the night of December 31, I was spending a holiday there in
Cardiff with a group of student friends and we were invited to a country
home-party to usher in the New Year. The guests that night were happily of
diverse ethnic groups and from many different parts of the world. We were
all very glad to be together. We were equally happy to be able to jointly
wish one another.
Out of a moderate gathering of about twenty or thirty people at that house
party, I was picked to go out of the house as the old year was winding up
on the 31st night of December, and mind you that was just a few minutes
before midnight, and on a freezing winter night, with a little bit of snow
around. I was to re-enter the house as the clock struck twelve, vigorously
ushering in the New Year for the benefit of everyone. I had to bring into
the house with me a piece of white bread, obviously for abundance of food
for the coming year, a silver coin symbolising wealth in gold and silver,
and forget not, a piece of black coal to keep the winter fires burning for
warmth in the cold weather. Believe me, it was my dark Sri Lankan
complexion which made me the winner that night, because they believed at
that time, and I hope they still do, that our dark colour effectively keeps
the devil away and the evil he brings along with him.
In Sri Lanka, there are very many things which we, as people, have shared
together for centuries, even if we wish to ignore and forget them today,
for reasons which cannot be better described except as being stupid and
petty. We call each other chauvinists, being needlessly arrogant and
critical, without for a moment realising that the pot is calling the kettle
black. Using a common solar calendar, we have learnt to reckon the
commencement of our year, the so-called Hindu or Sinhala New Year, with a
particular position of the sun in the zodiac in the month of April. The
calendar man in the village, the 'nakat rala', made a living from
generation to generation, providing us this information seasonally, and
carrying home in return bagfuls of red country rice, 'kekulu hal' and not
Basmati, and other provisions from the gratified village folk who were
amazingly generous, a few days before the event.
Even from more than thousands of years before the Buddha, Vedic Aryans of
India had learnt to venerate the Sun God, Savitar as the life-giver. He is
undoubtedly the chief guest at any life-welcoming ceremony. So as we
celebrate the New Year, following the solar calendar, as Hindus or
Buddhists, Sinhalese or Tamils, let us not forget that we owe a word of
thanks to the Sun God. For he stands in the sky well above the Hindus and
the Buddhists, Sinhalese and Tamils. Can we not learn to share peacefully
these gifts of nature, and in such sharing, sense a pulse of brotherhood
amongst us?
Beyond this point, if any group or groups resists cultural syntheses of any
sort, let them feel free to do what they like, but please, without any
venom or bitterness, to part ways and get their identities established,
whether they be religious, ethnic or any other, thinly veiled and subtly
camouflaged. The choice legitimately is theirs. But it is best we do not
forget that everybody would be equally mindful not to allow any trespass in
the expression of one's own rights and identities.
In pre-Mahindian Sri Lanka, such a great festival day was the full moon of
Poson or June. While Venerable Mahinda's flight from his father's land of
India was scheduled to touch down at Mihintale at a later hour in the
afternoon, King Devanampiya Tissa had already instructed his people to
commence their festivities for the occasion or 'nakat keli' with water
sports in the Tisaveva in Anuradhapura. For a better brand of sport,
misguided as this royal master Devanampiya Tissa was, he set out on the
deer hunt. For the luck of Sri Lankans, or of humanity anywhere in the
world, Tissa's encounter with Thera Mahinda brought a complete halt in Sri
Lanka to this kind of stupid buffoonery, of royal or state pastime, of
hunting for pleasure, whether that be fox, deer or Bengal tiger.
The culture of this country, let it be remembered by the state and the
people here, took a remarkable new turn in their attitude to life. A
serious error was detected and somebody had the courage to point it out and
get things corrected. We very much regret the absence of such characters in
our midst today. Within a couple of centuries, the rulers began to set up
sanctuaries, with an island-wide ban on slaughter of all animals or 'ma
ghata[ ('Maghatam karayi dipe sabbesam yeva paninam.' Mhv. 41.v.30).
Amandagamini, Silakala, Aggabodhi IV and Mahinda III are among kings who
pursued this policy. In extending this sense of mercy to the world of
animals, birds and beasts and even fish are all equally included
('Macchànaü migapakkhãnaü' . Mhv. 48. v. 97).
If Sri Lankans need a festival which is well and truly national for Sri
Lankans as a whole and which meaningfully marks the birth of a New Year,
where could they find one better, besides Poson. Poson indeed marks the
birth of a new culture, hence of a new era in Sri Lanka. There is no
denying that Poson has a religio-cultural identity which is truly national.
No matter as to the source of its genesis, who brought it here and from
where it came, it has stayed long enough in this country to be
all-embracing.
Think seriously of making Poson, from this year onwards, the National
Annual Festival of Sri Lanka which we shall celebrate more meaningfully and
for our edification. This will re-awaken us to the vastness of our cultural
inheritance and our identity on the world scene. This is the way for peace
on earth and goodwill among men.
From: http://sundaytimes.lk/070415/Plus/016_pls.html
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*~~~ සබ්බදානං ධම්මදානං ජිනාති ~~~*
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