Photo - A traditional Spirit Festival

When the month of Ta-Paung begins, there comes many pavilions receiving and accepting alms, donations or offerings besides the roads of Anyar region just like mushrooms becoming alive by the time the rain comes. Many citizens from Yangon think that natives from the Anyar region are from Ma-Gway, Min-Buu, Yay-Nan-Chaung and other upper areas. But talented writers who grew up there claimed to call as Myay-Lat and they only call Anyar region to those cities such as Mandalay, Pakkoaku, Myin-Chan, and Monywa. Another fun fact is that natives from Maw-Lite, Min-Kin, and Khan-Nee which located on the right side of the Chin-Twin river are known as the people of Anyar by locals of Monywa. So, you can say the Anyar region is quite broad.

In this article, I would like to mention about Anyar region which is from Monywa and Yin-Mar city in Sagaing State. As I have mentioned above, the reason why many pavilions are built is that it is the time of celebrating the festivals in honor of spirits which is a tradition observed by the elders of the long times. By the time the moon is full in Ta-Paung month, there comes the festival of Amay-Yin spirit aka Amay Gyi in the city of Yin-Mar.

Photo - A traditional Spirit Festival

The festival of Amay Yin is held on Maung-Tone village and Zee-Taw-Taung village from Taw-Nan. Starting from the very first day of Ta-Paung month, this festival usually takes a week to finish. Don’t you doubt about the popularity of this festival, a hundred thousand of people gather excitedly for this festival. The organizers even have to request the nearby natives to come day by day to avoid the congestion. For instance, the organizers demarcate only the villagers from Pa-Lal, Myaing, Yaw, and Pa-Khan towns to come through five or six days after the full moon day of Ta-Paung and the villagers from Ka-Ni and Yin-Mar towns to come on seven or eight days after. The village we live in is inside the town of Yin-Mar so we often go there after seven days of Ta-Paung full moon day. When we were young, it had to take about a week or ten days to get to the festival as the transportations were not very convenient. We had to go there by bullock cart. So, we took these days to prepare arched roof for the cart, to bring hays for the cows and to prepare food to eat on the way there. For those who didn’t own a cart, they had to pay for the ride and they also had to take their time to get ready. This festival is celebrated once in three years. If there is a funeral or an obsequy accorded to a departed monk at the village where it is held, the festival has to cancel for the reason of having a precedent that the village can have bad luck in years. When that happens, a woman who said to be chosen as consort by a spirit has to ask pardon to the spirits and make it up on another year. All the plans for the festival have to cancel when such tragic happens. When the table turns in another year, all the bullock carts in the village are prepared since the dawn and started to leave around the evening. A long row of carts begins to take place on the road with those who are ready for festive vibes. There are many kids are crying out loud as they are not allowed to come along and also many dogs barking at the crowds. It can be total chaos with lots of noise. The scene of crowds with many carts leaving the village while covering the whole environment with clouds of dust and the village itself remains silently after the peoples’ departure can be quite heartwarming. The reason they choose to go at the evening is that the cows can get tired if it’s going to be noon when the sun is having most of its aura.

After traveling along the whole night and the morning, the desired destination has reached. At that time, people start to free the cows from the cart and carry the shoulder-yoke while calling upon the spirit, Amay Yin, saying “the descendants of mother has come to pay homage” and begin to drop the shoulder-yoke on the ground making the loud noise. Even though the shoulder-yoke is dropped on the ground, the villagers have a belief that the things on the cart such as plates and water pots cannot be broken at the same time.

Photo - A traditional Spirit Festival

When they reach the shrine of the spirit, Amay Yin, they need to prepare for making a devotional offering with cooking the ingredients they bring. After cooking, they have to go to the shrine and splash fragrance or perfume around the environment. It can be said to have done the welcoming ceremony of the spirit after drinking the water from the shrine of Amay Yin. In the spare time, there are also bazaar sellers who come to sell their local products depending on this festival so they can go wander around. Moreover, there are also selling spare things for the bullock carts such as yokes, canes and so on. There are many more things such as cane baskets, mats woven with outer rind of bamboo, and even ripe tangerine from the middle part of Myanmar. The visitors often buy whatever they like from the market, cook the ingredients and take a rest from the long journey. After that, they begin to go back around the evening. It can take two nights and three days to travel back to their villages even though the distances are not too far.

Back then, the transportation was not that good so it had to take a lot of time to get there. But now it has been better and you can get to the festival without having to travel for two nights and three days. You can get there around 10 in the morning if you get off very early in the morning from the village. Because of better transportation, people tend to go a lot more than before. The people who only go there once in three years now have a chance to go once in a year. And also, people from other villages can now go with ease to the festival. So, the festival become more alive than ever with a teeming crowd every year so that many pavilions are also taking place on the road more than ever. From the starting point of the bridge, there can be more than 300 pavilions on the way to the festival approximately.

The donating money from one of those 300 pavilions can be more than 20 lakhs for a season. I believe the reason behind getting that amount of money donated must be of a tradition that is unique from other pavilions. This is because, on the way to the festival, the pavilions treat the visitors with local products such as white jaggery which is a kind of palm sugar, quid of betel, tea leaves salads, and fermented drink made from the toddy sap with both sweet and bitter flavor. The visitors can drink whatever they like and also there are more treats like boiled peanut, eastern gooseberry, and watermelon. You can also eat them if you don’t have the intention to donate as well. I think this is a very charming tradition. Most of the pavilions from Myanmar only focus on getting the donation while opening songs from the loudspeakers with an asking alms bowl to every car that is seen but on the way to Amay Yin festival, you can see the villagers delightfully treating with love to the visitors.

Myanmar people are willing to donate as much as they can even when they don’t have anything on hand for themselves. That is why Myanmar can be seen on the list of the most generous countries and even the richest country, America can’t beat our country.

Since our village also built a pavilion on the way to the festival, I know a lot about those pavilions. Our village is called Aung-Moe and it is near the Chin-Twin bridge. After building the pavilion of our own, we have to hire the loudspeakers. They don’t usually charge us a lot since it is for the donation for the village. All the young men from the village lead the way for the donation and the other young women and men volunteer for the sundry chores. All the money got is not even used for dining costs. For the volunteers, the generous villagers usually donate rice, oil, and all other ingredients from one house to another. Moreover, for the dining at the pavilion, the bushel of peanut, watermelon and fermented drink from toddy-palm are also donated from their respective owners. So, you can say all the money is netted from donation.

The festival usually ends on the eighth day after the full moon day of Ta-Paung month. During the festive period, the money got from the donation is around 20 to 40 lakhs. The money pulls a great effort for our village for repairing the monastery and the library. After the eighth day of the Amay Yin festival, there comes another Ah-Lone-Boe-Taw-Gyi festival. Some historical writers of the spirits wrote that Amay Yin and Ah-Lone-Boe-Taw-Gyi are related as brothers and sisters. Nobody can tell exactly about the history of spirits but we believe that the Amay-Yin spirit came to the festival of Ah-Lone-Boe-Taw-Gyi on the eighth day of Ta-Paung full moon day. When that day comes, our village still holds a tradition of welcoming the spirit of Amay Yin with lots of treats such as white snack and red snack from the fields in our village till today.

Many people believe in revering the spirits and vice versa. But in my opinion, despite their beliefs, I think some kinds of traditions are quite adorable to observe. Those festivals from the An-Nyar region are celebrated at the time of crop harvesting so the farmers can spend a lot on it. It can’t be denied the fact that there was some inconvenience for food-stuffs back then but those festivals became the main platform for trading products. Despite arguing about believing those spirits or not, I wanted to write this article based on the conditions of my young aged experiences and the current ones as I miss most of the time back then.