Samyak Guthi organizes the Samyak Mahadan Festival in every 5 years. This year I was lucky enough to see this festival. Being a newar and from Kopundole, I did not knew about this festival which is conducted at a distance of 10 min walk from my house. There are still lots of people who have no idea about such Festivals.
Newar Community is rich from every aspect
This is a Buddhist ceremony called Illhane Samyak conducted at Nagbahal, Patan. We can see more then hundred Buddhist’s sculpture there. Tanbahal bashundahra Devi, Jattadhari Lokeshwore, Deepankar, Aarya Tara, Dharma Kirti are few to be named.
It is believed that from B.S 1761 it started and used to be conducted every year, due to lack of fund for guthi, now a day in every 5 years it is conducted.
My purpose of posting about this samyak is to let people know about many such Festival that are conducted in Nepal by different community at different places which are unknown to other community or people from other part of Nepal. I bet, even many Newar or Buddhist from Kathmandu, Bhaktapur, Pokhara, Palpa don’t know about this.
If we can mark such small events in our national calendar and Nepal Tourism Board mark them as tourist attraction Festival in their calendar then it would get more reorganization, tourist will get attracted and I think we will not have to fear of forgetting or losing or discontinuation of our tradition and festivals. These Festivals will get continuation in future. I am sure there are many such events that are conducted at different place in different community of Nepal. One I want to mention here as I know it, Bhairav Naach from Pokhara which is conducted in every twelve years.
I would like to thank my friend Akhil Bajracharya who let me know about this festival and invited me to watch it from his uncle’s house at Nagbahal.
Patan Durbar Square
Women doing pooja at the Nagbahal gate
Thank you for Preserving the tradition
Girls playing Drums, and there are voices raising for more woman rights. Why ? Woman are in every part of Nepali’s life playing big roles
Traditional Nepali Music being played
women with rice and other things to give away to god
beggars
October 12th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
this festival do exist in kathmandu valley. it occurs once in twelve years, to my best knowledge, if someone wants to stage it before the 12 years, he can by getting approval from the king, the king attends the festival. I don’t know what they will do with the king gone.
the wonderful thing about this festival in kathmandu is that every caste in newar society has a role in staging this festival. it belong to all the newars, who are the original inhabitants of kathmandu valley.
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July 13th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
Where is the explanation? You just say this is a festival not many people know and just write nonsense bla bla bla. Describe what the festival is like, bring alive all the sounds and sites. You’re pictures just doesn’t do it unfortunately.
An incomplete and poor writing, sorry but it’s true.
July 19th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Faris
Thank for your suggestion
any way i also do not have full information on this. Just heard about it from my friend and went to took picture and then next day in daily news papers had short information which i posted here.
September 2nd, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Thank you for this articles about samyak mahadan.I really liked it but you should have put more pictures.But still your work is faboulous.keep it up.
February 24th, 2012 at 6:20 pm
I m frm nagbahal itself n m really proud n happy that we have such a unique festival to celebrate . The fact that it is celebrated once in 4 yrs, makes it more special n we the locals put more efforts to make it a grand success. As mentioned above many people frm inside the valley itself donot know abt this festival… I too call my frenz at home so that they know abt it…but this way is not good enough to let all people know..i hope that the festival never dies.The article above is really good but some improvements can b done by adding more. It was a nice read.