What are all five-color cloths for?

Five-color cloth is also called five-color prayer flags. As a symbol of good luck, prayer flags need to be renewed every year. You can't choose a new day at will, but choose a good day after the first day of the Tibetan New Year according to the Tibetan calendar.

This morning, all the people in the hospital put on their holiday costumes and gathered on the roof to hold a grand and happy prayer flag insertion ceremony. In Tibetan, this ceremony is called "supporting the old age", which means offering sacrifices to the gods and praying for blessings.

As far as its external form is concerned, prayer flags can be roughly divided into three types:

One is a blue, white, red, green and yellow square cloth with Buddha's teachings and bird and beast patterns printed on it, sewn one by one on a long rope and hung between two hills. Such prayer flags are common on sparsely populated mountains.

The second kind of prayer flags are narrow strips of cloth three to five meters long, which are single in color, either white or red. It is printed with the teachings of the Buddha, and one side of the cloth is sewn on a thick warp beam and inserted in front of the hospital. This kind of prayer flag is more common in Gongbulin District. This is the kind of warp beam inserted in Jokhang Temple Square in Lhasa, but it is more exquisite.

The third kind of prayer flags are glittering flags in five colors: blue, white, red, green and yellow, and a main square cloth with a monochrome edge, on which the teachings of the Buddha and the patterns of birds and animals are printed. These banners are hung on willow branches respectively, becoming prayer flags. Such prayer flags can be seen everywhere on the roofs of residential buildings in the ancient city of Lhasa.

Extended data:

In addition to the symbolic meaning of color, there are many Tibetan letters and vivid bird and beast patterns on the banner, which are printed with woodcut. Tibetan is a Buddhist doctrine at first glance. The text directly conveys the meaning, unlike colors and lines, and you can know its content after reading it.

Since it is the theory of Buddha, Confucian classics must be inseparable from the theme of compassion and universal salvation. In addition to writing, Tibetan scholars at home and abroad also have some explanations about what the Penglong liger picture in the four corners and the steed picture in the middle symbolize.

Among them, the most comprehensive and detailed explanation is given by the Italian Tibetan scholar Mr. Nankanobu in the section about the wind flag in Selected Works of Nankanobu (Tibetan version of China Tibetan Studies Publishing House).

In the word (Longda, Fengqi), (Longda) stands for heaven in five categories: earth, water, fire, wind and sky. The original meaning of this word is big, complete and complete. If it is combined with other phrases to form a noun, for example,. From the root meaning of these nouns, we can see that they have the meaning of big, complete and complete.