What are the customs of the Dai people?

The customs of the Dai people are as follows:

1, Dai Spring Festival, Dai New Year customs

The New Year of the Dai people, according to the Dai calendar is about the seventh day after the Qingming Festival of the Chinese lunar calendar. During the festival, the Dai compatriots hold lively and extraordinary water splashing, dragon boat racing, and release of high rise activities.

The water-splashing activity is the culmination of the Dai people's New Year's Eve, and it is also the most wonderful scene in the Dai calendar year, so it is usually referred to as the "Water-splashing Festival" in the Dai calendar year.

The young men and women of the Dai people love the game of throwing chaff bags, and during the Spring Festival, the young men and women throw chaff bags at each other to see who throws them accurately and who catches them.

Playing to a certain time, the girls will quietly snatch the young man's body to wear a belt knife, head cloth or tethered horse, ran home. If the young man is in love, they will follow. Parents see their daughters with a head cloth, leading the horse back, they hosted a banquet.

The major festivals of the Dai people are the Dai New Year -- the Water Festival, the Sampling Festival and the Open Door Festival. The "Water Festival" is a traditional festival for the Dai people to get rid of the old and bring in the new, which takes place in the middle of the fourth month of the solar calendar.

The main activities during the festival are worshiping ancestors, piling up sand, splashing water, throwing bags, racing dragon boats, setting off fireworks and singing and dancing for pleasure.

2, the door festival

The Dai language called "Haowu", meaning summer. It is held on September 15 of the Dai calendar (mid-July of the lunar calendar) and lasts for three months. According to legend, every year in September of the Dai calendar, the Buddha went to the West to preach with his mother, 3 months to return to earth.

On one occasion, just as the Buddha went to the West to preach during the period, thousands of Buddhists went to the countryside to preach, trampled on the people's crops, delaying their production, the people complained a lot, very dissatisfied with the Buddhists.

When the Buddha learned of this, he felt uneasy in his heart. From then on, every time the Buddha to the West when the Sutra, they will be the Buddhists are gathered together, the provisions of the three months not allowed to go anywhere, but only repentance, in order to atone for the sins of the past. Therefore, it is called the "closed door festival".

3, the Open Door Festival

The Dai language called "Angwa", meaning out of the summer, from the ancient Buddhist rainy season to live in the habit. Time in the Dai calendar on December 15 (about the middle of the ninth lunar month).

Symbolizing the end of the three-month rainy season and the lifting of marriage taboos between men and women since the "Closing Festival", young men and women can begin to fall in love freely or hold weddings from now on.

On the day of the festival, young men and women dressed in full costume go to a Buddhist temple to worship the Buddha, with food, flowers, wax strips, coins and offerings. After the worship, a grand civic gathering is held to celebrate the end of the Anjou fasting since the festival of the closing of the doors.

The main events include the lighting of sparklers and gaosung, the lighting of Kongming lanterns, singing and dancing. Youths also dance around the village with lanterns in the shapes of birds, animals, fish and insects. This is also a festival to celebrate the completion of the rice harvest.

4, Water Splashing Festival

It is the most ethnic festival of the Dai people. The festival is held in the sixth month of the Dai calendar, which is equivalent to the fourth month of the Gregorian calendar (the Water Splashing Festival in Dehong is held on April 11-12 every year).

On the day of the Water Splashing Festival, people worship the Buddha, and girls wash the Buddha with fresh water with flowers floating in it, and then splash water on each other to play and wish each other good luck.

At first, they used their hands and bowls to splash water, but later they used pots and buckets to splash water and sing songs, and the more they splashed, the more intense the sound of drums, gongs, splashing water, and cheers rang out.

During the Water Festival, traditional entertainment activities such as dragon boat races, putting on the high, flying lanterns and various singing and dancing evenings are also held. Most of them are related to Buddhism.

5. Rituals and Food Customs

The Dai people also worship their own village community god, the Dai people called "go to Raman", also known as "Phi Man", is the protection of the god, to be sacrificed twice a year.

Planting rice seedlings before praying for a good harvest, after the fall harvest for thanks, to collectively kill a cow or pig, each family prepared tribute to send into the room enshrining the community god, to be recited after the words of sacrifice, everyone **** food. The new members of the society should make offerings of chicken, wine and strips of bacon to the god of the society.

In Menghai and other places slaughtered sacrificial animals still retained plagiarized cattle and fish eating cowhide custom. Xishuangbanna once tribal gods, some of the offerings must be black cattle, white pigs.

Yuanjiang, Xinping and other places of the Dai, universal worship of the Dragon Tree, the Dragon God, Yuanjiang riverside Dai every year in March of the lunar calendar sacrifices of the Dragon Tree, the whole village to kill the red bull, killed before the red bull with white ash painted on the body pattern, but also in the cattle body Phi red and green cloth.

The same month, but also to kill the pig sacrifice "heaven and earth mother" in order to bless the livestock peace.

In the Dai folk, especially in some remote areas, there are still some taboos in cooking, such as: burning firewood to burn from the root; not from the fire across; can not casually move the tripod on the fire and so on.