Feature: Yangon residents observe yearly ritual to honor Buddha capping water festival

A large number of Yangon residents trooped to the city's major pagodas Friday morning, especially at the sacred Shwedagon Pagoda, where they paid obeisance to Buddha by bathing and sprinkling scented water on Buddha statues and images.

This was part of Myanmar people's centuries-old heritage practiced on the traditional New Year day after the four-day water festival which ran from Monday to Thursday.

As the New Year is ushered in, the people in Myanmar, who are mostly Buddhist believers, are busy with their annual rituals such as visiting monasteries and temples to take precepts, give donations and do meditation.

On this day, the youths normally pay their respects to their parents, grandparents, teachers and elderly persons, some of them giving baths, shampooing or manicuring old persons in homes for the aged as a gesture of preserving Myanmar's age-old customs and traditions. Some offer natural fragrant bark scents to the elderly.

Also during the New Year, it is customary for people to free caged birds to the wilderness and fishes in aquariums to the lakes as a gesture of love for nature.

During the four-day traditional Thingyan water festival, people threw water on one another. By nature, water is cold and clean and, therefore, Thingyan water makes people cool, fresh and pleasant, and happy. It symbolizes the cleansing of the dirt of the old year and having a fresh and auspicious start for the New Year.

Water is a symbol of not only cleanliness but also of auspiciousness. The people in Myanmar believe that through the celebration of the water festival, vices and evil deeds accumulated during the previous year can be washed out and replaced by happiness and hope for a better life in the incoming year.

In olden days, Myanmar people were content in sprinkling water using leaves on one another, the traditional way of observing the water festival.

Through the years, however, more people are now splashing water with one another using water guns or plastic hoses usually accompanied by loud guffaws, giving them more fun and enjoyment.

This year's Myanmar water festival ended on Thursday evening with a ceremony at the Yangon Mayors' Pandal featuring live song and dance numbers.

Throughout the years, people look forward to the Myanmar water festival as an occasion to thank the deities for the good life, peace and prosperity for the community.

Among Myanmar's 12 seasonal festivals held every year, the Thingyan water festival is considered the grandest and the most anticipated event by the people of Myanmar. Endi