Culture of Myanmar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The culture of Myanmar has been heavily influenced by Buddhism and the Mon people. Its neighbours, particularly India, China, and Thailand, have made major contributions to Burmese culture. In more recent times, British colonial rule and westernisation have influenced aspects of Burmese culture, including language and education.
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[edit] Arts
Historically, Burmese art was based on Buddhist or Hindu cosmology and myths. There are several regional styles of Buddha images, each with certain distinctive characteristics. There are 10 traditional arts, called pan sè myo (ပန္းဆယ္မ္ယုိး), listed as follows:[1]
- Blacksmith (ပန္းပဲ ba-bè)
- Woodcarving (ပန္းပု ba-bu)
- Goldsmith (ပန္းထိမ္ ba-dein)
- Stucco relief (ပန္းတော့ pan-daw)
- Masonry (ပန္းရန္ pa-yan)
- Stone carving (ပန္းတမော့ pan-ta-maw)
- Turnery (ပန္းပ္ဝတ္ pan but)
- Painting (ပန္းခ္ယီ ba-gyi)
- Lacquerware (ပန္းယ္ဝန္း pan-yun)
- Bronze casting (ပန္းတဥ္း ba-din)
In addition to the traditional arts are silk weaving, pottery, tapestry making, gemstone engraving, and gold leaf making. Temple architecture is typically of brick and stucco, and pagodas are often covered with layers of gold leaf while monasteries tend to be built of wood (although monasteries in cities are more likely to be built of modern materials).
Burmese literature has been greatly influenced by Buddhism, notably the Jataka Tales. Since orthodox Buddhism prohibited fiction, many historical works are nonfiction. However, British colonisation introduced many genres of fiction which have become extremely popular today. Poetry is a prominent feature and there are several forms unique to Burmese literature.
Pwe (performances) often feature an ancient form of dance called yo-da-ya a-ka which is an imitation of formal Thai dancing, in which a woman uses only her hands and feet to express emotions. The name yodaya is a Burmese corruption of Ayutthaya.
Various types of Burmese music use an array of traditional musical instruments, assembled in an orchestra known as saing waing[2] which the Burmese saing saya Kyaw Kyaw Naing has made more widely known in the West. An instrument unique to Myanmar is the saung-gauk,[2] an arched harp that can be traced to pre-Hittite times. Singing in classical times stemmed from various legends in Pali and subsequently in Burmese intermingled with Pali, related to religion or the power and glory of monarchs, and then the natural beauty of the land, forests and the seasons, eventually feminine beauty, love, passion and longing, in addition to folk music sung in the paddy fields. Pop music, however, dominates the music of Myanmar today, both adopted and homegrown.
[edit] Religion
Myanmar is a predominantly Theravada Buddhist country. Buddhism reached Myanmar around the beginning of the Christian era, mingling with Hinduism (also imported from India) and indigenous animism. The Pyu and Mon kingdoms of the first millennium were Buddhist, but the early Bamar peoples were animists. According to traditional history, King Anawrahta of Bagan adopted Buddhism in 1056 and went to war with the Mon kingdom of Thaton in the south of the country in order to obtain the Buddhist Canon and learned monks. The religious tradition created at this time, and which continues to the present day, is a syncretalist mix of what might be termed 'pure' Buddhism (of the Sri Lankan or Theravada school) with deep-rooted elements of the original animism or nat-worship[2][3] and even strands of Hinduism and the Mahayana tradition of northern India.
Islam reached Myanmar at approximately the same time, but never gained a foothold outside the geographically isolated seaboard running from modern Bangladesh southwards to the delta of the Ayeyarwady (modern Rakhine, known previously to the British as Arakan, and an independent kingdom until the eighteenth century). The colonial period saw a huge influx of Muslim (and Hindu) Indians into Yangon and other cities, and the majority of Yangon's many mosques and temples owe their origins to these immigrants.
Christianity was brought to Myanmar by European missionaries in the 1800s. It made little if any headway among Buddhists, but has been widely adopted by non-Buddhists such as the Chin, Karen, and Kachin. The Roman Catholic Church, Myanmar Baptist Convention and the Assemblies of God of Myanmar are the largest Christian denominations in Myanmar. Myanmar is home to the second largest population of Baptists in the world, after the United States.
The Chinese contribution to Myanmar's religious mix has been slight, but several traditional Chinese temples were established in Yangon and other large cities in the nineteenth century when large-scale Chinese migration was encouraged by the British. Since approximately 1990 this migration has resumed in huge numbers, but the modern Chinese immigrants seem to have little interest in religion.
Some more isolated indigenous peoples in the more inaccessible parts of the country still follow traditional animism.
There are no totally reliable demographic statistics form Myanmar, but the following is an estimate of the religious composition of the country:
- Buddhists: 87%
- Animists: 5%
- Christians: 4.5%
- Muslims: 4%
- Hindus: 1.5%
Myanmar allows complete freedom of religious expression, and there appears to be no inter-religious tensions as such (although there are ethnic tensions, particularly between the dominant Bamar and the descendants of Indian migrants, which can find religious expression). Nevertheless, the current regime's nationalistic policy of Bama san-gyin, which considers Buddhism a key element of Burmese-ness, does provide a systemic bias in favour of Buddhists in terms of preferment in the armed forces and other State structures.
[edit] Pagodas and monasteries
Aspects of Burmese culture is most apparent in religious sites. The country has been called the Land of Pagodas as the landscape is dominated by pagodas or stupas. The four most important Burmese Buddhist pilgrimage sites are Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, Mahamuni Buddha in Mandalay, Kyaiktiyo Pagoda in Mon State, and Bagan, an ancient capital by the River Ayeyarwaddy where thousands of stupas and temples have stood for nearly a millennium in various states of repair .
Pagodas are known by their Pali term zaydi, but are also commonly called hpaya which is synonymous with "Buddha". Monasteries are known as hpongyi kyaung, hpongyi meaning monk, and since they have traditionally been places of learning where village children are taught how to read and write including and more importantly Pali, the language of the Buddhist Scriptures, school also came to be called kyaung in the Burmese language.
[edit] Traditional festivals
There are twelve months in traditional calendar of Myanmar and twelve corresponding festivals.[4] Most of the festivals are related to Burmese Buddhism and in any town or village the local paya pwè (the pagoda festival) is the most important one.[2]
The most well-known festival is Thingyan, a four-day celebration of the coming lunar new year. This festival is held prior to the Burmese New Year (first day of Tagu, around 17 April). Similar to other Southeast Asian new year festivals (eg. Songkran), people splash water on one another. However, Thingyan has religious significance, marking the days in which Buddhists are expected to observe the Eight Precepts of Buddhism.[5]
[edit] Cuisine
Burmese cuisine falls somewhere between Indian and Chinese cuisine. It is not widely known throughout the world, and can be characterized as having a mildly spicy taste, with a limited use of spices. The most famous Burmese dish is mohinga, rice noodles in a rich fish soup. The Burmese traditionally eat with their fingers, although the usage of Western utensils and chopsticks have become more widespread, especially in towns and cities.
[edit] Sports
The most popular sport in Burma is football (soccer).[3] Chinlone, an indigenous sport utilises a rattan ball, and is played using mainly the feet and the knees but the head and also the arms may be used except the hands.[6][2] Burmese kickboxing called Let hwei is popular and tournaments may be seen at pagoda festivals. A form of Burmese martial arts called thaing (similar to Chinese kung fu) is also practiced. Of the twelve seasonal festivals, regettas are held in the month of Tawthalin (August/September), and equestrian events were held by the royal army in the time of the Burmese kings in the month of Pyatho (December/January).[4]
[edit] National holidays
Date (2007) | English name | Burmese name |
---|---|---|
4 January | Independence Day | လ္ဝတ္လပ္ရေးနေ့ (Lut lat yei nei) |
12 February | Union Day | ပ္ရည္ထောင္စုနေ့ (Pyidaungzu nei) |
2 March | Peasant's Day | တောင္သူလယ္သမားနေ့ (Taungthu lè thama nei) |
2 March | Full Moon of Tabaung | တပောင္းလပ္ရည့္နေ့ (Tabaung la byei nei) |
27 March | Armed Forces Day (formerly Resistance Day) | တပ္မတော္နေ့ (Tatmadaw nei) (formerly Tawhlan yay nei) |
13 - 16 April | Water Festival | သင္က္ရန္ (Thingyan) |
17 April | Burmese New Year | န္ဟစ္ဆန္းတစ္ရက္နေ့ (Hnitsan ta yet nei) |
1 May | Labour Day | အလုပ္သမားနေ့ (A louk thama nei) |
30 April | Full Moon of Kason | ကဆုန္လပ္ရည့္ဗုဒ္ဒနေ့ (Kahsoun la byei Bouda nei) |
29 July | Beginning of Buddhist Lent | ဝာဆုိလပ္ရည့္နေ့ (Wazo la byei nei) |
19 July | Martyrs' Day | အာဇာနည္နေ့ (Azani nei) |
26 October | End of Buddhist Lent, Festival of Lights | သီတင္းက္ယ္ဝတ္ (Thadingyut) |
Oct - Nov | Diwali | ဒီပာဝလီနေ့ (Deiwali nei) |
24 November | Tazaungmone Full Moon Festival, Festival of Lights | Tazaungdaing pwe |
4 December | National Day | အမ္ယုိးသားနေ့ (Amyotha nei) |
Dec - Jan | Kayin (Karen) New Year | ကရင္န္ဟစ္သစ္ကူး (Kayin hnithikku) |
25 December | Christmas | ခရစ္စမတ္နေ့ (Hkarissamat nei) |
Nov - Jan | Eid | အစ္နေ့ (Id nei) |
[edit] Customs
The "traditional" Burmese greeting is min-ga-la-ba. It is relatively recent as the custom started in schools in the 1960s effectively replacing the English "Good morning/afternoon, teacher" in the newly nationalised missionary schools; it is also considered formal and only used in certain instances. Greetings such as, "Have you eaten" (htamin sa pi bi la) and "how are you" (Nei kaung la) are still more commonly used as they have always been. "Hello" is also a popular greeting nowadays whereas it used to be confined to answering the phone.
The traditional garment of the Burmese is called longyi, a sarong worn by both women and men. Traditionally, Bamar men wear mandarin collared jackets, while Bamar women wore a blouse and a shawl. However, these are only worn on more formal occasions in modern times. In urban areas, skirts and pants are becoming more common.
Physical demonstrations of affection in public are common between friends of the same gender, but less rarely seen between lovers. It is thus common to see friends walking together holding hands or with arms round each other, but couples rarely do so except in major cities.
In language, the Burmese are very age-oriented. Elders are spoken to in a different and more respectable manner and a special vocabulary exists for speaking to monks.[2]
It is considered rude to touch a person's head, because it is the "highest" point of the body. It is also considered taboo to touch another's feet, or to point with the foot, because the feet are considered the lowest. Also, pointing a finger to Buddha images is considered blasphemous, although this custom has slowly eroded. Shoes are always taken off before entering homes and temples. A custom of the Burmese is to walk clockwise (let ya yit) around a pagoda, rather than counter-clockwise (let wè yit).
[edit] References
- ^ Myanmar Traditional Arts.
- ^ a b c d e f Shway Yoe (Sir James George Scott) 1882. The Burman - His Life and Notions. New York: The Norton Library 1963, 317-318, 231-242, 211-216, 376-378, 407-408.
- ^ a b Andrew Marshall (2002). The Trouser People. Washington DC: Counterpoint, 61-63,32-33,11113.
- ^ a b Introduction of Myanma Festivals. Yangon City Development Council. Retrieved on 2006-11-14.
- ^ The Eight Precepts.
- ^ Chinlon - Myanmar Traditional Sport.
[edit] External links
- Art Only - Burmese art and craft collection
- Burmese Literature inc. audio
- An Introduction to Burmese Sculpture
- The Exquisite Art of Wood Carving by Pyi Phone Myint
- Burmese Festivals
- Mystic Ball - the Movie (Chinlon)
- Let hwei (Burmese Kickboxing) YouTube
- National holidays of Myanmar and other ASEAN countries
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