Maniyek
In an extremely so called busy Nepal the Newars are specially busy from the birth, lots of rituals to follow and many more ‘Quarter festivals’ to accompany them. Quarter festivals are what are I call them because it comes within a week of the main ritual not like the eve of Christmas or the sequel to events, it is more like a spin off. There are quarter festivals where the daughter and sisters that have been married off are invited and then there are some where the material uncles are invited. This is done because the festivals are national events and everyone is busy in their own homes with their household chores, rituals and mostly worshipping and feasting amongst themselves.
Since only about a small segment of the extended family are invited I’d not be wrong to term the event as a Quarter festival or “Nakhatya” as it is termed ethnically. As Observing this after most major festivals is very time consuming, scheduling a free time is very tight for the Newa family especially girls.
The female born in the Newa family is tied to the odd dates. Not verified in any ritual books or even scientifically observed. There is a belief till date in the numbers that intercourse on the odd days after the first day of the end of menstruation will lead to the birth of a girl child and intercourse on even day will lead to the birth of a boy, This however has no scientific basis but it has been observed that hospitals claim to have observed strange boy season and a girl season with number of boys born was always greater in proportion drastically than girls and the same other way around making it quite easy to guess whether the new born baby is a boy or a girl.
This odd number sticks with the girls till she is a woman and married off or “given wings” (Ihi-pa) and tied off with an even number completing the cycle for another life to be brought. Till then the rituals that the girl has to follow are scheduled on the odd number. The odd month fifth or 7th for the weaning ceremony. The fifth or seventh year for the “Ihi” ceremony when it is the age where she is to be taught to be a female and her feminine hood blessed over as a sign of being a female in the form of a “wood apple” symbolizing a womb as a sign of being a female. It is after this event, the shyness, and the shame sets in with privacy required and family those taken as family activities become private. The boys don’t have any ritual as a substitute for this. After this is the coming of Age which is Global. Some notable coming-of-age traditions across the globe are Japan (Seijin no Hi): On the second Monday of January, 20-year-olds celebrate Coming of Age Day, wearing traditional kimono (furisode) for women and attending ceremonies to mark their official, legal entry into adulthood.
Kenya/Tanzania (Maasai Warrior Class): Teenage boys (10–20) undergo a, intense, multi-day ritual, including camping in the forest, to be initiated as “warriors” or “junior warriors,” marking their role as protectors of the tribe.
Vanuatu (Land Diving): In the South Pacific, young boys jump from tall, wooden towers with bungee-like vines attached to their ankles to prove their courage and manhood.
Canada/Arctic (Inuit Hunting): Boys, often around age 11-12, travel into the wilderness with elders to test their survival, hunting, and adaptability skills, a vital rite of passage for Arctic life. Burma/Myanmar (Shinbyu): Boys under 20 live as novice monks in a monastery for a short period, learning Buddhist teachings and acting as a necessary rite of passage before manhood.
Sri Lanka (Tamil Puberty Ritual): When a girl begins her period, she undergoes a ceremonial bath to mark her transition to womanhood, often involving new sarees and ancestral jewelry. The girls in Nepal too have their own coming of age, it’s just that they don’t have to worry about scheduling, nature provides the time with the onset of menustration. It’s the nature’s rhythm or so as called in Sanskrit as “rituwati hunu” or a direct interpretation would be ‘to be seasoned’ this in my interpretation would be to eligible naturally to bear a child. The law however pointing towards the fragility at that age and legally terming eighteen and above as the legal age to bear a child. The nature says otherwise.
It is this onset of menstruation that schedules the third ritual for the Newa Girls ‘the Barha’. It is traditionally a 13 day ritual that is a of celebration of the feminine and requires shying away from the sun for 12 day Our ancestors are said to have observed that during this time the girls who shyed away from the sun were observed to bear a healthier and stronger offspring (no scientific study yet only heard from the mouth of ritual guru who regularly performs such puja). Thus the ritual is said to have been born under some conference taken place some century ago during the golden age of cultural revolution when the gurus were equally able and equally competent in the Vedic texts and the observation and study if regular life. This ritual was not so long in the times and was limited to only the days of menstruation. Some four and some seven just to be sure.
4 days seclusion are still observed strictly in homes but even the Vedic Brahmans allow the menstruating women after the 4th day of the onset of menstruation to participate in the kitchen and to participate in worship, However involvement is only allowed after the 7th day. So This 7 day shying away from the sun is said to have been rescheduled for 12 days one day for keeping the 12month menustration that occur each month thus following the ritual of shying away from the Sun in a room with no access to the sun, only artificial light. The days during the wicker lamps would have been dreadful with rooms and confined spaces with all the windows blacked out not even space or small hole for sunlight to enter.
The lack of oxygen I can imagine could have been deadly but the ladies bore it nonetheless and are still strong and standing. There have been death in such rooms. This representation of one day for each of the month is taken as a course of 12 days where friends come and visit and aunts come to not just accompany the girls not just in a mood of a light form of game play but teaching them about the life that is followed after marriage; from the kitchen to the water spout, the acts of washing the dishes after every kitchen duty to cleaning the rooms and even recipes of the kitchen are shared with the girls in those twelve days in some form of games and songs. Conjugal life and even caring of young babies and neonates are said to be taught during the 12 days.
On the 13 day as they exit the dark room after they have completed a course on life and are now more mature than before, They exit as Lakshmi holding the icinography of the “Shinha moo” and the “jwalanhyaka” signaling her qualifications then asking forgiveness to the Sun for hiding away from him and continuing a normal life till the time for her to get Wings “Ihi-pa” that is getting Married” and go to the husband’s home and start practicing that she learnt within the 12 days.
as the times have moved forward the schedule even for the kids have become complex, The life to live and the society to be intermingled in has become so Complex that about 12 years have just to be spent on Schooling as reading books in school has become equivalent to reading manuals on how to engage in a society, and four more years of diploma to specialize in a vocation that can help the capitalist world generate some form of income to help in living in the society with some form of solace. This manual has become so complex and complicated that even skipping a day in a school is a big deal. The one day skip is interpreted to have perpetual effect far down the lifeline of a child.
Missing even a day of school is the new taboo. It is the other way ropund and simply so much non-taboo to shorten the rituals than to be smeared with that of missing school so much so that the 13day ritual has been shortened to 4 days and even a single day in most places. This was done by the masters and the Gurus of the holy text. As the 12 day ritual, one for each month were ritualized, similarly shortening had to have a better representation with larger proximity thus the yugas. The four yugas taken as reference of the time and so the time that a girl child has to spend in isolation was logically set to four days, purifying her for an equivalent for 4 yugas. When Spending four more learning days was taken as still a longer for of unnecessity, the elders of the community, singled out ‘Ultimate Truth’ to be the ultimate single event that encompassed everything thus coming to a conclusion of the ritual to be held just for a single day in leau to the single most power of the universal truth, And from the second day she is free to return to her usual life but as a better and an upgraded version.
In this age of the Tech and mobile in every hand it is not unusual to imagine that the young girls a long time before 12years of age have access via the screen and movies even YouTube shorts about what life occurs across on the husbands’ side. They have from the very first day of birth a mobile in front from every meal to the sleep time. A child might not even know what she eats as she consumes the social media reels and stories daily. The worst part is the addiction.
The girls following such rituals even for a day find it really hard to stay without a mobile even for an hour let alone the whole day but since the ritual demands it the girls comply and the mothers are not compelled by the louds screams and sulking children demanding mobiles to return the mobiles which would have been impossible even in absence of wif or even if the lights went out limiting access to the social media. As the day goes on the child after much of withdrawal symptoms slowly seemed to adjust to the absence of mobile (as I observed during the ritual of my niece) This ritual I believe needs to slowly turn from learning which it was in the past for the explanations of menstruation and the life of girls, the precautions to be taken and the daily life activities that dictate the life that is they have to wade through In The Homes, the society and the in laws. The girls don’t seem to need that type of sensitization nowadays.
they are already aware by the screen on the palm of their hand so to keep this ritual alive and the ritual to have a meaning in changing or realizing the lives of Young screen addicted children could be to rehabilitate them to the life that there is outside of the 6 inches screen on their palm, the Doom scrolling and the brain rot rhymes. I would like to propose a ritual reversal of the shorting of the ritual from 12 to 1 day in reverse and further push to at least 4 days or more to 12days ritual of Bara without mobile, the society and even the government I believe would benefit with this rehabilitation and the continuation of the Culture. The same tradition and culture but a different meaning, the old meanings might have shaped and started a ritual but giving new meaning to continue the same ritual could preserve both and also answering which drives what.
