Planet Burma - Burmese Festivals FAQ

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	Burmese Festival FAQ

Festivals:
What is the best way to research dates and festivals from the chart?
What festivals are included?
Can I find the details of all these festivals elsewhere in a conventional list?
Calendars:
Why do the Burmese people hold their festivals on completely different dates each year?
How do they adjust their lunar calendar to keep it in step with the solar one?
Myanmar also has several non-lunar holidays, doesn't it? Including Thingyan!
Chart:
What are the horizontal and vertical axes of the chart supposed to represent?
You say the columns of the chart are colour-coded to represent places in Myanmar. Where is the key to the colours?
How do I call up absolutely all the details you have about a particular festival?
How do I go about calling up a chart for a different year?
How do I control the horizontal straight edge that sometimes appears, to line up dates with events?
Map:
What are the colours on the map, and how do I stop it getting in my way?
Accuracy and Authorship:
How accurate are the details you give?
Who is the author of this festival chart?
Trouble-shooting:
Sometimes nothing happens when I pass the mouse pointer over the white name of a festival location.
Is there any way of making the chart load faster?

What is the best way to research dates and festivals from the chart?

If you want Burmese dates but not festivals, choose a year and take the short cut option you will be offered.
For the festivals, choose a year (if the current year is not correct), and
1. If you are interested in a particular month - perhaps the one when you plan to visit - scroll down to that date.
2. If you are interested in a particular area of Myanmar - perhaps the area where you plan to be - find the vertical column which represents your chosen region.
3. Each festival is represented on the chart by the name of its town or village, in a coloured rectangle on the chart. Move the mouse pointer over these white names - brief details will appear automatically, and a flashing red spot will pinpoint the location on a map of Myanmar.
4. When you find one festival of particular interest, click on the white name - and much fuller details will appear in a new window.
5. To search for a particular festival:
  - If you already know which town, use your browser's normal Find mechanism to reach it on the chart.
  - There is an Index - a full list of festivals, with the brief notes on each. Click on the button, and then scroll down the list at your leisure.
  - When you find a festival that interests you in the index, click on its name there to be taken to the right place on the main chart (where you can click on the name again for fuller notes).
  - You can also search the index by key word, to produce a shorter list of festivals relevant to the word you have chosen - "cave", perhaps, or "island" or "buffalo".

What festivals are included?

Myanmar has a large number of festivals - almost every pagoda of any note has an annual festival. Our own list, derived by Vicky Bowman from a number of sources, includes many of the principal ones. Please contribute more information! If you can send me photos of any of these festivals, or details of ones that are not on our list, we will include them with thanks, with your name next to them!

Can I find the details of all these festivals elsewhere in a conventional list?

Yes, on Vicky Bowman's full list, which currently includes around 165 festivals.

Why do the Burmese people hold their festivals on completely different dates each year?

Apart from the most important festival of all (Thingyan, which is held in April), all Burmese traditional festivals are held on fixed dates in the Burmese traditional calendar. However, this is a lunar calendar. The twelve Burmese months, when added together, produce a total of 354 days - compared with the familiar 365 / 366 in the solar calendar used by most other countries. Unlike the Muslim calendar, in which the lunar year floats around independent of the solar one, the Burmese year is continuously adjusted by Burmese experts to keep it roughly in step with the solar one - so that each Burmese month always comes in the same season. Unfortunately, there is no easy mathematical relationship between lunar and solar years, so the chart does not just repeat every so many years - although of course there are individual years whose Burmese dates are exactly the same.

The Burmese calendar has twelve months, alternating in length between 30 and 29 days. The months are: Tagu, Kason, Nayon, Waso, Wagaung, Tawthalin, Thadingyut, Tazaungmon, Nadaw, Pyatho, Tabodwe and Tabaung. January normally starts somewhere in Nadaw or Pyatho, but there can be as much as 36 days difference between one year and another! The full moon comes on the 15^th of each Burmese month. The new-moon day is taken as the last day of the month.

How do Burmese experts adjust their lunar calendar to keep it in step with the solar one?

An extra 30 days can be added when necessary before the month of Waso, in the summer. The full moon of Waso marks the start of the four-month Buddhist Lent. The new 30 days are then called First Waso, and the Buddhist Lent starts in the Second Waso. Less frequently, an extra day is added at the end of Nayon, to bring the 15^th of each month back in line with the full moon day when necessary.

Myanmar also has several non-lunar holidays, doesn't it? Including Thingyan!

In addition to all the traditional Burmese festivals (which are nearly all dated according to the lunar calendar), of course Myanmar also has a number of public holidays tied to days of the international calendar - e.g. Independence Day on 4th January, Union Day on 12th February and Martyrs Day on 19th July. All of these have been marked by small striped rectangles on the left-hand column of international dates.
Thingyan - alias the Water Festival or Burmese New Year - appears on the National column, though it is not a lunar festival. Normally, Thingyan is from the 13th to 16th April, with New Year's Day on the 17th. One year that differs from that is 2004; but I can not be sure when future Thingyans will differ from the standard pattern shown on the chart.

What are the horizontal and vertical axes of the chart supposed to represent?

The vertical axis represents time and the horizontal axis represents space.

In time, each chart shows all 365 (or 366) days of a solar year - through which you can scroll a screenful at a time.
Normal international dates appear down the left hand column, together with days of the week.
The far right column has the dates of the Burmese months, which are lunar - Nadaw, Pyatho, Tabodwe etc. The 15^th of each month is the full moon day (marked with a moon icon), with waxing days above in black and waning days below in red.
So much for time. The central ten columns of the chart deal with geographical location - ten columns of festivals, colour coded according to region.

You say the columns of the chart are colour-coded to represent places in Myanmar. Where is the key to the colours?

Throughout Myanmar.

Vicinity of Rangoon.

3-4

Along the road north from Rangoon along the Irrawaddy to Pagan.

Along the direct inland road up from Rangoon to Mandalay.

6-7

Mandalay and its surrounding area.

Shan State in the east.

The east, including Kayah and Karen States.

The south, including Mon State, Tenasserim and the Delta area.

The north, including Kachin State.

The west, including Chin State and Arakan.

To see just what area of Myanmar is represented by each colour, please look on the map below.

Unfortunately, there are times when several festivals coincide even in the same area.

Where this occurs, either they are shown by overlapping patches in the correct column (with dates specified), or occasionally a festival is transferred to a different column. If you see the odd red patch in the grey column, expect to find a Mandalay event that has been displaced for the sake of clarity.
At the bottom of the screen, copies of the column headings will remain as reminders even when you scroll.

How do I call up absolutely all the details you have about a particular festival?

Coloured patches represent festivals. In each coloured patch there is a white word naming the town or village where the event takes place. Simply move the mouse pointer over a white name in order to get three particulars about that event:

The name of the place appears at the top of the window, for confirmation.
The location is marked on a map of Myanmar with a flashing red dot
One or two lines of text appear below the mouse pointer, giving brief details of the event - and including one or more asterisks in cases when there are particularly copious details available elsewhere.
For brevity, the words waxing and waning have been omitted from the brief details.
Instead, waxing days are shown in yellow, waning days in red.

The more complete details can be seen in a new window when you click on a white place name (instead of just moving the mouse pointer over it). A paragraph or perhaps several paragraphs of details about that particular festival will now appear in a new window.

How do I control the horizontal straight edge that sometimes appears, to line up dates with events?

The straight edge - a magenta line for lining up festivals with dates - appears whenever the mouse pointer goes into the column of weekdays. Move the pointer to the right, out of the weekday column, at the height where you want the line to stay put.

What are the colours on the map, and how do I stop it getting in my way?

The Map

..can be dragged around the screen.
..can be made to disappear by clicking on the button.
..features a flashing red spot to show the exact location of the place you have selected.
..is colour-coded as a reminder of which column is which - pink for Mandalay, purple for Shan State etc.
Dragging or zapping the map will often be necessary, when it covers up something that you want to see. The invisible rectangle which contains the map can also prevent the mouse from getting a reaction from links underneath.
As long as you have not clicked the button to hide the map, don't worry about scrolling it off the screen. It will reappear whenever it is needed.
If you have hidden the map, you can click on when you want to make it reappear.

How do I go about calling up a chart for a different year?

Burmese festival charts can be generated for any year up to 2099.
The years 1900-2000 have also been added for reference - they are needed in making Burmese horoscopes.
Hold down the upper button to make the year go higher, or the lower button to make it go lower.
Travel through the years accelerates as you hold down the arrow. If you want to go a long distance - to 2095, say - hold down for several seconds to get into the right vicinity, then release it and give a few short presses up or down to arrive at the exact year.
When the year shown is the one you want, click on the larger button on the right. You will then be offered the choice of seeing a full chart of festivals for that year - which will take as long to appear as your first chart did - or just the lunar dates for that year, which will appear quite quickly.

How accurate are the details you give?

Features of the solar calendar shown on these charts (its months, leap years, weekdays etc) can be relied on for accuracy throughout the intended range (1900-2099). If anyone notices any errors, please alert me as soon as possible! (d.wavell@ntlworld.com).
Present-day dates on the lunar calendar can equally be relied on. Past lunar dates are also accurate.
Future lunar dates (from this year) are a computer projection. This projection's full and new moon dates correspond well with dates given by international moon tables, even right up to the end of the century - but there is a certain flexibility about when the Burmese experts choose to add an extra day to the lunar year, so no doubt our version will be a day earlier or later than the Burmese official version for some dates. As soon as we receive official dates from Myanmar, they will replace the present projection.
Thingyan is marked in from 13th-16th April every year, with the New Year on the 17th. In fact this will be accurate nine times out of ten, but 2004 is an exception. Long-term Burmese calendars don't tend to mention Thingyan, so apart from this year, please regard the dates I have given with skepticism.
A final reality check! Needless to say, nobody can guarantee how long into the future any of these festivals will be continued. As everywhere else in the world, traditional customs in Myanmar are under siege. But hopefully, some new festivals will also appear as old ones fade away.

Who is the author of this festival chart?

Vicky Bowman is to be congratulated for bringing the great majority of the festivals together, from reference works and her own travels. We have also had contributions from users of the chart, such as Dr Owen Wrigley.

Dreaming up the computer realisation of the chart, including the various interactive mechanisms, gave a lot of entertainment for me, Derek Brooke-Wavell, hon. secretary of the Britain-Myanmar Society.

Sometimes nothing happens when I pass the mouse pointer over the white name of a festival location.

Maybe that link is being masked by a virtual object that is on top of it. Both the map and the green "Help" corner occupy rectangular objects, of which part is invisible. Even an invisible part of an object will prevent a link from "seeing" the mouse pointer. Try using the "Hide Help" and "Hide Map" buttons, and see if that helps.

Is there any way of making the chart load faster?

Yes, there are ways, and we too have been doing work on our side to speed things up.
Before the chart forms before your eyes, it has to go through three processes:

The configuration for the year you have selected must first be calculated and the code drawn up that your computer will understand. There is a great deal to change from one year to another. However, this part of the program is carried out by a very fast computer, the server on the web site. There is nothing you can do to speed it up when you first open the chart - though it will speed up appreciably for subsequent charts on the same occasion.

The scripts and graphics have to be downloaded over the Internet. The main script is 73K, which is quite large but not exceptionally so, and the graphics do not take long. Quite a lot of them will already be in your computer's memory by the time you get to the main chart, becase they were downloaded for the Help page that preceded it. Subsequent charts after the first one will also load faster, because your computer now has a lot that it needs in its memory. However, you could certainly speed things up here by getting a faster Internet connection,or maybe some program like InternetBoost.

Last of all, your own computer has to interpret and draw the chart. This wait can be the worst of all because everything on the computer stops moving, maybe for as much as 20 seconds, while your browser is doing the complex calculations. We are talking of a chart with 13 columns and 365 horizontal lines in each column. Of course a faster computer will make a difference here. And there is also a difference between browsers - the various makes and versions. The latest browsers work fastest of all, if your computer has enough memory for them: Internet Explorer 6 or Mozilla Firebird. Firebird is still in an experimental version, but has been very sound in my exerience, and certainly very fast. Changing to a new browser is certainly worth trying if you are fed up with delays. Browsers can be downloaded free. However, the chart will only work on the Netscape/Mozilla/Internet Explorer range.

My own computer, which is used to visiting the web site, takes about 7 seconds to display the help page before the chart, and twelve seconds (after pressing the "festivals" button) for the main chart to form.
Of course, calling up just the calendar without the festivals saves time on every stage of the process, and is very fast.

Burmese Festival FAQ