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Celebrating Sa-paru Or Gai-jatra In Nepal
Celebrating Sa-paru Or Gai-jatra In Nepal
Siddhi B Ranjitkar
August 8, 2017
Kathmandu: On the first day of the dark fortnight of Bhadra (August/September), Nepalese celebrate the festival of cow as it is called in the major towns in Nepal. So, this day is called Sa-paru means the first day of the lunar calendar for cow in the Nevah, or Gai-jatra means the festival of cow in the Nepali.
Only the people in the Kathmandu have the day off for celebrating this festival, as the State has limited the State holiday to the people of Kathmandu only. Revelers in other towns have to go to work and celebrate this festival.
Some people think that only the Nevah people celebrate this festival but it is not true. Everybody believing souls of dead people enter the domain of Yamraj on this day, and then Yamraj sends them back to the human world to be born as one of the so many different lives in this world, celebrates it.
Families of loved ones deceased in the year send someone or symbolic cows or even live cows to masquerade as cows in the name of the deceased to go around the core-city center so that they might get through the entrance to the world of Yamraj: ruler of souls of dead people only opened on this day once a year. On this day, Yamraj decides what next life each soul has to take in the human world in other words Yamraj sends souls back to this world.
According to a belief, any soul has to pass through the 8.4-millions different lives believed to live in this world before getting a human life again. However, some souls might get exempted from taking so many different lives based on the merits they have earned while in the human world.
Most of the popular news media credit to Pratap Malla: one of the Malla kings for starting this unique festival in the fifteenth century but evidences have it that this festival has been going on since the Licchavi period means the fifth century or even before.
If anybody were to go and watch every town in Nepal how each town so differently and uniquely celebrate it then s/he would have the evidences that the credit for running this festival should not go to the then King Pratap Malla of Kathmandu only. Surely, the difference of celebrating this festival from one another is also the evidence that goes against only Pratap Malla did it.
Anyway no matter who did it, but it is a great festival, and it had been very important during the despotic rule of the Shah-Rana rule when people were hanged for speaking for the education of the common folks but on this particular day comedians and revelers could express their grievances and misdeeds of the rulers in a satirical way. So, everybody waited for this day at that time.
Scientifically, the Licchavis must have designed it to collect the census of the deaths in a year. So, watching the symbolic cows, the census readers could record the death of male and female children and adults, as those symbolic cows are made differently for male and female in Bhaktapur.
This festival also is significant, as it is celebrated after the transplantation of rice seedlings, and farmers have sufficient time to entertain. So, this festival goes on for eight days, and completes on the ninth day marking the birthday of Lord Krishna.
