<b>Myanmar</b> Complete Representation of the 37 Nat / Representação dos 37 Nat
Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet and Vietnam
english
The nats (Burmese: နတ်; MLCTS: nat; IPA: [naʔ]) are spirits worshipped in Burma (or Myanmar) in conjunction with Buddhism. They are divided between the 37 Great Nats and all the rest (i.e., spirits of trees, water, etc.). Almost all of the 37 Great Nats were human beings who met violent deaths (စိမ်းသေ, lit. "green death"). They may thus also be called nat sein (နတ်စိမ်း; lit. green spirits). It is important to note that the word 'sein', while meaning 'green', is being used to mean 'raw' in this context. There are however two types of nats in Burmese Buddhist belief.
Nat spirits are termed lower nats or auk nats (အောက်နတ်), whether named or unnamed, whereas ahtet nats (အထက်နတ်) or higher nat dewas inhabit the six heavens. Much like sainthood, nats can be designated for a variety of reasons, including those only known in certain regions in Burma. Nat worship is less common in urban areas than in rural areas, and is practised among ethnic minorities as well as in the mainstream Bamar society. It is however among the Buddhist Bamar that the most highly developed form of ceremony and ritual is seen.
Every Burmese village has a nat sin (နတ်စင်) which essentially serves as a shrine to the village guardian nat called the ywa saung nat (ရွာစောင့်နတ်). An offertory coconut (နတ်အုန်းသီး) is often hung on the main southeast post (ဥရူတိုင်) in the house, wearing a gaung baung (headdress) and surrounded by perfume, as an offering to the Min Mahagiri (Lord of the Great Mountain), also known as the ein dwin (အိမ်တွင်းနတ်) or ein saung (အိမ်စောင့်နတ်) (house guardian) nat. One may inherit a certain member or in some instances two of the 37 Nats as mi hsaing hpa hsaing (မိဆိုင်ဖဆိုင်; lit. mother's side, father's side) from one or both parents' side to worship depending on where their families originally come from. One also has a personal guardian spirit called ko saung nat (ကိုယ်စောင့်နတ်).
Nat worship and Buddhism
Some disagreement in fact exists in academic circles as to whether Burmese Buddhism and Burmese spirit worship are two separate entities or just different dimensions of a single entity. Many Burmese themselves would say it is merely superstition and tend to downplay its role in society. Since the institution of the official 37 Nats was founded by King Anawrahta (1044–1077) of Bagan, albeit with later alterations, it has been argued that this may be interpreted as a process of Burmanisation and establishment of Bamar supremacy in the Irrawaddy valley after the unification of the country and founding of the First Burmese Empire was achieved by the king. Worship of nats predates Buddhism in Burma. With the arrival of Buddhism, however, the nats were merged, syncretistically, with Buddhism.
Nat worship and ecology
The widespread traditional belief among rural folks that there are forest guardian spirits called taw saung nats (တောစောင့်နတ်) and mountain guardian spirits called taung saung nats (တောင်စောင့်နတ်) appears to act as a deterrent against environmental destruction up to a point. Indiscriminate felling particularly of large trees is generally eschewed owing to the belief that they are dwellings of tree spirits called yokkazo (ရုက္ခစိုး) and that such an act would bring the wrath of the nat upon the perpetrator.
List of official nats
King Anawrahta of Bagan (1044–1077) designated an official pantheon of 37 Nats, after he had failed to enforce a ban on nat worship. His stratagem of incorporation by bringing the nats to his Shwezigon Pagoda in positions of worshipping the Buddha, and by enlisting Thagya Min at the head of the pantheon above the Mahagiri nats, eventually succeeded.[5][7] Seven out of the 37 Nats appear to be directly associated with the life and times of Anawrahta.[7] The official pantheon is made up predominantly of those from the royal houses of Burmese history, but also contains nats of Thai (Yun Bayin) and Shan (Maung Po Tu) descent; illustrations of them show them in Burmese royal dress. Listed in proper order, they are:
1.Thagyamin (သိၾကားမင္း)
2.Min Mahagiri (မင္းမဟာဂီရိ)
3.Hnamadawgyi (ႏွမေတာ္ၾကီး)
4.Shwe Nabay (ေရႊနေဘ)
5.Thonbanhla (သုံးပန္လွ)
6.Taungoo Mingaung (ေတာင္ငူမင္းေခါင္)
7.Mintara (မင္းတရား)
8.Thandawgan (သံေတာ္ခံ)
9.Shwe Nawrahta (ေရႊေနာ္ရထာ)
10.Aungzwamagyi (ေအာင္စြာမႀကီး)
11.Ngazi Shin (ငါးစီးရွင္ေက်ာ္စြာ)
12.Aung Pinle Hsinbyushin (ေအာင္ပင္လယ္ဆင္ျဖဴရွင္)
13.Taungmagyi (ေတာင္မႀကီး)
14.Maungminshin (ေမာင္မင္းရွင္)
15.Shindaw (ရွင္ေတာ္)
16.Nyaunggyin (ေညာင္ခ်င္း)
17.Tabinshwehti (တပင္ေရႊထီး)
18.Minye Aungdin (မင္းရဲေအာင္ဒင္)
19.Shwe Sitthin (ေရႊစစ္သင္)
20.Medaw Shwezaga (မယ္ေတာ္ေရႊစကား)
21.Maung Po Tu (ေမာင္ဘိုးတူ)
22.Yun Bayin (ယြန္းဘုရင္)
23.Maung Minbyu (ေမာင္မင္းျဖဴ)
24.Mandalay Bodaw (မန္းတေလးဘိုးေတာ္)
25.Shwe Hpyin Naungdaw (ေရႊဖ်င္းေနာင္ေတာ္)
26.Shwe Hpyin Nyidaw (ေရႊဖ်င္းညီေတာ္)
27.Mintha Maungshin (မင္းသားေမာင္ရွင္)
28.Htibyuhsaung (ထီးျဖဴေစာင္း)
29.Htibyuhsaung Medaw (ထီးျဖဴေစာင္းမယ္ေတာ္)
30.Pareinma Shin Mingaung (ပရိမ္မရွင္မင္းေခါင္)
31.Min Sithu (မင္းစည္သူ)
32.Min Kyawzwa (မင္းေက်ာ္စြာ)
33.Myaukhpet Shinma (ေျမာက္ဖက္ရွင္မ)
34.Anauk Mibaya (အေနာက္မိဘုရား)
35.Shingon (ရွင္ကုန္းနတ္)
36.Shingwa (ရွင္ကြနတ္)
37.Shin Nemi (ရွင္နဲမိ)
português
Nat Pwe é um festival místico-religioso que ocorre anualmente, no mês de agosto, em todo o território de Mianmar ou Birmânia, na Ásia.
Nats são espíritos que fazem parte da crença popular de Mianmar desde a sua fundação pelo seu primeiro imperador.
Os festivais Nat Pwe precedem até mesmo ao budismo que foi introduzido na região desde a vizinha Índia e que se trata da religião predominante no país hoje em dia.
Acredita-se que os espíritos, almas ou nat têm a capacidade de ajudar as pessoas (i.e. provendo dinheiro, saúde, amor e outros) ou podem servir para atrapalhar a vida das pessoas, até mesmo chegando a lhes causar a ruína.
Os festivais Nat Pwe são conduzidos para apaziguar estes espíritos e para trazer o bem à vida das pessoas.
Muitos budistas conservadores acham que o consumo de álcool e o espírito de abandono que prevalece nessas reuniões populares não estão muito em sintonia com os propósitos originais do budismo.
<b>Myanmar</b> Complete Representation of the 37 Nat / Representação dos 37 Nat
Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tibet and Vietnam
english
The nats (Burmese: နတ်; MLCTS: nat; IPA: [naʔ]) are spirits worshipped in Burma (or Myanmar) in conjunction with Buddhism. They are divided between the 37 Great Nats and all the rest (i.e., spirits of trees, water, etc.). Almost all of the 37 Great Nats were human beings who met violent deaths (စိမ်းသေ, lit. "green death"). They may thus also be called nat sein (နတ်စိမ်း; lit. green spirits). It is important to note that the word 'sein', while meaning 'green', is being used to mean 'raw' in this context. There are however two types of nats in Burmese Buddhist belief.
Nat spirits are termed lower nats or auk nats (အောက်နတ်), whether named or unnamed, whereas ahtet nats (အထက်နတ်) or higher nat dewas inhabit the six heavens. Much like sainthood, nats can be designated for a variety of reasons, including those only known in certain regions in Burma. Nat worship is less common in urban areas than in rural areas, and is practised among ethnic minorities as well as in the mainstream Bamar society. It is however among the Buddhist Bamar that the most highly developed form of ceremony and ritual is seen.
Every Burmese village has a nat sin (နတ်စင်) which essentially serves as a shrine to the village guardian nat called the ywa saung nat (ရွာစောင့်နတ်). An offertory coconut (နတ်အုန်းသီး) is often hung on the main southeast post (ဥရူတိုင်) in the house, wearing a gaung baung (headdress) and surrounded by perfume, as an offering to the Min Mahagiri (Lord of the Great Mountain), also known as the ein dwin (အိမ်တွင်းနတ်) or ein saung (အိမ်စောင့်နတ်) (house guardian) nat. One may inherit a certain member or in some instances two of the 37 Nats as mi hsaing hpa hsaing (မိဆိုင်ဖဆိုင်; lit. mother's side, father's side) from one or both parents' side to worship depending on where their families originally come from. One also has a personal guardian spirit called ko saung nat (ကိုယ်စောင့်နတ်).
Nat worship and Buddhism
Some disagreement in fact exists in academic circles as to whether Burmese Buddhism and Burmese spirit worship are two separate entities or just different dimensions of a single entity. Many Burmese themselves would say it is merely superstition and tend to downplay its role in society. Since the institution of the official 37 Nats was founded by King Anawrahta (1044–1077) of Bagan, albeit with later alterations, it has been argued that this may be interpreted as a process of Burmanisation and establishment of Bamar supremacy in the Irrawaddy valley after the unification of the country and founding of the First Burmese Empire was achieved by the king. Worship of nats predates Buddhism in Burma. With the arrival of Buddhism, however, the nats were merged, syncretistically, with Buddhism.
Nat worship and ecology
The widespread traditional belief among rural folks that there are forest guardian spirits called taw saung nats (တောစောင့်နတ်) and mountain guardian spirits called taung saung nats (တောင်စောင့်နတ်) appears to act as a deterrent against environmental destruction up to a point. Indiscriminate felling particularly of large trees is generally eschewed owing to the belief that they are dwellings of tree spirits called yokkazo (ရုက္ခစိုး) and that such an act would bring the wrath of the nat upon the perpetrator.
List of official nats
King Anawrahta of Bagan (1044–1077) designated an official pantheon of 37 Nats, after he had failed to enforce a ban on nat worship. His stratagem of incorporation by bringing the nats to his Shwezigon Pagoda in positions of worshipping the Buddha, and by enlisting Thagya Min at the head of the pantheon above the Mahagiri nats, eventually succeeded.[5][7] Seven out of the 37 Nats appear to be directly associated with the life and times of Anawrahta.[7] The official pantheon is made up predominantly of those from the royal houses of Burmese history, but also contains nats of Thai (Yun Bayin) and Shan (Maung Po Tu) descent; illustrations of them show them in Burmese royal dress. Listed in proper order, they are:
1.Thagyamin (သိၾကားမင္း)
2.Min Mahagiri (မင္းမဟာဂီရိ)
3.Hnamadawgyi (ႏွမေတာ္ၾကီး)
4.Shwe Nabay (ေရႊနေဘ)
5.Thonbanhla (သုံးပန္လွ)
6.Taungoo Mingaung (ေတာင္ငူမင္းေခါင္)
7.Mintara (မင္းတရား)
8.Thandawgan (သံေတာ္ခံ)
9.Shwe Nawrahta (ေရႊေနာ္ရထာ)
10.Aungzwamagyi (ေအာင္စြာမႀကီး)
11.Ngazi Shin (ငါးစီးရွင္ေက်ာ္စြာ)
12.Aung Pinle Hsinbyushin (ေအာင္ပင္လယ္ဆင္ျဖဴရွင္)
13.Taungmagyi (ေတာင္မႀကီး)
14.Maungminshin (ေမာင္မင္းရွင္)
15.Shindaw (ရွင္ေတာ္)
16.Nyaunggyin (ေညာင္ခ်င္း)
17.Tabinshwehti (တပင္ေရႊထီး)
18.Minye Aungdin (မင္းရဲေအာင္ဒင္)
19.Shwe Sitthin (ေရႊစစ္သင္)
20.Medaw Shwezaga (မယ္ေတာ္ေရႊစကား)
21.Maung Po Tu (ေမာင္ဘိုးတူ)
22.Yun Bayin (ယြန္းဘုရင္)
23.Maung Minbyu (ေမာင္မင္းျဖဴ)
24.Mandalay Bodaw (မန္းတေလးဘိုးေတာ္)
25.Shwe Hpyin Naungdaw (ေရႊဖ်င္းေနာင္ေတာ္)
26.Shwe Hpyin Nyidaw (ေရႊဖ်င္းညီေတာ္)
27.Mintha Maungshin (မင္းသားေမာင္ရွင္)
28.Htibyuhsaung (ထီးျဖဴေစာင္း)
29.Htibyuhsaung Medaw (ထီးျဖဴေစာင္းမယ္ေတာ္)
30.Pareinma Shin Mingaung (ပရိမ္မရွင္မင္းေခါင္)
31.Min Sithu (မင္းစည္သူ)
32.Min Kyawzwa (မင္းေက်ာ္စြာ)
33.Myaukhpet Shinma (ေျမာက္ဖက္ရွင္မ)
34.Anauk Mibaya (အေနာက္မိဘုရား)
35.Shingon (ရွင္ကုန္းနတ္)
36.Shingwa (ရွင္ကြနတ္)
37.Shin Nemi (ရွင္နဲမိ)
português
Nat Pwe é um festival místico-religioso que ocorre anualmente, no mês de agosto, em todo o território de Mianmar ou Birmânia, na Ásia.
Nats são espíritos que fazem parte da crença popular de Mianmar desde a sua fundação pelo seu primeiro imperador.
Os festivais Nat Pwe precedem até mesmo ao budismo que foi introduzido na região desde a vizinha Índia e que se trata da religião predominante no país hoje em dia.
Acredita-se que os espíritos, almas ou nat têm a capacidade de ajudar as pessoas (i.e. provendo dinheiro, saúde, amor e outros) ou podem servir para atrapalhar a vida das pessoas, até mesmo chegando a lhes causar a ruína.
Os festivais Nat Pwe são conduzidos para apaziguar estes espíritos e para trazer o bem à vida das pessoas.
Muitos budistas conservadores acham que o consumo de álcool e o espírito de abandono que prevalece nessas reuniões populares não estão muito em sintonia com os propósitos originais do budismo.