Each year in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, a unique celebration of life and laughter emerges from sorrow and anguish. Gai Jatra, also called Cow Festival, is among the most meaningful festivals and colourful events in Nepalese social culture. Gai Jatra, rooted in tales of royal sorrow and collective grief, emphasizes honoring the dead, and it evokes compassion through laughter and satire in order to bring members of the community together to help them navigate their grief, while remembering worthy reflections on life.
Historical Significance
The first celebration of Gai Jatra can be traced back to the 17th century during the reign of the King of Kathmandu, Pratap Malla (1641–1671 AD). When the King’s teenage son Chakravartendra Malla died unexpectedly, the Queen mourned intensely and was inconsolable. The King made every attempt to help the Queen with her despair and loss, yet the torture of grief remained. In order to help implore some measure of consolation for the Queen by creating an event, The King organized a parade through the city and invited all families who had lost a person throughout the year to take part.
Each grieving family would parade with a cow or child dressed as a cow, since the cow is sacred and the believed guide of departed souls to another world. This is a form of visual symbolism meant to show the Queen that she was not alone with her grief, and give her a sense of closure. The occasion was so uplifting that the Queen smiled again, to which the King declared that the festival would now be recognized yearly.
Scholarly works suggest that the festival may pre-date King Pratap Malla by many centuries. Some scholars with expertise in traditional customs refer to an observation (a festival) that has maybe lasted over 600 years. However, the most documented origin of the formalized festival comes from King Pratap Malla.
Naming and Timing
In Nepal Bhasa (the language of the Newars), Gai Jatra is called Sa Paru, where Sa means “cow”, and Paru refers to the first day of the lunar fortnight. The festival is held on the first day of the dark fortnight of the month of Bhadra, which falls generally between August and September on the lunar calendar.
Cultural and Religious Importance
Gai Jatra serves as a ritual to liberate and remember the souls of the deceased and as a public event to express their sorrow through laughter and fellowship.
Significant aspects of Gai Jatra are:
- Remember and Honor: Gai Jatra provides opportunities for families to publicly remember who have passed away in the last year helping their loved ones’ souls pass to the next world peacefully.
- Healing through Fun: Gai Jatra is a festival of laughter, nutty moments of ridicule and ironic performances accompanying a procession, a reminder of life and death and provides reprieve for mourners.
- Guidance to Afterlife: Cows are sacred in Hinduism associated with riches and divinity (Lakshmi). The procession of cows or children dressed as cows represents and helps guide the souls of the dead safely across the meta-physical river of Vaitarani to heaven.
Traditional Practices and Customs
- Cow Procession: Family members that lost loved ones, dress children as cows or lead real cows around the city. In proper traditional form, boys wear long skirts with tulle belts that drag on the ground, to signify the souls clinging to the Earth in their karmic journey to heaven. Face paint, mustaches drawn on the children’s face, and head dresses decorated with cow printed assortments are also normal attire.
- Public Celebrations: Besides the solemn procession, the day includes carnivals, dance, and street parades featuring participants dressed in ridiculous, grotesque, or satirical costumes, and sometimes with mock-costumes of political participants or social issues. This aspect of the festival symbolizes social commentary and community catharsis.
- Community support: Gai Jatra socializes people in a way that encourages communal support through food sharing, food donations, and supporting people during grieving periods, getting communities to care for one another.
- Some Districts Have Extended Festivals: In Bhaktapur, the festival can physically last for eight days, with extended ceremonial practices and cultural activities that take place until the Krishna Janmastami.
Gai Jatra in Bhaktapur: The Week-Long Carnival of Remembrance
In Bhaktapur, Gai Jatra is more than one day’s event. It is an extended celebration lasting up to seven or eight days long, it is one of the valley’s largest festival celebrations next to the Biska Jatra. The unique version of the Gai Jatra in Bhaktapur combines the elements of solemn remembrance, raucous humor, and community, which represents the cultural flavor of Bhaktapur.
Individualized Elements and Rituals of Gai Jatra in Bhaktapur
1. The Taha Macha Chariots:
The key to Bhaktapur’s Gai Jatra, in fact, is the Taha Macha, a bamboo chariot adorned with cloth and flowers, and usually a photograph or personal belonging(s) of the deceased. The family members whose loved ones died in the previous year build these chariots and parade them through the streets of the city. The chariots are often covered with Haku Patasi (women’s black sari with a red border) or plain sari cloth for men.
2. Display of Photographs and Children’s Possessions:
These chariots prominently display photographs and belongings of the departed loved one or family member as focused memories connected to the Taha Macha.
3. Bhairab and Ajima Lead the Taha Macha:
The procession is led by a straw covered chariot representing Bhailya Dya (Bhairab), and Ajima (Bhadrakali) is the last chariot – Bhaila and Ajima signify that people are spiritually protected, and helps unify the community at large.
4. Ghintang Ghisi Dance:
All during the week, the streets will be ringing out with ghintang ghisi stick dances, elaborate stick clashing performances, and often satirical skits. Men frequently dress in traditional clothing for women, the Hakupatasi, paint their faces, and wear masks, while parodying a social figure or issue at hand.
5. Evening Satirical and Theatrical Acts After Processions:
After the Taha Macha parade there are late-night acts, by neighborhood, folk dances like makha pyakhan, and comedic skits – “turning grief into joint laughter and rejoicing”.
6. Shared Routes and Pradakshina Patha:
The celebrations follow a special route of circulation, or Pradakshina Patha, circling the old city; music, stick dances, and performances were present on every street.
7. Duration and Conclusion:
Gai Jatra in Bhaktapur begins on the day after Janai Purnima and lasts until just before Krishna Janmashtami – approximately 7 to 8 nights in length. Correlating the entire festival with communal participation of every neighborhood maintains the participation of the entire city across the course of the festival and breeds solidarity through rituals and entertainment that are shared with the entire community.
Why is the Gai Jatra in Bhaktapur Different?
When compared to the single-day celebration in Kathmandu, Gai Jatra is a city-wide playground for emotional expression in Bhaktapur. Families are able to find healing and a release of pain through public remembrance and communal laughter, while the entire community is able to come together in support and laughter. Whereas the duration is the most salient distinction, the nightly celebrations constitute a more profound—and happy—outpouring of remembrance than that which is witnessed in Kathmandu, yet is an identity that Bhaktapur can claim as their own.
Regardless of whether a person is in attendance for the moving Taha Macha parades or the high energy ghintang ghisi dances, to witness Gai Jatra in Bhaktapur is to watch the resilient joy and togetherness of this ancient Newar city.
Tip:
If you are planning to travel to Nepal, you can’t miss the opportunity to participate in Bhaktapur’s week-long Gai Jatra, which is an unprecedented way to experience the city of Bhaktapur’s living heritage and understand the underlying connections between remembering and community celebration.
Modern Celebration
Gai Jatra continues to be celebrated widely in its vibrant form across the Kathmandu Valley and other Newar populated areas. Now, the festival is also attracting visitors and tourists who want to experience Nepal’s rich cultural heritage firsthand. Although now in some places Gai Jatra has slightly taken on different forms or modern versions that are still and can be watched when visiting, which often include organized comedic performances, political satire, and parades with floats, it is still meant to keep the aspect of honoring dead family members and help ease mourning and share joy in community.
Local governments such as the Kathmandu Metropolitan City and Bhaktapur Municipality when it is required are also usually prepared for Gai Jatra by sometimes shutting down traffic during the day or managing traffic during the large procession cavalcade during the day.
Social and Spiritual Effects
Gai Jatra offers a stunning social function by exposing grief while also promoting persistence through humor and connection. The festival helps individuals to work through the mixed emotions associated with the death and loss of loved ones because it is showcasing that mourning is a shared human experience. The festival promotes compassion and remembrance while accepting that life and death are intertwined.
Conclusion
In closing, Gai Jatra is an immensely significant festival in Nepal that fuses respect for the deceased with communal, public celebration to help lessen the pain of loss. The festival’s origin lies in a royal attempt to console a sad queen, but ultimately the event has transcended that origin into a cultural ideological form of its own. This festival not only celebrates equality and life’s joys, but also commemorates the sacred cow, life, death, and deep-rooted human qualities of empathy and understanding through the lens of all those involved in the festival each year. Through the cow procession, theatrical satire, singing, dancing, and carnival-like atmosphere, Gai Jatra remarkably transmutes grief and sadness into joy and laughter, helping citizens of Nepal say farewell to their loved ones while providing companionship during the mourning process, all through shared experience.
If you would like to experience Nepal’s traditional customs and cultural festivities, visiting during the time of Gai Jatra presents an exceptional opportunity to experience the vibrancy of Nepalese culture through both ancient social ritual and the human engagement and relationships through time-honoured customs.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1) When does Gai Jatra take place yearly?
Gai Jatra takes place annually on the first day of the dark fortnight of the month of Bhadra. On the lunar calendar this occurs in August or September.
2) Why do participants dress like cows or march with real cows during Gai Jatra?
Since cows are sacred in Hinduism, they were considered the animal that guided the deceased’s soul into the afterlife. Thus dressing like a cow or joining in the procession and marching with cows was a symbolic act to help the departed souls.
3. How did Gai-Jatra change in recent years?
Although maintaining the core remembrance ritual and group solidarity, the Gai Jatra festival nowadays comprises staged comedic performance, satirical-costume procession on roads, and is typically popular with visitors. The festival is equally as much about endurance, social satire, and mutual euphoria as the ancient mourning.