Excursions India : Ladakh Tour Package
Ladakh Calendar
CALENDAR
Ladakhis use the Tibetan calendar for, among other things, determining the dates of monastic festivals. The Tibetan calendar, which resembles a large chessboard, is rather complicated and varies form year to year, making it difficult to convert Western dates into Tibetan ones and vice versa.
The first difficulty is that the Tibetan lunar year is supposed to be twelve 30-day months. This only adds up to 360 days per year, so every third year an extra month is added and put in anywhere among the 12 months that is considered auspicious for that year.
The next complicating factor is that there are less than 360 days in a true lunar year, so certain days must be omitted. As a result, there are squares on the Tibetan calendar with no number, only the word chad (meaning cut off). That day of the month simply does not exist that year. Sometimes a day is considered inauspicious and in order to avoid it, that date is also omitted and similarly does not exist in that year. Instead the same (previous day's) date appears in two consecutive squares.
Tibetan months are numbered, rather than named, but days of the week and years are named. Similar to the west, weekdays are named after the sun, the moon, and five of the visible planets.
As for the years, prior to the 11th century, the calendar was based on a twelve-year cycle and each year was named for an animal mouse, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, serpent, horse, sheep, ape, bird, dog and hog. In the 11th century a 60-year cycle was developed by adding the names of the five elements (wood, fire, earth, iron and water) to the names of the animals. The same element is combined with an animal for two years in succession. To eliminate confusion between two successive element years, male is added to the first year and female to the second year. Thus the Wood - Male - Mouse year is followed by the Wood - Female-Ox year. This cycle begun in 1027 AD is called Rabjung and a single year is called Lokhar.
The Tibetan New Year begins with the rising of the new moon in February or March depending on when the extra month is added. Toward the end of each year a new calendar was worked out by Tibet's State Astrologer. Thus, no one knew the next year's dates until that year was almost upon them.
RELIGION
The predominant religion in Ladakh is the Tibetan form of Buddhism, although Islamic influences are found from the Kashmir Valley as far as Kargil, and there are some Christian families in Leh.
The Tibetan influence in Ladakh is manifest, all religious books and prayers are in the Tibetan language, the monastic orders in the gompas are those developed in Tibet and the gompa artwork is clearly Tibetan in origin. Even the architectural design of Leh Palace is very similar to that of Lhasa's Potala Palace.
Tibetan Buddhism is built on an earlier Tibetan religion - Bon or Bon-Shamanism, - and it incorporated many of Bon's demons and gods. It similarly incorporated many of the gods in the Hindu pantheon, transforming them into Bodhisattvas or different incarnations or manifestation of various personalities.
The walls of Ladakh's gompas are covered with illustrations of the Lord Buddha, his manifestations and followers, and the incorporated Bon and Hindu guardian deities in their various incarnations. It all makes the colourful and varied wall murals in very gompa.
Ladakh's gompas represent the monastic side of Buddhism, or Lamaism, which requires lamas to spend many hours daily in prayer and meditation. The monasteries in Ladakh follow each of the two main sects of Buddhism that developed in Tibet, the Karyapa (red-hat sect and the Gelugpa (yellow-hat sect). The Dalai Lama believed to be a reincarnation of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, is the head of the yellow-hat sect. The lamaist side of Buddhism, requiring long hours of silent meditation, contrasts with the everyday practice of Buddhism by Ladakhi lay people.
For Ladakhis, religion is a daily affair with visible rituals that are frequently observed. These rituals include spinning prayer wheels, making pilgrimages to gompas, chortens, mani walls and holy tombs, chanting mantras and reciting daily prayers in the area of the home set aside as a chapel.
RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS & RITUAL OCCASIONS
Most Ladakhi festivals are religious in nature, take place at the gompas and unfortunately for the general tourist, occur during the winter months. Ladakh's climate is so harsh in the winter that no outdoor work is done; this is the time for weddings, visiting back and forth among family and friends, indoor handicraft work and attendance at religious festivals.
Traditionally, only Hemis held a big summer festival but in 1983 Thiksey gompa held its festival in the summer for the first time. In addition to the religious festivals, there are small harvest thanksgiving festivals in the autumn.
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