Buddhists in Nepal celebrated Pancha Daan, or the festival of five summer gifts, on August 30.

• >>Pancha Daan is known as the festival of five summer gifts, which include rice grains, unhusked rice grains, salt, money and pulses – all of which are needed for one’s daily life. These gifts are all donated to the gods and in the name of charity. This can be the five traditional gifts to gifting people some VERY unusual things. This festival falls on triodashi, two days prior to the Father’s day (Buwa ko mukh herne din), according to the lunar calendar.

• >>This is a Buddhist festival in which gifts are made by the laity to the monks observed by Buddhists of Kathmandu, Lalitpur, Bhaktapur, Panauti and Banepa only, especially by Shakyas and Bajracharyas.

• >>On Panch Dan, Buddhist antiques are displaced and gigantic effigies of Dipankar are paraded around the town. Since monastic Buddhism has been long extinct in Nepal, the receivers of the gift today are the Buddhist priests, the Shakyas and the Vajracharyas, who go begging aims to the house of their clients

• >>The main aspect of the five-day festival is the giving away of five elements of wheat grains, rice grains, salt, money and fruit.

Buddhism

Buddhism is a major global religion with a complex history and system of beliefs which is orginated in Nepal. Historians estimate that the founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama, lived from 566 to 480B.C.