Yi Peng festival
Thai festival
Yi Peng (Thai: ยี่เป็ง, Northern Thai: ᨿᩦ᩵ᩮᨻ᩠ᨦ), also spelled Yee Peng, is a traditional Lan Na festival celebrated in Northern Thailand. It is a festival of lights, deeply rooted in Theravada Buddhism, and is celebrated for three days, culminating on the full moon of the second month of the Lanna lunar calendar (Thai: เดือนยี่, duean yi), which typically falls in November.
The festival is most closely associated with the city of Chiang Mai, where its best-known feature is the mass release of thousands of khom loi (sky lanterns), which are believed to relieve misfortune and send wishes to the heavens. While Yi Peng is a distinct Lanna tradition, it is celebrated concurrently with the national Thai festival of Loy Krathong.
Etymology and origin
Yi means 'two' and peng means a 'full moon day'. Yi Peng refers to the full moon day in the second month according to the Lanna lunar calendar (the twelfth month of the Thai lunar calendar).
Yi Peng originated in the ancient Lan Na Kingdom (c. 13th–18th centuries) and is thought to have roots in the pre-Buddhist Haripuñjaya Kingdom (modern-day Lamphun).
According to certain accounts, the festival's origins are sometimes associated with ancient animist and Brahmanic traditions of India, although it is primarily observed today as a Buddhist custom. The festival is meant as a time to obtain Buddhist merit (ทำบุญ, tham bun).
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This entry incorporates text from “Yi Peng festival” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.