Statues, stupas and other religious structures are common sights in Bhutan. They are gorgeous to look at but without proper zung or inner relics, they have no spiritual values. If the statue is not filled in with the zung, it is believed that malevolent spirits get into the statue and cause harm to people. Therefore, installing zung in these structures is very important. With the installation of zung, the religious structure or statues become a living entity capable of bestowing blessings. Zung bestow them with spiritual importance and sacredness, hence inserting zung is tantamount to installing a soul in the body. Ideally, zung offering should be done by an ordained monk who does not eat meat, onion, garlic, drink alcohol, smoke or chew tobacco and has taken the vow of celibacy, but such a person is very rare to find in this modern era. Zung consists of scriptures in the form of mantras or prayers, and precious objects, supported by a sogshing (life wood) in the centre. The sogshing must be a fruit bearing tree with fragrant leaves such as juniper, cypress or sandalwood. It is cut into four sides tapering towards the tip while its base is kept in vajra shape. The whole sogshing is painted red and mantras are inscribed on the four sides in gold. The size of the sogshing depends on the height of the statue or stupa. Mantra rolls are an important component in filling the religious objects. Thus, Holy Scriptures or mantras are printed and rolled but each roll is marked to ensure the right order of the scripts for installation, as Bhutanese believe that installing scriptures upside down may cause more harm than good. Various other important components such as body, speech, and mind relics of great lamas, precious metals and a small statue (terma) are placed around the sogshing, which is then wrapped in silk brocade. After fitting the sogshing, rolls of mantras printed on papers and stuffed with sandalwood powders along with incense are arranged around it. The stuffed items will keep the zung items firmly in their respective positions. When every possible space is completely filled, the base is sealed with a bronze sheet. Finally, a consecration ceremony is performed to make the object fit for worship and refuge.

The Gesar epic recounts the sacred deeds of the hero King Gesar, while unfolding a broad spectrum of oral genres, embedded hundreds of myth, legend, folktale, ballad, and proverb in narrative framework of “beads on a string,” namely “Gesar Epic Cycle,” demonstrating the sheer monumentality and vitality of verbal arts. So far we found the earliest manuscript is The Battle Between Vjang Regality and Gling Regality, which dated to the 14th century, while the earliest Mongolian woodblock version titled “Geser Khan, Guardian Lord of the Ten Directions,” was published in Beijing in 1716. As of today, there are over 120 different oral cantos on record. Not counting the texts in prose, the portions in verse alone are total over one million lines excluding different variations, indicating that the living oral epic continues to expand. As the creators and inheritors of the heroic song, the Tibetan singers and storytellers are traditionally classified in several ways by how they learn and master the epic. In oral performances, they invoke a flexible genre of bcad-lhug-spel-ma, namely ‘prosimetrum,’ by melding concisely worded prose with lyrical verse and over 80 melodies of music in responding to different contexts. They often use a variety of skills that include gestures, facial expressions, postures, and verbal sound effects to enhance the singing artistry. Among their meaningful props, the hat, bronze mirror, and costume are shaped in special ways to symbolize the traditional cosmology and aesthetics. In Mongolian tradition however, the epic singing is handed down professionally from master to apprentice. Performances usually feature musical accompaniment by stringed instruments called the “horse head fiddle” (morin khuur) and the “four stringed spiked fiddle” (hugur). The two major singing styles, “improvised melodic singing” (holboga) and “musical storytelling” (bensen ulger), are combined with oral narratives, which highlight vocal singing with deep, broad, and melodious sounds skilfully utilized as needed. Gesar epic performances play important roles in rites of passage, festival ceremonies and religious rituals in communities concerned. For instance, when a child is born, passages about King Gesar’s descending to the world are sung. The epic also reflects Tibet’s native Bon religion, in respect to beliefs, rituals, theology, divination, and so on. Moreover, the epic singing itself usually accompanies with specific ritualized practices, for example, smoke offering, meditation devoting, and spirit possessed. Hence, the epic is not only the dominant means for communicating with the hero, gods, ancestors, and members of society, but also the major entertainment in rural communities. The epic performers have acted as traditional educators who enable people understanding genealogy and history, astronomy and geography, zoology and botany, arts and crafts, medicine and treatment through their storytelling. Concrete narratives focusing on origins of nature and universe are incorporated in numerous episodes called Ode, such as Ode to Mountain, Ode to Sword, etc., revealing that the epic itself a continuum of experiential knowledge in response to their environment, their interaction with nature, universe, and history. As a Tibetan proverb goes, “On every person’s lips there is a canto of King Gesar.” It has been a constant inspiration for other art forms, including traditional forms such as Thangka painting, Tibetan opera, and Cham masked dance, as well as contemporary arts, which provides peoples and young generations a sense of cultural identity and historical continuity, while reflecting credit on the common cultural legacy, shared by generations, serves as a really all-embracing encyclopedia for the general public.

China 2009

Agriculture is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock and over centuries, rise in agricultural has contributed in the growth civilization. Early people have developed and improved varieties of plants and till date the practice is considered to be the important aspect of Bhutanese livelihood. It is one of the sources of income as over69% of the population here, directly depends on it for their livelihood (MoAF, 2011). In 2011, agriculture sector accounted for about 17.7% of the total GDP of the country (RNR Statistics, 2012) Asham (Maize) plays a critical role in the entire life of given economy and is a pre-dominant cereal crop for the eastern part of the Bhutan for many years contributing to more than half of total maize production in the country. Asham cultivation was one of the main cereal as well as cash crops that supported and supports lively hood for major households in the part of the country. To these days, the practice and culture of maize cultivation is one of the main live hood and sources of income. Most communities in the eastern part of the country depend on cultivation of Asham to produce following products: •\tKharang- grits, grind maize used as staple food •\tAsham me-gogni- roasted corn •\tAsham bokpi- corn flour •\tTengma- roasted and pounded maize •\tAsham mu-nang- a local term for popcorn •\tZhu- brewed alcohol Apart from above products, asham is also used as cereals for bartering during the olden days to exchange with wooden and bamboo products produced from other parts of the Dzongkhags. Moreover people also used to exchange with rice, chili, meat and dairy products within or outside the community. People used to offer asham, kharang and bokpi to monks and gomchen(great meditation masters) as they visit begging for cash and kind. Asham and its product were also used during the religious rituals at households. Crafting of Torma (Sacrificial ritual cakes) and Sur (Smoke offering) during the rituals were done by using corn flour. There has been lots of transformation in the culture, practice and process in cultivation maize in the region due to introduction of hybrid seeds, improve in tools and technologies used compared to old and traditional ways of cultivation.

Karmey: (Butter lamp Offering) during A-shey Lhamo Dance is an indigenous tradition practiced exclusively by women in the communities of Shingkhar, Somthrang, Pangkhar and Ura in Ura Gewog (block), Bumthang Dzongkhag (district). Colloquially, Karmey means offering butter lamps in all temples and monasteries in and around these communities. The element is closely related to an annual offering of Saang (smoke offering), popularly known as A-shey Lhamo which is normally conducted from 8th and 9th day of the 7th month of the lunar calendar. The Karmey program is the last and concluding event of the three-day A-shey Lhamo festival which is held on the 10th day of the 7th month coinciding the birth anniversary of Guru Padsambava. The origin of Karmey is identical to that of A-shey Lhamo, although A-shey Lhamo is considered a Bon-kar (transformed Bon practices) and the other explicitly a Buddhist tradition. The establishment of the A-shey Lhamo festival dates back to the reign of Dung Lhawang Rabgay (local ruler) of the Ura community, not long before the advent of the Dung caste system in Bhutan around the 10th and 11th centuries. It is said that the misfortune of shey-ned (diarrhoeal infection) spread among the children of the Ura community, and to cure such epidemic diseases, Dung Lhawang Drakpa introduced the performance of the A-shey Lhamo dance, an offering to appease the female local deity on the eighth and ninth days of the seventh month of the lunar calendar. For most Bon practitioners throughout the country, this is a special day when they make confirmation offerings to their respective deities and ask for blessings of peace and happiness for the individual as well as for the entire community, country and all sentient beings in the world. According to older members of these communities, they have noticed a decline and disappearance of this ancient practice over the years. They say that they remember crowds of women from communities like Ura, Pangkhar, Somthrang and even Singkhar singing and running to all the temples and monasteries to offer butter lamps and tshogs (offerings) and perform melodious folk dances right after the A-shey Lhamo festival was celebrated. There are also some native songs and dances that are sung and performed only on Karmey Day. It is believed that after the annual offering to the A-shey Lhamo deities according to the Bon Kar tradition, people also wanted to observe the Buddhist way of offering to the scattered temples and monasteries, which falls exactly on the 10th day of the month, which is revered as the birthday of Guru Padsambava, one of the highly revered saints who introduced Vajrayana Buddhism in the mid-8th century. However, over time, the villages of Somthrang and Pangkhar have discontinued this tradition along with the performance of A-shey Lhamo, and today Shingkhar and Ura are the only two communities that follow and maintain this tradition.