Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to present to scholars of Tibetan and Himalayan culture a document which is recited annually to an assembled militia organization during the New Year festival observed in the old winter capital of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan at Punakha. Apart from attempting to disclose the origin of this custom, which can be traced with some accuracy to the middle years of the seventeenth century, it is intended to relate it briefly to the wider context of the New Year celebrations as they used to be held in Tibet and as they continue to be held with considerable variance in Bhutan and other places on the periphery of Tibetan culture. In certain areas an ancient and fundamental distinction between the ‘King's New Year’ (rgyal-po lo-gsar) and the ‘Agricultural New Year’ (so-nam lo-gsar) has survived and my remarks on the relevant Bhutanese traditions are made on the basis of these two categories.
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