Loy Krathong 2025

This coming Wednesday 5th November is the full moon of the 12th lunar month of the main Thai and Lao lunar calendar and the 2nd month in the Lanna calendar. As this full moon also falls on a Wednesday it is at the same time an opportunity to make merit by honouring Phra Upakut (Upagupta) as well.

Of all the festivals of Thailand, Loy Krathong is the most popular with visitors to the country because of it’s picturesque beauty, a fact already seen in the description by the French delegate Simon de la Loubère in the late 17th century:

“The Siamese have also some Religious Shows. When the Waters begin to retreat, the People return them Thanks for several Nights together with a great Illumination: not only for that they are retired, but for the Fertility which they render to the Lands. The whole River is then seen cover’d with floating Lanterns which pass with it. They are of different Sizes, according to the Devotopn of every particular Person; the variously painted Paper, wherof they are made, augments the agreeable effect of so many lights.”

(Du Royaume de Siam 1687)

Already it can be seen that this festival has a multiplicity of meanings, perhaps more so than any other Thai festival. For this short article we will focus on 3 main aspects: 1) Tai propitation rituals, 2) Water related rituals and 3) Buddhist traditions.

Firstly the name of the festival shows it’s deep connection to ancient Tai beliefs. These are the indigineous ideas of the Tai people, not to be confused with the Thai, as Tai includes the Lao and Shan and other groups in South China, Northern Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and North East India. The word Loy means “to float” and Krathong is a container made of banana trunk. One tradition of Loy Krathong commonly practiced is to put nail-clippings etc in the Krathong to float away all one’s bad luck from the previous year away. A similar practice is found in the Tai Ahom of India who are seemingly uninfluenced by Buddhism:

“A prominent feature of the concluding part of the Ahom ritual of warding off evil is the making of rafts and the floating of the danger away in the river… Taking the evidence from this Ahom ritual into account, the idea that Loy Krathong could represent a Buddhist form of an indigenous rite of expulsion of evil warrants further investigation.”

(Pg 103, Terwiel, B.J. and Wichasin, R. (1992) Tai Ahoms and the Stars)

The second aspect is the related to the timing of the festival which marks the traditional end of the rainy season. Previously there were many different rituals both to bring rain but also to stop it and cause the waters to recede. Loy Krathong is often seen as a way to thank the Goddess of the Waters, Mae Khongka (พระแม่คงคา) or Mother Ganges as well as a way of apologizing for any pollution done to the waters too.

Finally there are many Buddhist narratives that are told to explain the meaning of Loy Krathong. The most often repeated being that the offerings are in honour of the Buddha’s footprint which is located in the Narmada river and which the Buddha gave to a Naga king.

Another Buddhist tale connected with this time of year in the Lanna region such as Chiang Mai involves a traditional lantern made with a wick shaped like a crow’s foot and is connected with the 5 Buddhas of this Auspicious Aeon:

“In a former time, at the beginning of the first kappa, a white crow mother nested in a tree on the bank of the River Ganges. She carefully attended her five eggs (the future five bodhisattvas); after days of brooding she had to search food and left the nest.  A severe storm developed uprooting the tree that fell into the raging river dispersing the eggs. When the mother crow flew back and did not find the eggs, she was very distraught, died broken hearted and ascended to the Mahabrahma Heaven.

The eggs were swept into the Ganges River. The egg with Kokasandha was found by the queen of chickens who took it with her own eggs. Shortly after the shell cracked revealing a male child. At the same time, Konagamana’s egg was found by a serpent (naga), Kassapa’s egg by a mother turtle, and Gotama’s egg by the queen of the cows. The fifth egg (of Si Ariya Matteya) was discovered by a lioness.

The respective foster-mothers nurtured with love their children, born at the same time, the same day tough in different place. After 12 years, the Bodhisattvas reunited and decided to become hermits. They left their parent promising to remember the family name and lineage when attaining enlightenment. Each of the five went into the forest to practice asceticism and meditation. One day, it happened that the five found themselves under the same beautiful nigrodha tree and discovered they had the same father and mother (the White Crow), being thus brothers. They expressed their determination to follow asceticism till reaching the enlightenment. At that moment their white crow mother descended from heaven, with beautiful full wings.

The Five Bodhisattas rejoiced to be reunited and agreed to honour their mother and compassion by making a replica of her footprints. She agreed and gave them strands of cotton twisted in the shape of a crow’s foot to make a votive lamp[1] to use for puja until they reached enlightenment. Later, they made the vow to come regularly the nigrodha tree and construct a special place to enshrine the relics. They returned to the forest “performing puja with the offering of lamps whose wicks were made in the shape of a crow’s foot”. The first to attain enlightenment was Kakusandha, followed by Konagamana, Kassapa and Gotama. The fifth Buddha will be reborn as Si Ariya Matteyya, for whom the four had agreed to build a very large reliquary (cetiya) so that humans can pay respect to relics by worshipping, physically or in their mind.”

Summarized by Vittorio Roveda:

https://khmerimagery.blogspot.com/2016/12/archaeology-images-n_25.html

5 Buddhas of the Auspicious Aeon