Shoton Festival

A Brief Introduction to Shoton Festival

Shoton Festival is a traditional Tibetan festival from the end of June to the beginning of July. In Tibetan, the word "Sho" means yoghurt and the word "ton" means feast or eat. According to Tibetan explanation, Shoton Festival means a festival for eating yoghurt and thus it is also called Yoghurt Festival. Since there are also many grand Tibetan operas performances and Buddhist rituals during the festival, it is also called Tibetan Operas Festival or Shaifo Festival (shaifo means to expose the Buddhist Thangka in the sunshine and pray in front of it).

Origin of Shoton Festival

Shoton Festival can be traced back to the middle 11th century. At that time, Shoton Festival was just a pure religious activity. It is said that there are more than 300 commandments and disciplines in the Buddhism field. The top taboo is that no life-killings are allowed. But when the summer came, it got warmer and warmer and the vegetations began to grow. Many insects came out and became active. It was unavoidable for the Buddhists who went outdoors to tread those insects dead, which was against the top taboo of Buddhism. As a result, the Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism regulated that from the 4th month to the 6th month of the Tibetan Calendar, Lamas must stay in the monasteries and cultivate themselves, which was called "Yale" meaning "stay at monasteries in summer". Till the end of the 6th century, they were allowed to get out. The Buddhists then came downhill. The local lay people prepared yoghurts for those Buddhists and held excursions and picnics for them. On the ceremony, Tibetan Operas were performed for these Buddhists. This is the very origin of the Shoton Festival.

Development of Shoton Festival

In the second half of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century, the Qing emperor canonized the 5th Dalai and 5th Panchen and gave them the golden seals and thus the policy of unification of church and politics in Tibet was reinforced. According to the record, there were altogether 12 Tibetan Opera groups took part in the performances in the Shoton Festival. Therefore, to some extant, Shoton Festival-the traditional festival of Zang nationality lasting over 300 years could be called Tibetan Opera Festival.

In the initial days when the Tibetan operas were infiltrated in the Shoton Festival, it was the beginning of the connection between the religious activity and recreational activity. However, it was still confined in the monasteries. From the very beginning, those activities were centered by the Drepung Monastery. After the 5th Dalai moved to the Potala Palace from the Drepung Monastery, Shoton Festival was always at first celebrated in the Drepung Monastery and on the next day, in the Potala Palace.

In the beginning of the 18th century, the summer palace for Dalai-Norbulingka was built and thus activities of Shoton Festivals were moved to the Norbulingka from the Potala Palace. What's more, the lay people were also allowed to get in the Norbulingka to watch the Tibetan Operas. From then on, activities of Shoton Festival were gradually completed and formed a set of fixed festival rituals.

Since the democratic revolution of Tibet in 1959, the contents of Shoton Festival were much more enriched. During the festival, the Tibetan people-Buddhists or laymen, flock into the Norbulingka carrying with buckets of barley wine. Apart from the local Tibetan operas groups, some Tibetan operas groups in Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces also come to Lhasa and communicate to improve their performances. In addition to the Tibetan operas, people also pitch colorful tents under big tress and perform ethnical songs and dances in the tents. Anyhow, the significances of Shoton Festival are becoming more and more important.