Samyak Mahadan, a thousand-year-old Buddhist alms-giving festival was celebrated from 26–27 February on a large open ground in the historic Nepalese city of Patan (now Lalitpur Metropolitan City) in the south-central part of Kathmandu Valley. The main focus of the festival is to honour the buddhas, particularly Dipankara Buddha, who, in a previous life, predicted the enlightenment of Shakyamuni Buddha.

According to The Kathmandu Post newspaper, Samyak Mahadan was first celebrated in Kathmandu in 1015 CE (135 in the Nepalese lunar calendar) and is observed once every 12 years in Kathmandu, every five years in Patan, and every year in Bhaktapur, a city in east corner of Kathmandu Valley. This year, the celebrations in Patan marked its 472nd anniversary, with more than a million people reportedly taking part.

The festival brings together a wide cross-section of the Newar community, including lamas, musicians, artists, and farmers. During the celebrations, the city reverberates with the chants of lamas and Buddhist religious performances. The event showcases a variety of Newer Buddhist elements, with hundreds of images of Dipankar Buddha, and other buddhas and bodhisattvas, including Avalokitesvara and Arya Tara, and gifts of different types of food for the deities of the Buddhist cosmos.

“The festival is quite important for Buddhist Newars, as it has become a way of practising daan (an act of giving and sharing) dharma. A festival that also has, over the years, nurtured our faith,” said local resident Sabita Dhakwa. “We were lucky as we took an inside route, so we didn’t have to wait in the line for long. But many people had already arrived before us, fearing that the queue would have them standing for hours.” (The Kathmandu Post)