On The Tibetan Buddhist Prayer Flags Cultural Characteristics And Religious Functions

Buddhist artifacts play a pivotal role in the development and heritage of the Tibetan Buddhism. It is not only an important theme of Tibetan Buddhist sculptures, paintings and other artistic forms, but also an important medium of the spread of Buddhist ideas and concepts. In many Buddhist artifacts, prayer flags are one of the most well-known in Tibetan artifacts and also one of the most unique landscapes for outsiders setting foot on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Colored prayer flags which are in monasteries, mountain, valley, houses and other places are fluttering in the breeze, and the "wind horse" ascends slowly in the curl mulberry smoke like the heavenly maids scatter blossoms. All of these reflect the widespread and importance of prayer flags in Tibetan religious society, and their profound cultural connotations also reflect a characteristic of Tibetan Buddhism and even the development of Tibetan culture that is unity in diversity and fully inclusive and equitable. In this paper, I try to deepen people’s understanding of Tibetan prayer flags with introduction and analysis of Tibetan prayer flags, hoping that is good for succession and development of Tibetan traditional culture.This paper is divided into fifth chapters:The First chapter is the preface of the paper, which mainly introduced the origin of the Tibetan Buddhist prayer, the purpose of the topic, the research status and its relevant methods.In the Second chapter, I introduced the concept of Tibetan prayer flags with the different interpretation of the Tibetan and Chinese and made a classification of the different forms of prayer flags which are popular in Tibetan areas. Then analyzed to the flags of mantra, five kinds of animals’pictures, color and other theme patterns from the perspective of symbolic anthropology and interpreted these words, patterns’dual meaning of Buddhism and Bon, and did a brief summary of hanging prayer flags all the religious merit through some records of the Buddhist scriptures.The third chapter is mainly on the source of prayer flags. As a Buddhist tribute, prayer flags hand down to various parts of East Asia along with the spread of Buddhism. In this paper, I made a brief description and comparison of Theravada Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhist’s prayer flags with combination of historical documents and research works today. Because of the impact of Bon religion in Tibetan traditional culture, prayer flags which were spread in Tibetan are quite different from the other regions of the streamer. In addition, the evolution of Tibetan prayer flags were influenced by Tibetan ancestors’worship of the old trees, cold weapons of a small state separatist era, as well as the flags of Tubo era.The fourth chapter described some issues of the production process of the Tibetan prayer flags and some matters needing attention in suspension. The production of Tibetan prayer flags is intimately linked to the development of Tibetan woodblock printing industry, which is also very similar to the Buddhist printing process, different only in the printed material. Printing prayer flags were printed with textile (such as silk streamer, cloth, etc.), while printing Buddhist scriptures were needed the Jibetan paper. Moreover, Tibetans will hang on prayer flags, spilling "wind horse" on many occasions, especially on mountain god worship. In this paper, taking Gannan Tibetan area Arrow Festival as an example, then I introduce the points for attention when hanging flags and related processes.The fifth chapter summarized four cultural characteristics of Tibetan prayer flags:cultural diversity, martial spirit remains, the embodiment of Tibetan horse culture and metaphor of horse and fortune. Followed by a brief summary of these characteristics, I then sum up the function of the flags. In addition to the decorative features function, there are sustenance of faith, religious propaganda and environmental advocacy.The sixth chapter summarized the value of Tibetan prayer flags, namely: religious values, religious and social value as well as environmental value of the streamer.