ABSTRACT
The cultus of the Thirty-Seven nats enters into almost all facets of private and public life. Nats are propitiated at various stages of the life cycle as part of rite-de-passage ceremonies—notably, at birth, at the boy's Buddhist initiation at marriage, and at death. There are two types of nat pwes. First, there is the voluntary, noncalendrical, noncyclical ceremony which, though public, is sponsored by a private person or family. Secondly, there is the prescribed, calendrical, cyclical ceremony, which might properly be termed a festival. Sedaw, a village about eighteen miles southeast of Mandalay, is the scene of an annual festival honoring the regional nat of the Sedaw wier, Sedaw Thakinma. The Taungbyon Festival, the most famous nat festival in Burma is held at the end of August in Taungbyon village, about twenty miles north of Mandalay. The shrine holding the images of the Taungbyon Brothers is probably the most impressive nat shrine in all of Burma.
