The Trace to the Sources of Three Important Festivals for the Hani Nationality

Three important festivals of the Hani Nationality originated form the traditional "Ten-Month Solar Calendar".What is so called Ten-Month Calendar?That is to divide a year into two parts as "Yang year(Solar year)" and "Yin year(Lunar year)".In the Ten-Month Calendar there are 10 months in total for one year and 36 days for each month in the solar calendar system.From the Winter Solstice to the Summer Solstice(from January to May) there are slightly more than 181 days and the last day is the first New Year's day(last two days for the leap year).From the Summer Solstice to the Winter Solstice(from June to December) there are 184 days and the last four days are the second New Year's days.Two periods for New Year's days around a year is the peculiar property for the Ten-Month Calendar.After the Ten-Month Calendar was abolished those three important festivals have been remained,however which day is the festival day that is not uniform because people in different place use the Chinese traditional calendar.The "Zha-Le-Te" day is the New Year's day in October commonly including 4 to 5 days in the first ten days of the month.In those days the original tradition is to make the ancestor worship.The "Ku-Zha-Zha" day is the New Year's day in June of July including 2 to 6 days.In those days the original tradition is to make the God worxhip.The "Ang-Ma-Tu" day is to make the protective deify worship for the village and is the important festival before the agricultural activity in the Spring.The original dates of this festival are in the second month of the Ten-Month Calendar including 1 to 3 days,but in the Chinese traditional calendar it would be in between October and February.Because of the historical changing in different village there are different contents for the festivals mentioned above.