Today is Laba Festival. We all know that Laba Festival is an important traditional festival in China. On this day, every family cooks Laba rice, Laba porridge and a steaming bowl of rice. It's very warm. There are actually allusions about the food of Laba Festival. Do you want to know about them?
In the Han Dynasty, Laba porridge was bound to hold a year-end wax festival every December of the lunar calendar. Therefore, the December of the lunar calendar was also called "the month of wax" or "the month of wax". The porridge cooked on the eighth day of the first lunar month is called "Laba porridge".
For the origin and legend of Laba porridge, there are many different opinions. Among them, the most popular story is about the memory of Sakyamuni becoming a Buddha.
It is said that Sakyamuni escaped from the Royal Palace and became a monk in the Jiadu mountain. He studied Classics and spent six years in the mountains. When he finished his study of sutras, it was the eighth day of the first lunar month, which is generally known as "Sakyamuni's Enlightenment day" in Buddhism.
According to the cause and effect Sutra, Sakyamuni had no time for personal food and clothing because of his six-year hard work. He only ate some hemp and wheat every day, but could not eat and eat all the year round. At the end of his study, he was dressed in rags, skinny and looked like a dead wood.
Exhausted, he went down Jiadu mountain and sat on the Bank of the river, begging from the villagers. A cow herding woman in the village cooked milk in a bowl for Sakyamuni to eat, which quickly restored his health. After the rise of Buddhism, in order to commemorate this event, it was stipulated that this day was a day for the ancient Indian people to "fast monks" and to give alms to the poor.
After Buddhism was introduced into China in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the practice of giving alms on the eighth day of the first lunar month gradually became the custom of cooking "Laba porridge". In some Buddhist temples in China, Laba porridge is cooked to commemorate the story of the cattle herding woman on the Bank of the nilian river who helped Shakyamuni.
With the prosperity of Buddhism, Laba porridge is also popular among the people. The Laba porridge of rich families is made of dozens of rice bean and fruit materials, which are also presented to each other by relatives and friends. Poor people also need to cook a pot of porridge with millet and red dates on this day. It is said that Laba will be poorer next year without porridge. In the Qing Dynasty, the Laba porridge in the Imperial Palace was cooked by lamas of the Yonghe palace and paid tribute.