TODAY

Botanically Thabyey (Eugenia Jambolana Lamk) is the genus of clove plant. It is named after Eugene who was  the Prince of Suvoy (1663-1736). It grows wild or cultivated anywhere in Myanmar. It has different species and different shades of queen and sizes of leaves and branches depending upon, please,  soil, reainfall and climate.

Culturally Thabyey is like laurel in Hellemistic culture and civilization of Ancient Greece and the Mediterrancan Region. Laurels (laurrus nobilis) native to the Mediterrancan Region are aromative ever green leaves with blackishish berries. Laurcl leaves are made into a wreath or crown to center as a mark of honour in ancient times upon paets, heroes, and victors in athlectic contests. In Olympic games of ancient Greece winners were eco

with laurcl leaves. Hence to-day all olympic symbols, trophics and awards have laural  motifs.

Thabyey springs are also symbols of victory, success and awards for outstanding performances in Myanmar culture and civilization. There are many Myanmar old sayings and rhymed couplets about Thabyey – ေအာင္သေျပေညာင္ေရေလာင္းလို႔၊ ဆုေတာင္းပါတယ္။ Would pray for your success by pouring lushal water on the sacred Bodhi Tree (Bunnyan Tree) from the waterpot with Thabyey sprigs) သေျပခတ္နဲ႔ ေရပက္ႀကိဳမယ္။ (We’ll welcome you with Thabyey spring to spray lushel water at you) သေျပပန္းနဲ႔ ေရခ်မ္းကိုေလာင္း၊ ေမတၱာဆုေတာင္း (Greeting with loving kindness to all by pouring lustral water  out of the pot with Thabyey springs.

Legends of Thabyey go  far buck into Myanmar tradition even before the advent of   Buddhism to the country. In Myanmar traditional cosmo graphy each universe is composed of one highest mountain called “Meru” at the center of the Universe. Around Menu are four big islands at four cardinal paints. They are (1) Pubbavideha, the East Island where the sun rises (2) Apragoyana, the west Island where the sun sets (3) Ultaru, the North Island where the guiding star Ukkar shrines and (4) the South Island is not called Dekkhina in the true sense of Pali name but the South Island is called Tabudipa, because on this South Island only that the most auspicious Tabu Thabyey tree grow and all Buddhas had revealed and all future Buddhaa would be revealed on this South Island. Therefore the South Island is aus piciourly called Tabudipa “the Island where Tabu Thabyey tree grow.”

Around Mt Meru are encricled clock wise by seven mountain ranges and seven rivers and seven oceans. In the oceans, among all aquatic creatures there lives the fish named Ananta which eats the fruits into the water produce seven lones of music, and fish Ananta swallowing Tabu Thabyey fruits also produces seventones of  music. Therefore Thabyey is nevered, respected and culturally light valued by the Myanmars.

Thabyey has pride of place in Myanmar visual and performing arts and literatire. Many eulogizing adjectives are prefixed to Thabyey— such as Aung Thabyey meaning victorious Thabyey, Aung Pan (Flower or spring of victory) Aung Na Meik Pan (Auspicious symbol of up coming victory). Sheer presenting a spring of Thabyey to a friend who is anticipating victery or success speaks volumes of your regard for him.

In Myanmar New year Festival Thingyan, people pour or splash lustral water out of Thingyan atar water pot in wich springs of leaves or flowers, each representing a day  of the week. (1) Ohn Let (Coconut leaves) representing sunday (2) Guntgaw leaves or flowers (iron wood, mesua Ferra Linn) representing Monday, (3) Sein pan (gold mohur, Poinciana regia) representing Tuesday, (4) Ywet Hla ( Croton, Codiaeum Varriegatum)   representing Wednesday, (5) Myey Zar (Couch grass, Cynodondactylon Pers) representing thurs day, (6) Thi (wood apple tree, Feronia elephantum Corres) representing Friday and (7) Dan (Henna, Lawsinia inermis Linn) representing Saturaday are arranged in order in the atar pot. Also springs of Thabyey (Eugenis jumbolana Lamk) are added tp the atar pot as dymbolic leaves of victery.

Religiously, at the libation ceremony held after the performance of religious deeds or events (initiation of novices, ordination of monks , robe or food offering building religioud monuments etc) holy water is dripped drop by drop from a silver bowl or ever with springs of Thabyey and at the end of the ceremony all sentient beings are called upon to take sh    of the good deed just carvied out. The audience responds in unison “Sadu” (welldone) three times, expressing appreciation. So Thabyey is a must min religious functions and ceremonies.

Simitarly hus a social role. At wedding ceremony, the groom and the bride, each holds sprigs of Thabyey to pay homage to the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, both parents, the teachers and the quests. They bow three times while the master of ceremony chants mantras and sprunikles with Thabyey leaves lustral water from the white conch shell he is holding above the heads of the wedding couple and finally empties all water into the silver bowl.

Thabyey sprigs are used in annoiting the royal head at the time of caronation and the crown.

In all ceremonies of the court, Thabyey plays un impartamt role. There is a standard sjyme  “သေျပႏု၊ ေငြခ႐ုနဲ႔ ေဇရတုေခၽြ” (With tender Thabyey leaves in white eonch shell blessings “Zey – yatu” are showered). When Myanmar armies, past and present march to the battlefield or parade, all onlookers after  sprigs of Thabyey to the marchers who respectfully receive them and keep the thabyey sprigs on their chests helmets or ever wear on their ears.

Thabyey occupies prominent place in all state crests flag, medals, urisignias, sports trophies, trade marks, beands, auspicioud names for houres, shaps. etc. Even some boy’s and girls names bear Thabyey as prefix on suffix.

Of all species of Thabyey, Tabu Thabyey seems the best. It has a pleasant aroma. It’s fruits are juicy, black outside but dark scalet inside very nice to chew and eat. There is a talk song about its fruits.

၀ါဆို၀ါေခါင္၊ ေရေတြႀကီးလို႔၊ သေျပသီးမွည့္ေကာက္စို႔ကြယ္။

Floods in Waso and Wakhaung (July and August) Let’s go out to gather ripen Thabyey fruits.

Myanmar herbahists recommend sniffing Thabyey leaves and eating its fruits to relieve giddiness.

In upper Myanmar, there is a special species of Thabyey called Padetha Thabyey. Keep a spring of this species in a water pot  and change water everyday, the sprig continues to give out shoots into all directions, giving a green atmosphere inside the home.

Non-a-days in the morning bazaars, floral shops are selling a new type of Thabyey. ASEAN Thabyey they name it. Reddish green leaves. With ASEAN Games Myanmar is hosting soon, this timely emergence of “ASEAN Thabyey” augurs well for Myanmar sports.

 ျမန္မာ့သေျပ

–      သေျပပန္းလွ်င္

–      “ပန္း´´ ဟူ၍သာ၊ ေခၚေ၀ၚပါလည္း

–      သူ႔မွာ ကင္းဘိ၊ ဖူးပြင့္မရွိ။

–      သို႔ပါေသာ္ျငား

–      ထူးျခားျမရြက္၊ နီညိဳရြက္ႏွင့္

–      အရြက္အလွ၊ တင့္ရႊန္းပ။

–      သေျပပန္းအား

–      ဘုရားတင္ကာ ဆုမြန္ထြာ၍

–      ေကသာထက္တြင္၊ အလွဆင္၍

–      မဂၤလာမႈ၊ အစုစုတြင္

–      ဂုဏ္ျပဳသုံးၾက၊ ျမတ္ႏိုးၾက။

–      အို႐ႈစမ္းပါ

–      စစ္လွမ္းခ်ီရာ၊ ေအာင္ေစရာတည့္

–      ေအာင္ရာေအာင္ေၾကာင္း၊ ေအာင္ဆုေတာင္း၍

–      ေအာင္ေၾကာင္း၊ ေ၀ျဖာစစ္ေအာင္ရာတြင္

–      ၾကည္သာရႊင္ပ် ေပးဆက္ၾကသည္

–      ျမန္မာ့သေျပ၊ ေအာင္သေျပ

မင္းယုေ၀

Myanmar Thabyey

–  Though called Thabyey Pan in Myanmar,

It has neither buds nor flowers

–  Nonthless its green browmish red leaves

Are specially beautiful indeed.

–  Offer Thabyey pan to Buddha’s shine,

Pray for blessings all the time.

– Adorn Myanmar hair knots for grace,

At all ceremonies Thabyey is embraced.

– At battle march or parade on display,

For victory and success Thabyeys are  arranged.

–  Onlookers greeting the manchers gleefully,

–  Thabyey sprigs are offered as symbols of victary.

Trans: by Dr Khin Maung Nyunt