Raksha Bandhan, also Rakshabandhan,[2] or simply Rakhi,[3] is a Hindu festival centred around the tying of a thread or ornamental bracelet on the right wrist as a form of bond and ritual protection between brother and sister. It's celebrated on the full moon day in the lunar month of Shravana. The day signifies the mutual bond of love between siblings.[4][5][6] The festive Hindu andJain ritual is one principally between brothers and sisters, observed both before and after she gets married thereby marking her continued relationship with her natal home and brothers.[7][8] The rite is also found between priests and patrons, and sometimes by individuals to real or potential benefactors. Differing versions of the rite have been traditionally performed in northern India,[9][10][11] western India,[12] Nepal,[5] and some Hindu, Jain[8] and Sikh[13]emigrants from the India subcontinent since the 19th-century. It is alternately referred to as Saluno,[14][15] Silono,[16] and Rakri.[17] The rituals associated with these rites, however, have spread beyond their traditional regions to much of India and have been transformed through technology and migration,[18] the movies,[19] social interaction,[20] and promotion by politicized Hinduism,[21][22] as well as as a occasion of national solidarity and state tradition.[23]
On this festival, sisters of all ages tie a cotton bracelet or amulet, called therakhi,[3] around the wrists of their brothers, ritually affirming the bond and support of her brothers, receiving a gift from them in return, and traditionally investing the brothers with a share of the responsibility of their potential care.[24] The expression "Raksha Bandhan," Sanskrit, literally, "the bond of protection, obligation, or care," is now principally applied to this ritual. It has also applied to a similar ritual in which a domestic priest ties string bracelets on the wrists of his patrons and receives gifts of money.[17][25] A ritual associated with Saluno includes the sisters placing shoots of barley behind the ears of their brothers.[14]
Of special significance to married women, Raksha Bandhan is rooted in the practice of territorial exogamy, in which a bride marries out of her natal village or town, and her parents, by custom, do not visit her in her married home.[26]In rural north India, where territorial exogamy is strongly prevalent, large numbers of married Hindu women travel back to their parents' homes every year for the ceremony.[27][28] Their brothers, who typically live with the parents or nearby, sometimes travel to their sisters' married home to escort them back. Many younger married women arrive a few weeks earlier at their natal homes and stay until the ceremony.[29] The brothers serve as lifelong intermediaries between their sisters' married- and parental homes,[30] as well as potential stewards of their security.
Among women and men who are not blood relatives, there is also a transformed tradition of voluntary kin relations, achieved through the tying of rakhi amulets, which have cut across caste and class lines,[31] and Hindu and Muslim divisions.[32] In some communities or contexts, other figures, such as a matriarch, or a person in authority, can be included in the ceremony in ritual acknowledgement of their benefaction.[33] Raksha Bandhan
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