Overview
Raksha Bandhan is a traditionally Hindu annual rite and festival celebrated across South Asia and among communities influenced by Hindu culture. The Sanskrit expression "Raksha Bandhan" literally means "the bond of protection, obligation, or care", and the festival centres on the tying of an amulet or talisman, known as the rakhi, by sisters around the wrists of their brothers. Through this gesture, sisters symbolically extend protection to their brothers, receive a gift in return, and traditionally invest the brothers with a share of responsibility for their potential care.
The festival is observed on the last day of the Hindu lunar month of Shravana, which generally falls in August. While the term "Raksha Bandhan" is today principally associated with the sister–brother ritual, until the mid-20th century it was more commonly applied to a related ceremony, with precedence in ancient Hindu texts, in which a domestic priest tied amulets, charms or threads on the wrists of his patrons, or changed their sacred thread, in exchange for gifts of money. This priestly form of the rite continues in some places.
The sister–brother festival itself has origins in folk culture and was historically known by varying regional names, including saluno, silono and rakri. One ritual associated with saluno involved sisters placing shoots of barley behind the ears of their brothers. Over time, these regional customs converged with the wider name Raksha Bandhan.
The festival holds particular significance for married women and is closely linked to the practice of territorial or village exogamy, in which a bride marries outside her natal village or town and, by custom, her parents do not visit her in her married home. In rural north India, where village exogamy remains strongly prevalent, large numbers of married Hindu women travel back to their parents' homes each year for the ceremony. Their brothers, who typically live with their parents or nearby, sometimes travel to their sisters' married homes to escort them back. Many younger married women arrive at their natal homes a few weeks earlier and remain through the festival period, making Raksha Bandhan an occasion that reinforces ties between siblings and between a married woman and her family of birth.
References
Adapted from the English