Rakshya Bandhan

Raksha Bandhan, also Rakshabandhan,^[2] or Rakhi, is a popular, traditionally Hindu, annual rite which is central to a festival of the same name, and celebrated in South Asia, or among people of South Asian origin around the world. On this day, sisters of all ages tie a talisman, or amulet, called the rakhi, around the wrists of their brothers, symbolically protecting them, receiving a gift in return, and traditionally investing the brothers with a share of the responsibility of their potential care.^[1] Differing versions of the rite have been traditionally performed by Hindus in northern India,^[3][4][5] western India,^[6] Nepal,^[7] and former colonies of the British Empire to which Hindus had emigrated from India in the 19th-century. The expression "Raksha Bandhan," Sanskrit, literally, "the bond of protection, obligation, or care," is now principally applied to this ritual. Until the mid-20th-century, the expression was more commonly applied to a similar ritual in which a domestic priest ties amulets, charms, or threads on the wrists of his patrons and receives gifts of money; in some places, this is still the case.^[8][9] The sister-brother festival, on the other hand, had various names, varying with location, with some rendered as Saluno,^[10][11] Silono,^[12] and Rakri.^[8] A ritual associated with Saluno, for example, included the sisters placing shoots of barley behind the ears of their brothers.^[10] Raksha Bandhan is observed on the last day of the Hindu lunar calendar month of Shraavana, which typically falls in August.