Buddhist Tartan?

[Daaaaang]

Hey what with threads for Jewish and Catholic tartans, I got to thinking about what a Buddhist tartan would look like. (Why not, right?)

All I can think of for colours are saffron and grey. And maybe some brown? Although I'm only familiar with Korean (Son) Buddhism. I guess saffron would be the only necessary colour for a general Buddhist tartan. So a Stillwater saffron kilt would probably do nicely.

(really though, a proper Buddhist kilt would have to be made by you from scraps of fabric that you find laying around…)

Anybody?

[pipesndrumsnun]

Definitely a saffron-colored great kilt!

[Galician]

I've been wondering for a while if the traditional association of Celts with saffron and the use of that color by Buddhist monastics are connected. Given the roots of the Celtic tribes in Asia Minor, not far from the kingdom of Prince Siddartha--who was to become the Buddha, I have come to suspect that they indeed may be.

So when I wear saffron as a Catholic monastic, am I being ecumenical?

Btw, the Indian community of my order does wear saffron, instead of our traditional color of white. Very colorful when they visit!

[TheKiltedWonder]

I would imagine it would be hard to draw a clear link between the two after all these years. Irish Gaelic and Sanskrit are part of the same language family, so there are connections.

[Daaaaang]

Yeah, mad respect to the anthropologists or historians or whoever it is that finds those connections from thousands of years ago. It's a really hard job.

On the other hand, maybe saffron is just a very nice colour?

[Bugbear]

I kind of stopped taking history as absolute fact and take it as a best guess now. How about a general spiritual tartan that is like a shepard's check, but with different shades of the same two colors almost at random.

[Ozman1944]

Saffron, definitely.

[McMurdo]

Check out this thread

http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/t....html?p=345437

[gilmore]

In the time of the Buddha and thereafter the monks would take cloth from bodies that had been left to decay in charnel grounds and sew them together for their robes. (The robes are still in patchwork for that reason.) The robes were then dyed in saffron, it being the cheapest dye on the Gangetic plain, the story goes. In many parts of the Buddhist world lay people never wear clothes that are the dark red of freshly dyed, unfaded saffron or the mustard of faded saffron, those colors being reserved for the monks and nuns.

I doubt there is a saffron link between Celts and Siddhartha, since they were separated by hundreds of miles, several mountain ranges and a desert or two.

I wrote to Samye Ling, the monastery mentioned in the link McMurdo posted, about the lay and monastic tartans, but never got a reply.

[Fedgunner]

Not to be a tosser here...

In another forum, I was informed that anyone who was not a protestant, observed wearing a saffron kilt (In Ireland) would bring forth calls for blood.

I hurt some feelings when I complained.