Grain God

The Bai ethnic people celebrate the torch festival on the 25th day of the 6th lunar month,to commemorate Bada,their ancestor.According to the legend,after the formation of heaven and earth,people had nothing to eat,living by bark and wild vegetables.Bada had walked for a hundred days to meet Avalokitesvara,begging grain seeds.Avalokitesvara gave him four small gourds and one big gourd,telling him that:buckwheat seeds are in the first gourd with three sections,which should be sown on the top of mountains,barley seeds are in the second gourd with two sections,which should be sown on the mountainside,rice seeds in the third thin-neck gourd,which should be sown in the fields by the brook,glutinous rice seeds in the fourth one,which should be sown in the fields by the river,and the seeds in the big gourd are the tree species,which would not be seeded until the seeds in the four small gourds have been seeded.With Aalokitesvara’s instructions,Bada had seeded the different seeds on the top of the mountain,the mountain side,the fields by the brook,and the fields by the river.Because he was so busy planting seeds that he had lost the cover of the big gourd.When he looked back after planting,the mountains were covered with trees and he could not find the way home.(https://www.daowen.com)

People got the news that there grew the crops on the fields,and they were so happy that they fired torches to go to the fields to see.Also they cheered Bada’s name,making him Grain God.