Linge ping

Also पिङ. The wooden wheel beside it is the rote ping, also called charkhe ping and pirke ping.

At Dashain, villages raise a swing of four bamboo poles taller than a house, and everyone rides it. The custom is that you should leave the ground at least once a year.

Who plays
Anyone, one or two riders at a time.
What you need
Four tall poles of bamboo or sal, a log, a rope of babiyo grass and a day's work.
Where
Villages across the country.
When
Raised for Dashain and taken down after Tihar.

Raising a linge ping

A linge ping is a ride, and nobody keeps score. The young people of the village raise it, and it takes them a day.

Four poles

Cut four long poles of bamboo, or of sal where it can still be cut, and plant them in the ground in two pairs.

Tied at the top

Tie each pair together at the top, and lay a log across from one pair to the other. A finished linge ping stands more than eight metres high.

The rope

Hang the rope from the log. It was twisted from babiyo grass, and now it is often plastic or jute.

8 m and moreLogRopeFour poles, in pairs
From the front. The rider swings towards you and away.

Riding it

One or two ride at a time, sitting or standing. Somebody pushes the rider off, and from then on the rider keeps it going by shifting their weight. Elders remember singing on the swing late into the night.

Push off
From the side, the way the swing goes.

Why everyone swings at Dashain

Nepali Wikipedia gives the custom: after the tika at Dashain, you should play on the swing and leave the ground. The Nepali Times adds that it was done to obtain salvation.

The rote ping

Beside the swing there is often a rote ping, a wooden wheel of seats turned by hand and kept from one year to the next. Photographs from the 1960s show one at a stop on the Tribhuvan Highway in Makwanpur and a hand-powered one in Tehrathum.

In Rolpa the wheel is the charkhe ping, and it turns at another time of year. In Oh village of Parivartan Rural Municipality it is swung on the first and the twelfth of Bhadau. Onlinekhabar reports that nearly every village in Rolpa once raised one, and that they are now close to dying out.

A wheel of four seats, turned at the hub.

What is on record

  • 1962A child on a ping near Pokhara, photographed by a Peace Corps volunteer.
  • 1964, 1965A swing raised for Dashain at Kaun Danda in Pokhara, and children on a wooden wheel in Kaski.
  • 1966A woman on a linge ping in Tanahu.
  • 1967A hand-powered wheel in Tehrathum, and a wooden one at a stop on the Tribhuvan Highway in Makwanpur.
  • 2075 BSOnlinekhabar's Dashain report calls it a famine of swings.
  • 2021The Nepali Times finds swings going up again after Covid, at Changunarayan among other places.
  • Bhadau 2083Onlinekhabar reports Rolpa's charkhe ping close to dying out.

Where the sources disagree, or say too little

When is it raised?

Onlinekhabar says at Ghatasthapana, the first day of Dashain. The Nepali Times says about a week before.

When does it come down?

The Nepali Times says after Tihar. Wikipedia says after some weeks.

What is the wheel called?

Rote ping in the Nepali Times, pirke ping in Wikipedia, and charkhe ping in Rolpa, where Onlinekhabar says it is also known as rote ping.

Sources

Every fact on this page comes from one of these. Where a source could not be read, or a claim has none, the text says so.

  1. Once upon a time, Dashain was all about the swing, The Kathmandu Post, 25 September 2019, photographs from the Nepal Photo History Project
  2. High on swings, Monika Deupala, Nepali Times, 15 October 2021
  3. दशैंमा पिङको अनिकाल, Bishal Sapkota, Onlinekhabar, 31 Asoj 2075 (in Nepali)
  4. रोल्पामा लोप हुँदै परम्परागत चर्खे पिङ, Onlinekhabar, 1 Bhadau 2083 (in Nepali)
  5. Linge Ping, Wikipedia
  6. पिङ, Nepali Wikipedia (in Nepali)
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