Magha Puja (also Sangha Day) commemorates an event early in the Buddha's ministry: the gathering, without prior summons, of 1,250 enlightened disciples who came of their own accord to hear the Buddha at the Veluvana grove near Rajagaha, on the full moon of the month of Magha (February-March). Tradition adds that all of those present were arahants (fully liberated), and all had been personally ordained by the Buddha, a fourfold coincidence that gives the day its name as the assembly of the perfected Sangha. On this occasion the Buddha is said to have delivered the Ovada-Patimokkha, a summary of the heart of the teaching, "to avoid all evil, to do good, and to purify the mind".
The day is one of the principal Theravada festivals, kept especially in Thailand, where it is a public holiday, and in Laos, Cambodia and among Theravada communities elsewhere, though it was formalised as a public observance relatively recently, in nineteenth-century Siam. Its characteristic evening rite is the candlelit circumambulation (wian tian): devotees walk three times, clockwise, around the temple's main shrine carrying candles, incense and flowers, in honour of the Three Jewels. As the festival of the Sangha, the community of practitioners, Magha Puja complements Vesak (the Buddha) and Asalha Puja (the Dhamma), completing the annual honouring of the three refuges of Buddhism.