Prayer banner

A thin cloth banner (dar ras) attached to the top of an upright pole (lcog) and running vertically down it, usually printed with a deity’s image and inscriptions or mantras, and serving as a “support” for the deity. The English “prayer flag” can refer to various forms of printed flags, but dar lcog refers specifically to a long, narrow, upright banner and differs from a dar chen , which consists of hundreds of strings of small prayer flags wound around the pole horizontally. Samten Karmay (The Arrow and the Spindle, p. 413) says that dar lcog originally had no religious connotation but developed into a religious article as Buddhism penetrated all aspects of Tibetan culture so that dar lcog now can contain only prayers and mantra.