Bhutan Flag

Both the government and king share the power in the Buddhist state of Bhutan, which means Land of the Dragon in local dialect. They consider thunder the sound of dragons roaring. According to the histroy on the Bhutan flag, in around 1200, the Drukpas sect set up a monastery in Bhutan called Thunder Dragon or druk. The white dragon on the Bhutan flag, still associated with Bhutan today, symbolizes purity.

The history of the Bluton flag shows the changes over the last many years. In 1949 at the signing of the Indo Bhutan Treaty, the first version of the Bhutan flag appeared. Designed by the king, the flag of Bhutan was square and divided diagonally with red on the upper left triangle and yellow on the lower right triangle. It had a green dragon placed diagonally along the yellow, red line. In 1956 during the royal tour, they changed the dragon to white and placed it straight across the Bhutan flag. In the late 1950s, the Bhutanese flag changed shape from square to nine feet long by six feet high. The red became orange and they placed the dragon diagonally on the flag.

The current flag of Bhutan, divided diagonally from the lower left corner to the upper right corner of the flag, makes two equal triangles. The lower orange triangle and upper yellow triangle have the white dragon centered along the middle or dividing line. The white dragon faces right, or away from the hoist. The symbols on Bhutan’s flag represent different things. The two divided colors on the Bhutan flag represent temporal power and spiritual power within Bhutan. The white dragon represents Druk, which means the ‘Kingdom of Bhutan’ in Tibetan. The snarling mouth on the white dragon represents the strength of female and male gods protecting Bhutan. The jewel’s the white dragon grasps in its claws symbolizes wealth, while the orange field on the Bhutan flag symbolizes the Buddhist religious practice and the Drukpas monasteries. The saffron yellow triangle on the Bhutanese flag represents the secular monarchy of the dynasty.

A couple of interesting facts about the flag of Bhutan is that, of all the national flags of the world, only two depict a dragon. One is the Bhutanese flag and the other is the flag of Wales, which has a red dragon. The second is that only a couple of national flags use orange as one of their prominent colors.