Polyandry in Tibet

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Polyandry in Tibet is a traditional marriage practice that has existed within a milieu whereby a woman could have several husbands; a father and his sons could share the same wife, and a mother and her daughters could share the same husband, or the daughters themselves could share a husband. Historically, the feudal system also compelled everyone to abide by the tradition of marrying within their own social class, and also among their own blood relations.

After Mao Zedong's People's Republic of China occupied Tibet, the 1959-60 reforms emancipated the serfs and the slaves, resulting in a devastating impact on Tibet's traditional marriage system. With the enhancement of their social position, the du-jung and the mi-bo were the first to avoid the intramarriages that characterized the old society. As part of its population control measures, the Chinese government also forbid polygamous marriage under its new family law, thereby drastically impacting on Tibet's social structure, and her traditional marriage system.

Currently, after collective farming was phased out of in China and the farmed land reverted in the form of long-term leases to individual families, polyandry in Tibet, while still officially illegal, is de facto the norm in rural areas for economic reasons.

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[edit] Rationale behind polyandry

Many anthropological studies have attempted to explain the existence of polyandry in Tibet, especially the more commonly encountered fraternal polyandry. Two reasons have commonly been put forward in traditional literature:

  • Because of the practice of female infanticide in Tibet, there had been a relative shortage of females. Polyandry resolved the problem by allowing a few men to marry one woman.
  • Because Tibet lies at a very high altitude, and land was infertile, polyandry was adopted to prevent starvation. Under the circumstances, polyandry, by diminishing the birth rate of every generation, prevented excessive demographic growth that could result in starvation.

The anthropologist, Melvyn Goldstein, however, questioned both of these explanations, arguing that female infanticide was never institutionalized in Tibet, and that women in Tibetan society had considerable rights. Moreover, there is no demographic evidence of a relative shortage of females in the literature on the subject. Goldstein also disputed the second theory, arguing that polyandry was widely practised only among the land-owning families, and not among the poorest classes where starvation was more likely. He, therefore, counterproposed that polyandry could be better understood in relation to the social stratification of Tibet. In fact, family structures and marriages in Tibet were inextricably tied to a social organization that was distinctly characterized by clearly-defined social classes.

[edit] Social stratification and family structure

The traditional Tibetan social organization was quasi-feudal, in that arable land was divided and owned by aristocratic families, religious organizations, and the central government. Tibetan society was divided into two main categories:

  • ger-ba (aristocratic lords); and
  • mi-ser (serfs).

Membership to each of these two classes was hereditary; the linkage between serfs and lords was similarly transmitted through parallel descent. Serfs were further subdivided into three classes, namely the tre-ba, the du-jung, and the mi-bo. The tre-ba, although numerically inferior among the three subclasses, occupied a more superior position in terms of political and economic status.

[edit] Tre-ba

The tre-bas lived in "corporate family units" that hereditarily owned huge tracts of estates that were given to them by their lords, complete with land titles. In return for the land, they had to pay taxes (in fact, tre-ba means "taxpayer" ), and supply corvée services that included both human and animal labor, to their lords. Even so, the land offered them a comfortable standard of living. So important was land to the lives of the tre-ba that it was synonymous with life itself, overriding all other considerations. As a result of this, the entire family structure and marriage system were subordinated to serve the land.

The family structure and marriage system of tre-ba were characterized by two fundamental principles:

  • the corporate stem family; and
  • the mono-marital principle.

A "stem family" is one in which a married child is inextricably linked to his natal family in a common household. The "mono-marital principle" dictates that for each and every generation, one and only one marriage is permitted collectively among all the male siblings, and the children born out of this marriage are members of the family unit who have full legal rights.

The tre-ba family organization was based on these two patterns to avoid the partitioning of their estates. A generation with two or more conjugal families was seen as unstable because it could produce serious conflicts that could divide their corporate family land. As a matter of fact, Tibetan inheritance rules of family land, mainly based on agnatic links, did provide for each generation to partition the land between brothers, but this was ignored to prevent the estate unit from being threatened. Polygamous marriage, therefore arose as a solution to this potential threat.

To elucidate, let us consider a family with two or more sons. Tibetan inheritance rules gave all males of the family, the right to claim a part of the family estate, so if each son took a different bride, there would be different conjugal families, and this would lead to the partitioning of the land among the different sons' families. To avoid this situation, the solution was a fraternal polyandrous marriage, where the brothers would share a bride. Bi-fraternal polyandrous marriages were more common than tri-fraternal or quadri-fraternal polyandry, because the latter forms of marriage were often characterized by severe familial tensions. Different mechanisms were employed to reduce the number of sons within a household, such as making one son a celibate monk, or sending away a son to become an adoptive bridegroom to a family without male children.

Another kind of marriage, although uncommon, is the "polygynous marriage". In a family where all the children were female, sisterly polygynous marriage represented the most common choice. In traditional inheritance rules, only males had rights over the land, but where there were no males to inherit them, the daughters had the right over the corporation’s land. To maintain the familial estate unit, the daughters would share a bridegroom who will move matrilocally (as opposed to the patrilocal principle where the brides move into the husband's family) and become a member of his wife's family.

Bigenerational polygamy was present as an application of the mono-marital principle. Let us consider a family in which the mother died before the son was married. If the widower remarried another woman, two conjugal families would have been created, leading to the eventual partition of the estate. Bigenerational polyandry, whereby the father shared a wife with his son, was therefore the solution to avoid this problem. Conversely, when a woman with no male offspring was widowed, she would share a husband with her daughter ("bigenerational polygyny"), thus avoiding land partitioning.

In these mono-marital stem families, the family head, who had a dominant role in the family, was called trong bey abo (or simply abo). The abo who managed the property and resources of the family unit, was always a male, and almost invariably the oldest male of the elder generation in power. Sometimes, a younger brother would assume the abo role when the eldest male retired.

In tre-ba families, polyandrous and monogamist marriage were the more common forms of marriage, while less widespread was the polygynous marriage. Bigenerational forms of polyandry were, however, very rare.

[edit] Du-jung

The du-jung comprised serfs who held only small plots of land, which were, legally and literally, "individual" possessions (different from the tre-ba who owned land as familial corporation). Land inheritance rules for the du-jung were quite different from tre-ba rules, in that there was no certainty as to whether a plot of land would be inherited by his son. The lord, who was the real landowner, decided on this matter. Compared to the tre-ba, the du-jung, however, had lighter tax obligations, having only human labor corvèe obligations to their lords. These obligations, unlike the tre-ba obligations, fell only on the individual, and not on his family.

The du-jung family structure, unlike the tre-ba, was characterized by the absence of corporate family units, and this was obviously due to the absence of property. When a son married, he often established a new household, and split off from the original family unit. If tre-ba married for patrimonial and land reasons that bound them to their estates, du-jung marriages were freer, and they generally married for love, and were usually monogamists. The small number of polyandry cases within the du-jung class were limited to only the rich families.

[edit] Mi-bo

The mi-bo were not bound and did not have any rights to the estates. In contrast with the tre-ba and the du-jung, they had the freedom to go wherever they wanted, even though they were linked to their lords. They leased their land from tre-ba families, and as payment, took on work for these families. Like the du-jung, the mi-bo also used resources in their own individual capacity, which were non-hereditable.

[edit] Fraternal polyandry

As has been seen, fraternal polyandry was a form of marriage that was prevalent among the tre-ba class. Traditionally, marriages were arranged by the parents, often when the children were still very young. As tre-ba marriages were decided for patrimonial reasons, the brides' and bridegrooms' personal preferences were of no consequence. In polyandrous conjugal family, the eldest brother was, more often than not, the dominant person in the household. All the other brothers, however, shared equally the work, and had the right to sexual relations with their common wife, who had to treat them equally.

All children were treated equally, and a "father" is not allowed to show any favoritism, even if he knew who his biological children really were, as biological paternity was not regarded as important. Similarly, the children considered all their uncles as their fathers, and a child avoided treating members of the elder generation differently, even if they knew who their biological father was.

Divorce was quite simple. If one of the brothers in a polyandrous marriage felt displeased, he only had to leave the household. Polyandrous marriages were often characterized by tensions and clashes for a variety of different reasons. Conflicts may, for example arise because a younger brother wanted to contest the authority of his eldest brother, or sometimes, sexual favoritism might occur, generating tension among the male partners in the marriage, especially so, when there are significant age differences among the brothers.

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