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8 Tibetan Spouse Selection and Marriage Family is the basic unit of human society and families are formed through a variety of marriage patterns. By studying marriage patterns and family formation we can discern the fundamental models and networks of human organization as well as social stratification and mobility within a society. The norms and values of societies and communities also can be determined in an indirect way through examining patterns of spousal selection. This is why marriage and family studies are so important to the field of sociology. After a brief review of the relevant literature on Tibetan marriages, this chapter willconcentrateonananalysisofour1988surveydatawithurban-ruralcomparisons. In addition, this chapter will address the issue of intermarriage, an important aspect of ethnic relation studies (Gordon, 1964: 70) that is seldom touched upon by other Tibetan studies. The Literature on Tibetan Marriage Practices Early writings about Tibetan marriages In general, the literature on family and marriages in Tibet can be divided into three groups. The first group appeared before the 1950s. The earliest reports on marriages of Tibet, especially polyandry, were provided by western missionaries, geographic explorers and diplomats, as well as by the Chinese officials, monks and scholars who traveled to Tibet. Polyandry as a marriage type is mainly concentrated in Tibet and other Himalayan regions. This uncommon form of marriage has always attracted the curiosity of missionaries, diplomats and scholars. As the British Political Representative in Tibet, Bhutan and Sikkim, Sir Charles Bell visited Tibet and had personal communications with Tibetans, including the 13th Dalai Lama. He was among the first group of Westerners who 242 Population and Society in Contemporary Tibet provided personal observations and some information about Tibetan society. In his book The People of Tibet (1928), he wrote, “Monogamy, polygamy, and polyandry are all found in Tibet . . . Polyandry is frequently practiced by both farmers and herdsmen.” For the structure of the marriage types, he was informed by Tibetan officials that “in the province of U out of every 20 households one might say that 15 would be monogamous, three polyandrous, and two polygamous. In the northern Plains he estimated the proportions at 10 polyandrous, seven monogamous, and three polygamous (Bell, 1928: 192–194).” He found that fraternal polyandry was the most common type of polyandrous marriage in Tibet. “Where polyandry holds, the husbands are brothers . . . Having married one of the brothers in a family, the wife also married the other brothers who are younger, but not any that are older than him (Bell, 1928: 192).” Another type of marriage in which a man joined his wife’s family, lived on her family’s property and took her family’s surname was also described (Bell, 1928: 176). Rolf Alfred Stein described marriage patterns of Tibetans in La Civilisation Tibetaine (1962). He concluded that “the most typical marriage type seems to be polyandry. It is popular almost anywhere among both agricultural population and herdsmen, it just did not appear in Amdo [Qinghai] (Stein, 1962 [1982: 93]).” In Ethnographic Atlas (1969), the Tibetan areas were identified as the region with the highest rate of polyandry in the world (Murdock, 1969).1 In Origin of Family, Private Ownership and State, Friedrich Engels also mentioned polyandry in Tibet and India as “an exception” in marriage types (1884: 58). Marriage patterns in Tibet were also described by some Han Chinese who had traveled to Tibet. For example, Sichuan Tongzhi: Xiyu Zhi (General Chronicle of Sichuan: Western Frontier), published in 1816, described the customs of polyandry among Tibetans in western Sichuan (Kham). “Popular local opinions (in western Sichuan) looked down on monogamous marriages and preferred woman to marry brothers, three or four if necessary, for household harmony. In several areas of Litang, women must wear silver hairpins with the number of hairpins indicating the number of her husbands. If people see a woman with three or four hairpins they know that she is married to several brothers (Chen Qingying, 1995: 418).” Two Kuomintang officials in Lhasa also reported that “polyandry, of the type in which several brothers share one wife, is a popular form of marriage in Tibet (Shen, TsungLien and Liu, Shen-Chi, 1953: 142).” It must be pointed out that all information provided by literature in the first group was based on personal observations and conversations with Tibetans and there was no scientific research on marriage in Tibet by westerners or Chinese. These reports, though simplistic and often contradictory, introduced the marriage patterns of Tibet to the outside world for the first time. [3...

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