Half Of The Tibetan Social Life, State In The 20th Century (1900-1959)

The first half of the 20^th Century is the period in which the Tibetan society experienced the dramatic changes in social structure, social -economical formation, and social institution. The aim of the thesis is to describe a whole scene of the dying out social life situation of the different social classes before the democratic reform because the characteristics of the past Tibetan social life not only reflect the developing stage of the Tibet, but also provide the factors which lead to the changes of the social life.In the thesis, the whole inhabitants of Tibet, according to their typical social life style, economic contribution to the society and social position etc., are stratified into different social classes such as peasants, herdsmen, town people, aristocratic families, Buddhist monks and nuns, and primitive tribal men. To emphasize their typical survival manners and social life style of the different classes, to avoid the superfluous trifles and unnecessary repetition , the author only selected the following characteristic topics to research: (1) The production mode of the peasants , the situations of their polygamy marriage, especially the polyandry marriage caused by the personal-attachment system. (2) The survival mode of the herdsmen, including their movements, their barter with peasants and their traditional marriage customs. (3) The trades of the town people and the social position of the town craftsmen such as the tailors and the blacksmiths, the very special phenomenon Lhasa tramps. (4) The privileged position of the aristocratic families, their vital role in the local government and their uxorilocal (mag-pa) marriage and polyandry marriage in order to keep the title of the family and keep their property from separation, also the nobles' pursuit of the western life style . ( 5 ) The all pervasive influence of the Buddhist churches and the secular lives of the Buddhist monks , nuns and priests in a very strongreligious atmosphere, such as the monks engaging the trading business and the loving affairs of the nuns . (6) The tribal communes along the southwest borders, centering on their primitive cultures distinctive from mainstream Tibetan culture.In the thesis , the author utilizes the fundamental theories and concepts of sociology and social -anthropology, combining with the methodology of history and ethnography and by means of the social investigation data, so as to build a dimensional and quantitative Tibetan social life system of the first half of the 20th Century. The author concludes that in the first half the 20th Century, Tibet was still in the feudalism founded in the 17th Century. The social structure was stable and lack of fluidity among the social classes. So the society morphology is in sluggish and in want of innovation and advance of the society. The influence of the western material civilization after the invasion of Great Britain was only confined within the everyday life customs of the noblemen, but not to the vast population of the rest classes in Tibetan society.