Tibetan Traditional Marriage Culture Studies

Tibetan culture is broad and profound, abundant with numerous books on it. It embodies rich cultural connotations in both material and spiritual aspects. As one of the most important contents of Tibetan culture, Tibetan social system constitutes the most significant part of traditional Tibetan culture, through which Tibetan culture and social life could be examined and understood comprehensively and systematically.The record of Tibetan history is characterized by its emphasis on religion and neglect about other things, which, for a long time, has been influenced by the unique history and culture of Tibetan society and its religious concepts. The Tibetan historical literature seldom involves marriage or families. The only relevant some remains on the description over the marital status of a minority of aristocracy found in A Happy Feast of the sages (《贤者喜宴》),Song of the Cuckoo(《西藏王臣记》),A Mirror of Genealogy of Kings (《西藏王统记》) and other Tibetan historical literature where the polygamy is described to highlight the aristocracy's power and wealth. However, the description on marriage and families of the herdsmen is hardly found in Tibetan historical literature. Tibetans'marriage culture has been evolving with the development of Tibetan ethnic minority, becoming secularized, rationalized, socialized, normalized and institutionalized. This is undoubtedly providing a new perspective for us to study the history and reality of Tibetan society.While in20th century, especially in the second half of20th century, there appears to be more and more research and studies over it, yet in-depth and systematic ones are not many. Problems remain unclear such as the life in polygamy families, the relations between polygamy family and monogamy family, and the relationships between polygamy and monogamy families and Tibetan society, economy and culture. The particular characteristic of matrimony in Tibetan society was the coexistence of polygamy and polyandry, which has been attracting people's attention. In one word, most of the investigation and research during this time belong to the records of folk-custom phenomena, with the documents fragmentary and simple. Some scholars, affected by their own values, even argue with bias that this phenomenon appears to be the remnants of Original Group Marriage.The traditional Tibetan values have been forming and developing in the society of feudal serfdom lasting for over1000years. As the direct product of feudal dictatorial system characterized by the unification of the state and the church, the values are social awareness acquired through simple perceptual experience under the condition of natural economy with husbandry and agriculture as its mainstay. Therefore, the traditional Tibetan values has been guiding and directing Tibetan emotion and ethnic behaviors over hundreds of years, exerting great impacts on the cohesion and stability of Tibetan society and also the shaping of Tibetans ethnical disposition and spirit.The core vaiue of Tibetan morals is "to value justice above material gains", which is manifested in the matrimony and household system of Tibetan society, namely, the coexistence of polygamy and polyandry. In Tibetan society, no matter whether it is to share a wife among brothers, among friends, between father and son, or share a husband among sisters, or with a person without the ties of blood, it is commonly accepted and understood by the whole society. Moreover, it is also a code of conduct for people to measure how much harmonious the families are, thus leading to the further development of Tibetan family structure and matrimony till today.Many scholars argue that Tibetan matrimony, especially polyandry, is a backward folk-custom since it's the remnants of group marriage. This involves the value judgment over which professor Ma Rong has his penetrating opinion. He argues that "in human society, it's hard to gauge which sex relation and marriage relation is more moral or advanced simply according to a traditional standard of a society. Therefore, before making value judgment on an ethnic's marriage custom and family structure, the most important is to comprehend it systematically and profoundly, and then to carry out scientific investigation and research over it. Besides, emic approach should be applied to the anthropological investigation during the research.My research proceeds out of two ways of thinking. One starts from the specialty of the research object; the other focuses on the correlation between the research object and the whole society and culture. The research over Tibetan family structure cannot part with the examination about Tibetan matrimony. And the particular geographical environment and humanity factors lead to the differences among the three Tibetan areas of Dbus-gTsang(Central Tibet), Khams(Eastern Tibet) and A-mdo(Western Tibet). The differences are not only manifested in geographical location, but also in the cultural aspect, including the matrimony and family structure. Therefore, the specific characteristics of the three Tibetan areas should be examined through case studies in order to reveal the whole scene of the Tibetan matrimony and households. Meanwhile, Tibetan marriage forms and family structure also correlate with Tibetan society and culture. Influenced by the religious concept, Tibetan moral concepts and values are directly or indirectly reflected in their marriage forms and family structures, which have been exerting impact on the economic development and social advancement of the Tibetan society.