The Causes Of Tibetan Fish Avoidance And Its Changes

Tibetans have refused to eat fishes for a long time, which at least can date from the period of Yarlung Dynasty in the history documents. The custom of Tibetan fish avoidance has been through a series of changes, from fish taboo in the period of the Yarlung Dynasty to the custom of no eating fishes nowadays. Otherwise there’re a small parts of Tibetan who eat fish and fishing through the whole Tibetan history.Firstly, Tibetan denial attitude towards fish is because fishes in the Tibetan plateau usually grow slowly. According to the optimal foraging theory, fishes in the Tibetan plateau provided lower calorie for human being than the yaks and goats do. Secondly, fish is the food for the poor in the conception of Tibetan people. Furthermore, the Bon religion and Tibetan Buddhism strengthens and maintains the custom of fish avoidance. In the Bon religion, fish is the symbol of the klu deity, which endows the fish holiness. Then Tibetan people have been preventing from eating fishes and fishing by the conception of ahimsa in Tibetan Buddhism. But in Tibetan Buddhism, there’re no obvious rules prohibited believers from eating fishes and be opt to fishing prohibition. This is one of the reasons which lead to the conversion of fish taboo to fish avoidance. And the rest reasons are the de-holiness of fishes in Tibetan Buddhism, the explosion of fishery, the development of transportation and catering.This paper is based on the history documents and field survey, and combined the domestic and international existing research results and theories. The general idea of the article is to look into the causes of Tibetan fish avoidance and its changes ethnologically, historically, biologically.Five chapters are composed of the paper. Chapter one is the introduction, containing the value of the thesis theme, the research methods and the academic history of this topic, and especially introduces the research results about the food prejudice and taboo abroad. Chapter two is mainly about Tibetan attitude to fish eating and its changes from Neolithic times to these days. Chapter three expounds the causes of Tibetan avoidance. Chapter four discusses why fish taboo turned to fish avoidance. And the last part of the article is the conclusion.