5 - Land, polyandry and celibacy in Tibet

Summary

China and India have often been contrasted with Japan and the West in respect of their early marriage and their commitments to the model of the ‘grand family’ (that is, household, houseful or ‘house’, depending upon context). On the other hand in all three Asian societies marriage was virtually universal, with Japan controlling the growth of its population not only by the age of marriage but also by other, positive, means.

While there is a difference at the level of the model between large family households in China and the single-heir households of Japan, one has to remember that the actual difference in average household size was not great, that the Confucian ethic was a strong feature of Japanese as well as of Chinese education and that many similar practices were found in the repertoires of both countries. In any case in Japan ‘grand families’ such as that of the Makioka (Tanizaki 1957) existed not as households but in a dispersed state, although the relation between brothers was very different, more egalitarian in one case, more hierarchical in the other.

The case of Tibet, albeit representing a great difference in scale from its two neighbours, to one of whom it is attached politically, illustrates another variation on the same set of themes, since we find households that are at once large (frèreches) and stem at the same time, effectively limiting reproduction to the children of one spouse.