Tibetan Frontier Families: Reflections of Three Generations from D'ing-ri by Barbara NimriAzizReview by: Melvyn C. GoldsteinJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 100, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1980), pp. 214-216Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/601101 .

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214 Journal of the American Oriental Society 100.2 (1980)

Veber, Probnaja trankripcija nazvanij vsekh gorodov Korei,

1907 (Imp. russ. geogr. ObW. Kartograficeskaja komissija [according to Cordier, Bibliotheca sinica, 4428]); D. D. Eliseev, Korejskie novelly XIX v., Vostocnyjal'manakh 1957, 1: 251-80. There are a few typing errors: no. 1984, the

translator of "Corea the hermit nation" is spelled Sipov, not

Sipov. A. M. Pozdneev (Kamennopisnyj pamjatnik pod&i-

nenjia man 'durami Korei) is indexed under the name of his

brother, D. M. Pozdneev. Entry no. 1952 Poezdka v Koreju

Gen. st. Podpolk. Al'ftana v dekabre 1895 g. i janvare 1896

g. was published in SGMA 69, 1896, 8-96. Smidt's paper

Koreja i korejcy was published in Russkoe bogatstvo 1903, 11:65-94. Entry 1906 Korejsko-russkij slovar' by Kholodovic was published also in 1958 (2nd ed.) and 1959 (3rd ed.; 896

pp.). The page numbers missing in entries 1883 and 1750 are 166-94 and 201, respectively.

HARTMUT WALRAVENS

HAMBURG

Tsongol Folklore. Translation of the Collection "The Lan- guage and Collective Farm Poetri of the Buriat Mongols of the Selenga Region." By NIC HOlIAS POPPE. Pp. 150. (Asiatische Forschungen, Band 55). Wiesbaden: OTTrio HARRASSOWITZ. 1978.

The Asiatische Forschungen has already published a wide range of books designed to make Mongolian folklore avail- able in German and English translation for those folklorists who do not know Mongolian. The credit for the success of this venture must go to Professor Walther Heissig (Bonn). who is not only the initiator but the "curator" of the whole series. Tsongol Folklore is a welcome continuation of this series.

The Tsongols come from the Khalkha-Mongolian peoples who today comprise the majority population of the Mongol- ian People's Republic. According to historical chronicles, the Tsongols migrated from the present area of the Mongol- ian People's Republic to the valley of the Selenga River over the course of a hundred years beginning in the second quarter of the 17th century. After they settled down in the Selenga valley they mixed with Buriats such that today they consider themselves primarily Buriat in nationality and char- acter, although they have managed to preserve many Khalkha features as well. The Tsongols became Russian subjects in their new-found homeland, which left a distinct imprint on their folklore in which many historical events of old Russia and the Soviet Union are reflected. This will, of course, set it apart from the folklore of the Khalkhas, who seem to be the closest to them in origin.

The texts in Tsongol Folklore were collected by Professor Poppe back in 1931 and were first published in Leningrad in 1934 (reprinted by Gregg International in 1972). The volume contains mostly folk songs, but also epics, folktales, histori- cal tales, stories, and maxims. The folk songs cover a broad range of subjects. Most of them are love songs, others are about the First World War, the October Revolution, Lenin, the Soviet Union, the collectivization of farms, etc. The collection also includes 100 riddles, a real treat for scholars working in this field.

The Tsongol texts of this book were translated into Eng- lish and provided with footnotes by Professor Poppe him- self. Those who appreciate Professor Poppe's authority in Mongolian studies will take it for granted that the transla- tion is excellent and that the notes are exact, concise, and highly academic. There is, however, one rather formal point to which I wish to object. Professor Poppe uses the symbols 0 and u7 in such words as Tem{u/in, Temurr, Ude, u?khesno instead of Temrijin, Temrir, Ode, iikhesno" (p. 59), Hsu in General Hsi Shu-tseng's name (p. 93), or ko"l instead of Turkic kdl "lake" (p. 29), etc. These are quite unusual symbols in the normal transliterations of Mongolian, Chinese and Turkic texts. Besides, their usage interferes with the symbols of other languages (e.g., in Hungarian o" and u' correspond to oi and U, that is, to long o and ii), and 1 fear that it may cause confusion. In any case, this kind of transliteration is strange and improper.

In sum, I wish to affirm that Professor Poppe's translation will serve as a very useful source of information for all those scholars who do not know Mongolian. He has also set a good example to be followed by those who are just trying their wings at translating from Mongolian into English.

LAJOS BESE

BU DAPES'T

Tibetan Frontier Families: Reflections of Three Generations from D'ing-ri. By BARBARA NIMRI Aziz. Pp. xiv + 292. Durham, North Carolina: CAROLINA ACADEMIC PRESS.

1978.

Despite the passage of almost twenty years since Tibetans first entered South Asia as political refugees, we still know relatively little about the nature of pre-1950 Tibetan society. This anthropological study by Dr. Aziz is a useful addition to this scant literature.

Dr. Aziz's study is a reconstruction of the social, economic and religious life of D'ing-ri, a Tibetan border area located in Tibet just north of Nepal. The study is in the genre of ethnography, but it is an ethnography collected via

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Reviews of Books 215

reconstruction. That is to say, data was collected by extensive interviews with Tibetan refugees who fled from D'ing-ri to Nepal where they resided when Aziz studied them.

Reconstruction investigation is extraordinarily difficult and highly prone to distortions via informant idealization of past reality. Subjects, sometimes consciously, more often uninten- tionally tend to relate "normative" or "wished-for" accounts rather than actual ones. Having a large number of subjects from a single area is the best antidote for this inherent pathology since it affords an opportunity to check and cross- check information with other informants from the same village. Dr. Aziz's study does this. About 2000 (20%) of the original population of D'ing-ri were living in Nepal when the study was conducted. A second way to avoid over "idealized" accounts of behavior is to root reconstruction investigation in specific case histories of individuals and families. Dr. Aziz also uses this technique extensively.

Tibetan Frontier Families portrays life in a lively and sensitive fashion. It presents the first real data on untouch- ability and useful basic data on other aspects of the Tibetan social system. This volume, however, is not without short- comings and although the book as a whole has merit, I would be remiss in not pointing out some of the more serious of these.

One very irritating aspect of the book is Dr. Aziz's nar- rative style which not only uses the present tense, but often leaves the impression that she was actually in Tibet doing first-hand research. For example:

One of the most thrilling and unusual gatherings I ever witnessed among the Tibetans is the Tr'ul-zhig La-ma zhab-tan held annually at Dza-rong after the K'an-po's succession there. It is a grand affair in which the incumbent is ceremoniously reinstalled. He receives offerings from his ordinands, who come from all ovei D'ing-ri once a year to join in the day-long prayer and feast. I personally found the last part, called tsog-lu, the most interesting because of its utterly humorous content (225).

While this language is picturesque, it is very misleading. I do not doubt she actually saw the rite, but she could only have seen it in Nepal.

More serious, I found Dr. Aziz's analysis of the Tibetan socioeconomic system grossly misleading. It is clearly the weakest part of the book but, ironically, not because the "facts" she retrieved are incorrect. Rather, it is the concep- tual framework within which she embeds these "facts" that is totally inappropriate. Aziz apparently decided to avoid ad- dressing the issue of whether Tibetan society is a form of serfdom as Goldstein (1971 a,b,c) and others have argued. She indicates that she wants to present Tibetan social struc- ture from the point of view of the Tibetans themselves, in other words, to illuminate its structure by "applying the

same standard of differentiation and rank that the people use among themselves" (52). While this emic approach is defen- sible, one would expect that the Tibetan terms themselves would be used in the narrative. For example, she could say that there is a social stratum called mi-ser which consists of several sub-strata such as dr'ong-pa, d'ii-ch'ung, etc. Aziz does cite the Tibetan terms but places them in an etic (outside observer) conceptual framework by calling these "commoner," "tenant" and so forth.

For example, Aziz writes that the Tibetan class or stratum known as dr'ong-pa are "tenant farmers." The normal mean- ing of "tenant farmer" in our society (Aziz does not define it) refers to a person who holds land of another person for a period of time and pays the owner rent for use of the land. It is a relationship freely entered and specifically delimited with respect to time and obligations. It is a contractual rela- tionship. This is not the situation for dr'ong-pa in Tibet. Dr'ong-pa are persons bound at birth to arable land (an estate) cum various duties and obligations with respect to that land. The individual cannot legally terminate the re- lationship, i.e., cannot return the land and go on his way. He must stay and work the land. On the other hand, the dr'ong- pa have hereditary rights to that land. They cannot be evicted so long as their duties (taxes in-kind and in corvee labor) are fulfilled. This is not just my own interpretation of Tibetan society, Aziz herself writes:

All are taxpaying tenant farmers, working holdings leased from the government or another landlord. Every dr'ong-pa householder is a tenant farmer and as such is bound through his land to a particular landlord. Even though it is almost impossible for him to loosen that tie, the tenant enjoys certain rights. He has hereditarily transferred rights to the holding (67, emphasis mine).

Relationships such as this are clearly not "tenant-landlord" contracts relating to leased land. I have argued (Gold- stein 197 la, 1971b) that they fit precisely the type of peasant known cross-culturally as "serf." To project the conceptual framework of tenants and landlords onto Tibetan society is totally incorrect and not supported by Aziz's own data.

Tibetans, moreover, do not see the dr'ong-pa land tenure relationship as one of "leasing land." The Tibetan's term for leased land is booma (bogs ma) and it is common in villages for peasants to lease land repaying the leasor with either a share of the crop or labor. These land tenure relationships, however, are seen as fundamentally different than that of the land held hereditarily as a dr'ong-pa, the latter being called ten (brten) or foundation. The dr'ong-pa hold a ten from their lord and are obligated to provide taxes and services.

The most salient characteristic of the status of serf vis-a- vis that of tenants is that serfs are hereditarily tied to their land. Aziz's own data again support the serf interpretation.

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216 Journal of the American Oriental Society 100.2 (1980)

The laws state that persons who occupy land as tenant farmers (dr'ong-pa) are not free to leave the land at will, nor may they transfer their land by sale on debt (103).

Aziz's discussion of the type of "sharecropper" or "itin- erant laborer" (d'u-ch'ung) called mi-b'og further supports this.

Some recalcitrants [tenants] run away, severing all ties, but many make arrangements with their landlord to pay a retainer fee. This fee is called mi-b'og, from where their name derives. It enables an individual to leave the household and his land, but not to lease himself to another landlord and estate. A modest fee of only 1 or 2 srang is all the mi-b'og is required to pay each year in order to remain unharassed and free to live in D'ing-ri (71).

Mi-b'og serfs are interesting in that they have obtained permission from their lord (Aziz's landlord) to leave their land and work wherever and at whatever they choose. They are as close to "free" as exists for any mi-ser. But, unlike what we would expect if this were a tenant-landlord rela- tionship, the tenant farmer (serf) cannot sever his linkage with his estate and lord. The status of serf is ascribed at birth and continues even though the serf obtains written permis- sion to leave the estate physically (see Goldstein 1971b for a detailed discussion of this including a translation of a mi- b'og granting document). Thus, mi-b'og serfs not only have to pay an annual fee to their lord for the rest of their lives (and/or other obligations) but their serf status with a specific estate and lord is transmitted to their children via parallel descent, i.e., the lord of a man becomes the lord of his sons, and the lord of a female becomes the lord of her daughters. Moreover, as Aziz indicates, these mi-b'og serfs cannot become the serfs (Aziz's tenants) of another lord although they can and do lease land (in the normal bogs-ma sense that was discussed above) from other serfs and lords.

Another important problem in Aziz's analysis that must be mentioned briefly concerns her presentation of Tibetan so- cial stratification. Aziz argues that Tibetan society is divided into "four socially distinct categories" and that it is only within each of these that secondary economic differences further distinguish people (51). Membership in these four social groups is ascribed at birth and "every member of the society and every Tibetan throughout the country belongs to one of the four: ngag-pa (priest), ger-pa (noble), mi-ser (commoner) and ya--wa (outcaste)" (52). These four groups, she says, are endogamous and approximate the Hindu varna model (52).

Although space does not permit a detailed rebuttal, I suggest that this is an erroneous oversimplification. This classification does not, in fact, encompass all Tibetans as Dr. Aziz states, since monks fall into none of the categories.

Monks are not considered mi-ser regardless of what their status was at birth. On the other hand, ya-wa (outcastes) may be mi-ser (serfs) depending on their occupation and status. A ya-wa holding a ten (land) from a lord is a mi-ser. Endogamy, moreover, is only found among the ya-wa. There is no jural rule of endogamy within the other strata, and nobles, e.g., may and do marry mi-ser and ngag-pa (priests). Similarly, priests may and do marry mi-ser. The system proposed by Aziz is also distortive in that it excludes (or relegates as secondary) ascribed statuses such as dr'ong-pa (her 'tenant farmer'). Why are the strata dr'ong-pa and d'u- chung secondary? Is this what Tibetans say? Without getting into further detail, I would suggest that there is no single overarching system of social categories in Tibetan society nor is there any reason why there should be only one. I suggest that it is emically more accurate to divide Tibetan society into a variety of social categories such as monk, laymen, clean, unclean, noble, commoner, dr'ong-pa, d'u- ch'ung, mi-b'og, trader, rich, poor, etc., which are called into play in different contexts. In some situations all Tibetans will be categorized into two strata; 'clean' and 'unclean' whereas in others into noble, dr'ong-pa serf and d'u-ch'ung serf. Tibetans, themselves, do not conceptualize a single funda- mental categorical system. It is not surprising, therefore, when Aziz herself writes,"In none of my numerous personal interviews with all classes of D'ing-ri people was a conscious system of ordered relationships verbally articulated" (53).

In conclusion, despite these rather basic shortcomings in Dr. Aziz's interpretation of the nature of Tibetan society, the information presented in her case histories is very valuable and instructive as is her reconstruction of the history of the area. Tibetan Frontier Families is a monograph worth reading.

MELVYN C. GOLDSTEIN CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

REFERENCES

Goldstein, Melvyn C. (1971a) "Taxation and the structure of a Tibetan village," Central Asiatic Journal 15 (1): 1-27.

(1971b) "Serfdom and mobility: an exam- ination of the institution of 'human lease' in traditional Tibetan society," Journal of Asian Studies 30 (3): 521-34.

(1971c) "Stratification, polyandry and family structure in Tibet," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 27 (1): 64-74.

Sherpas Through Their Rituals. By SHERRY ORTNER. Pp. 195. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1978.

Sherpas Through Their Rituals is an ethnography of the Sherpas of the Solu region of Eastern Nepal. These Sherpas

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