It is pitiful to contemplate the condition of the students who, without scholarship or support, are preparing in the colleges for their degrees. They live hard struggling lives of study in the midst of want, and yet the only stimulus that encourages them is the expectation that they will be able to enjoy the comfortable life of high priests, when they have got through the prescribed course of study and have achieved the Doctorate. They do really suffer, but their sufferings are not, so far as I know, those of the man of self-denial who strives hard and struggles against difficulties for the noble ambition of winning souls to salvation, or for some humanitarian purpose; they are exceedingly patient in suffering, simply with the hope of reaping ease and comfort in the latter part of their lives. After a hard monastic life of some twenty years when they have completed the whole course of study, these poor students will have the honor of getting the Doctor’s degree, a title implying the highest learning, but in undue proportion costly; for besides spending nearly half their lives in toils and struggles to get it, they have to give a grand feast to all their schoolmasters to celebrate their graduation. It is true, the feast consists only of meat gruel, a sort of porridge of meat mixed with rice, but the quantity given is enormous, as there are many capacious stomachs to be filled.
To give a feast of this sort requires some five hundred yen at the very least, each bowlful costing over twenty-five sen. Of course, the poverty-stricken priests cannot possibly provide the money themselves, but fortunately the diploma has its use this time; their credit has so much improved that the wealthy priests who turned up their noses at needy students are very willing now to supply them with the necessary money, simply because they have the degree and chance to pay interest. By the means of this convenient credit transaction they can procure the means of giving the necessary banquet and the wealthy priests get not only credit for their generosity, but also interest for their money. But nothing is more disappointing than the future life of those poor priests, who will probably never succeed in paying off the burden of debt, or, if exceptionally fortunate, they may succeed in doing so only after long and hard struggles. It is a sad thing to contemplate, but such is the hard lot of most Tibetan priests.
[CHAPTER LIV.]
Tibetan Weddings and Wedded Life.
As I was lodging at the house of the Minister of Finance, I had the good fortune to become acquainted with and occasionally to call on the other Ministers of State, among whom was one of the Prime-Ministers, of the name of Sho Khangwa. (In Tibet, there are four Prime-Ministers and three Ministers of Finance; the senior Minister, in either case, taking the actual business and standing responsible for the conduct of affairs, while the others hold only nominal portfolios, assisting in the work of the Department as vice-Ministers. Sho Khangwa was the second Prime-Minister). During my stay in Lhasa, his daughter married the son of a noble called the Prince of Yutok. I was invited to the wedding, a ceremony most solemnly performed, which I attended with curiosity and interest. Before proceeding to relate what I saw on that occasion, I may make a few observations on Tibetan marriages in general. No general statement can be made however with regard to marriage-customs, as they vary vastly according to the different localities. There are several books containing descriptions of Tibetan marriages, but these are from the pens of European travellers, who may perhaps have been in Chinese Tibet, or on the northern frontier of Tibet proper, but were surely not permitted to visit Lhasa. So although their descriptions may be correct, so far as they go, yet no detailed account of a marriage in Lhasa is, so far as I know, to be found in any of these books. It is next to impossible for a passing visitor, especially in such a country as Tibet, where marriage-customs and manners differ so much with the widely separated tribes, to give any really trustworthy descriptions; still, as circumstances have given me special opportunities of observing minutely the people’s life, social and domestic, in Lhasa, and even of attending several wedding ceremonies of the natives, it is not only proper, but may also possibly be of some value, to relate my observations and experiences during my stay in the city.
It is generally known that a peculiar system of marriage prevails in Tibet—a plurality not of wives but of husbands. The cases of polyandry are; first, when several brothers take the same woman as their wife at the same time; second, when two or more men not brothers, marry the same woman by mutual agreement; and thirdly, when a woman, already married to one man, gains influence over her husband, and, with his consent, marries another in addition. In case the mother of a family dies, either the father or the son takes a new spouse, who becomes at the same time the wife of the other male members of the family without infringing the law of the country. They are quite insensible to the shame of this dissolute condition of matrimonial relations, which can scarcely be even imagined by people with a civilised moral sense; and yet there do exist some restrictions: marriage of brothers with sisters, or between cousins, is not only censured by the public as immoral, but also prohibited by the law as criminal.
The wife’s authority over her husbands is something surprising. All the money which the husbands have earned has to be handed over to their wife, and if one of the husbands is found less clever or less successful in making money than the others, she will give him a severe scolding. When a husband needs money, he has to beg his wife to give him so much for such and such a purpose, just as a child does to its mother. If she happens to find any of her husbands keeping back his earnings, she will break out in anger, and give him slaps instead of caresses. In short, a wife generally exercises a commanding authority over her husbands.
She will order them to go out shopping and to do this or that, and husbands are quite obedient to the wife, too, and quite ready to do everything that is required, or that they find suitable to soothe her. When two or more men have anything to agree upon among them, they do not decide for themselves, but run home and ask their wife’s opinion before coming to a final decision, and, if she has no objection, they will meet again and settle the matter. Though polyandry is the prevailing system of marriage in Tibet, there are a few exceptional cases of monogamistic couples, generally in cases where the husband is in a comparatively influential position.
Another peculiarity in connexion with marriage is that an agreement, to the effect that either husband or wife may divorce the other whenever he or she has become averse to continuing as the other’s partner, is acknowledged as a legitimate condition of a matrimonial contract.
I come now to a description of the marriage ceremony as observed in Lhasa. The Tibetans, whether men or women, marry generally between the twentieth and twenty-fifth years of age.