YUNG-NING.
RULER OF YUNG-NING
Yung-ning, in spite of the prominence given to it on the maps, is a large straggling village rather than a town. It has no walls, its houses are humble structures mostly built of wood, and its only conspicuous building is an imposing lamasery. Its population is purely agricultural. The people are of mixed Mo-so and Tibetan race, and the prevailing religion is Lamaism. The town—if it must be so called—is the capital of a district bounded on the north and east by the provincial frontier, on the south by the Yangtse or River of Golden Sand, and the Chinese sub-prefecture of Yung Pei, and on the west by the tribal district of Chung-tien. The district of Yung-ning is ruled by a hereditary native chief, a personage of less importance than the "kings" of Chala and Muli, but still of considerable rank and influence. Like many other tribal chiefs who, during the last few centuries have been brought by cajolery or force of arms under the dominion of China, the Yung-ning chief holds the hereditary rank of a Chinese official. In China proper, as I need hardly say, official rank is not hereditary; but in subduing the wild "barbarian" districts of Ssuch'uan and Yunnan the Chinese Government found their task facilitated by making an ingenious compromise with the chiefs. Each chieftain who placed himself and his territory under the suzerainty of China, and undertook to be guided in all matters of political importance by Chinese advice, was not only confirmed in his position as tribal ruler, but received the title and rank of a Chinese official to be borne by his heirs and successors in perpetuity. The ruler of Yung-ning thus bears the hereditary rank and title of prefect, and it is for this reason that in the maps his capital is marked as a fu or prefecture. In all matters affecting Chinese interests he is practically the subordinate of the sub-prefect of Yung Pei, a Chinese official whose rank is nominally inferior to his own. Yung Pei is a small city lying about six days' journey south of Yung-ning, forming the centre of a Chinese administrative subdivision.
The day after my arrival at Yung-ning I received a call from the chief. As he knew no Chinese we had to converse through the medium of his Chinese secretary. The chief was a young man of about twenty-eight, amiable enough, but intensely shy and ill at ease in the presence of a foreigner. He wore the uniform of his Chinese rank, and showed himself well acquainted with the Chinese rules of ceremony and etiquette.
The plain of Yung-ning is situated about 9,500 feet above sea-level, in a warm latitude, and produces a great variety of crops. Part of it is given up to the cultivation of rice, for it is well watered by a considerable stream, which bisects the town and flows through the middle of the plain. I saw here, for the first time since I had left central Ssuch'uan, that patient and indispensable partner of the Chinese ploughman in the rice-field, the water-buffalo. The stream is named the K'ai Chi[257] and is spanned by a handsome stone bridge which, according to the inscription on a tablet close by, was rebuilt as recently as the thirtieth year of the present reign (1905). The stream produces excellent fish.
POLYANDRY
The town contains, besides quasi-Tibetans and Mo-so, a considerable number of Li-so (Leesaw), who speak a language of their own. During the day and a half I spent in Yung-ning I took the opportunity to note down a list of Li-so words, in order that I might compare them with the Mo-so words I had picked up during the three days' march from Muli. The vocabularies will be found in Appendix A.
In many respects the social customs of the Mo-so are identical with those of eastern Tibet. Polyandry, for example, prevails among them to a great extent. It is quite common for a woman to have three or four husbands, or even more. With regard to the prevalence of this practice in Tibetan countries, Baber[258] has observed the curious fact that polygamy is the rule in the valleys while polyandry prevails in the uplands, the reason apparently being that women are numerous in the valleys, where the work is light and suitable to their capabilities, but form only a small minority of the population of the mountains, where the climate is severe and the work of the herdsmen not suited to females. "The subject," he says, "raises many curious and by no means frivolous questions, but I cannot help thinking it singular that the conduct of courtship and matrimony should be regulated by the barometrical pressure." In the Mo-so country, however, the practice of polyandry seems to be almost, if not quite, as prevalent among the people of the plains as among those of the mountains; it exists, for instance, in the villages situated on the banks of the upper Yangtse, less than two days' journey south of Yung-ning. The children of a woman who has several husbands are apparently regarded as the legitimate offspring of all of them: an arrangement facilitated by the fact that the husbands are generally closely related to each other,[259] and that the Mo-so, like the Tibetans, have no regular surnames. In one of the Sino-Tibetan states north-west of Tachienlu the sovereign power is said to be always in the hands of a woman. This is the principality of Sa-mong (so spelled in Tibetan) in the north-east of Derge. If this "regiment of women" is not connected with an ancient matriarchal custom it may be the result of ages of polyandry, though I am not aware that the queen of Sa-mong takes to herself more than one prince-consort.[260]
DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD