Among Their Rude Plenishings Are Large Stone
Corn Chests Like Sarcophagi, Stone Bowls From Baltistan, Cauldrons,
Cooking Pots, A Tripod, Wooden Bowls, Spoons, And Dishes, Earthen
Pots, And Yaks' And Sheep's Packsaddles.
The garments of the
household are kept in long wooden boxes.
Family life presents some curious features. In the disposal in
marriage of a girl, her eldest brother has more 'say' than the
parents. The eldest son brings home the bride to his father's house,
but at a given age the old people are 'shelved,' i.e. they retire to
a small house, which may be termed a 'jointure house,' and the eldest
son assumes the patrimony and the rule of affairs. I have not met
with a similar custom anywhere in the East. It is difficult to speak
of Tibetan life, with all its affection and jollity, as 'family
life,' for Buddhism, which enjoins monastic life, and usually
celibacy along with it, on eleven thousand out of a total population
of a hundred and twenty thousand, farther restrains the increase of
population within the limits of sustenance by inculcating and rigidly
upholding the system of polyandry, permitting marriage only to the
eldest son, the heir of the land, while the bride accepts all his
brothers as inferior or subordinate husbands, thus attaching the
whole family to the soil and family roof-tree, the children being
regarded legally as the property of the eldest son, who is addressed
by them as 'Big Father,' his brothers receiving the title of 'Little
Father.' The resolute determination, on economic as well as
religious grounds, not to abandon this ancient custom, is the most
formidable obstacle in the way of the reception of Christianity by
the Tibetans.
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