POLYANDRY IN THIBET.

Waikato Times, Volume XII, Issue 947, 18 July 1878, Page 2

POLYANDRY IN THIBET.

A. noticeable feature in the national life ia the immense number of monasteries and nunneries which are to be found scattered over the country. In the neighbourhood of Lhasa alone there are 11 monasteries, in which are cloistered upwards of 20,000 monks, and the nuuneries are found in like proportion. This .apparent devotion to spiritual concerns is at first sight calculated to arouse our admiration and but a little consideration suggests the idea that the religious fervour of these Thibetian monks and nuns is a good deal heightened by a keen sense of sordid self-interest. If the blood of martyrs is the seed of churches, poverty, especially in the East, has a wonderful effect in multiplying the crop. To men who have no taste for the hard labor demanded from the soil by its tillers, and to women who have no means of gainino- a livelihood for themselves, the secluded idleness and secured meals of a monastery or a nunnery present att-actions which it. is next to impossible to resist. The women also also have an excuse for entering religious orders which is denied to men, for their exists in Thibet one of those extraordinary ' marriage customs which are occasionally met with in out-of-the-way parts of the world, and which are w be explained only by reference to the surrounding circumstances of the people. A numerous progeny, in a poor and sterile country, is doubtless a tU§-

tinct evil, and it is one which naturally suggests the imposition of a check even to those who have never heard of Malthas or his dootrin©3, This we may suppose, to have been the position pone Th'ibetians when they, cast about for some plan by which they might limit the increase of the population. Whe plan they adopted for this purpose is almost unique, and is called?/polyandry, which may be explatujsld as being the exact reverse ot -polygamy; for, as in most Eastern countries it is lawful for a man to have a plurality of wives, in Thibet it is the custom for a woman to b. ive a plurality of husbands. The usual practice is for two, three, or four brothers in a household to many one wife. They all reside in one house, and the children are considered to be the joint offspring of all. It is inconceivable to us that such a system should exist for an hour • but in Thibet, far, from giving rise to the evils which might be expected to flow from it, it works easily and well, and the pictures w Irish travellers give us of Thibetian households display a degree of domestic happiness and affection which certainly ecyials that enjoyed in much more fay'Sred lands. This is a description Mr Bogle gives us of a family at whose house he spent the night :~" The house belongs to two b-others, who are married to a very handsome wife, and have three of the prettiest children I ever saw. They all came to drink tea and eat sugar-candy. After night came on the whole family assembled in a i*oom to dance to their own singing, and spent two hours in this manner with abundance of mirth and glee."—Cornhul Magazine.