Social class in Tibet

There were three main feudal social groups in Tibet prior to 1959, namely ordinary laypeople (mi ser in Tibetan), lay nobility (sger pa), and monks.^[1] The ordinary layperson could be further classified as a peasant farmer (shing-pa)^{[citation needed]} or nomadic pastoralist (trokpa).^{[citation needed]} To influence politics and religion, entering into monkhood and the military was required.

The Tsangpa Dynasty (1565-1642) and Ganden Phodrang (1642-1950) law codes distinguished three social divisions: high, medium and low. Each in turn was divided into three classes, to give nine classes in all. Social status was a formal classification, mostly hereditary and had legal consequences: for example the compensation to be paid for the killing of a member of these classes varied from 5 (for the lowest) to 200 'sung' for the second highest, the members of the noble families.

Nobles, government officials and monks of pure conduct were in the high division, only – probably – the Dalai Lama was in the very highest position. The middle division contained a large portion of the population and ranged from minor government officials, to taxpayer and landholding peasants, to landless peasants. Social mobility was possible in the middle division.^[2] The lower division contained ragyabpa of different types: e.g. blacksmiths and butchers. The very lowest class contained executioners, and (in the Tsang code) bachelors and hermaphrodites.^[3]

Anthropologists have presented different taxonomies for the middle social division, in part because they studied specific regions of Tibet and the terms were not universal.^[4][5][6][7] Both Melvyn Goldstein and Geoff Childs however classified the population into three main types:^[8][9]

• taxpayer families (tre-ba^[8] or khral-pa^[4][9])
• householders (du-jong^[8] or dud-chung-ba^[4][9])
• landless peasants (mi-bo^[8])

In the middle group, the taxpaying families could be quite wealthy.^[10] Depending upon the district, each category had different responsibilities in terms of tax and labor.^[11] Membership to each of these classes was primarily hereditary; the linkage between subjects and their estate and overlord was similarly transmitted through parallel descent. The taxpayer class, although numerically smallest among the three subclasses, occupied a superior position in terms of political and economic status.

The question of whether serfdom prevailed in traditional Tibetan society is controversial; Heidi Fjeld ^[no] argues for a moderate position, recognizing that serfdom existed but was not universal in Tibet.