Culture and Traditions
Culture
Anyone who knows the Tibetan language and has firsthand experience of Tibetan people knows the utter distinctness of the Tibetan culture. But to demonstrate this fact it is helpful to think back to ground principles. What is a “national culture”?
A nation is more than a state, which is more than a tribe, which is more than a clan, which is more than a family. The only common political unit larger than a nation used to be called an “empire” though now there are entities called “United States” and “Union of Republics.”
The English nation’s descendants of Angles and Saxons and Celts and Normans, to name a few tribes, themselves the amalgams of clans, can usually think of themselves as members of a single nation. Scots sometimes have difficulty thinking of themselves as part of the English nation, and the Irish cannot, though both groups were part of Great Britain for centuries. A people seem to think of themselves as a single nation when they have
1. Come together in a common territory through history,
2. Share a common language fixed on a writing system, live under a common system of laws,
3. Are imbued with a common sense of history, tolerate an understood range of religious beliefs and
4. Intuitively feel a common sense of identity through any of these commonalties, often buttressed by a sense of racial similarity.
Tibetans claim that Tibet is a separate nation with a distinct culture, yet the Chinese claim that it is a minority member of the Chinese nation (sometimes they say, inexplicably, “family of nations”) with a local variation of a common culture. Taking the above six points as elements of a working definition of the term culture, we can examine the historical facts point by point.
Common Territory
No sizable Chinese populations had settled in Tibet until China’s occupation. A border was established between the warring Tang Empire and Yarlung Empire running east of Chamdo and Derge up toward Lanchou.
Invading warlord armies – Mongol and Manchu troops in the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, respectively – came toTibet, as well as sporadic diplomatic missions, a few merchants and visiting monks. But there were no noticeable settled Chinese populations.
This has of course changed since I959: there are now 7.5 million Chinese settlers in Tibet, excluding army garrisons. In historical terms, they have to be considered recent colonists, in no position to anchor a common culture.
Common Language
Tibetan is quite different from Chinese. It used to belong to the “Tibeto-Burman” family, although recently some linguists have taken up the label “Sino-Tibetan” (to include Sinic, Daic, Bodic [Tibetan] and Burmic, with the first two and the last two forming distinct subfamilies).
These terminological games do not alter the fundamental difference in the languages. Chinese is written in ideograms and is monosyllabic, non inflected and tonal.
Tibetan is written in an alphabet and is polysyllabic; is inflected with case, declension and gender structures adapted from Sanskrit; and is not semantically tonal.
Tibetan borrows some words from Chinese, but it also borrows Indian, Nepali and Mongolian words. After 30 years of occupation, a mere handful of the present Chinese colonists speak Tibetan, although a younger generation of Tibetans has been forced to learn colloquial Chinese.
Common System of Laws
The first laws were promulgated in Tibet by Emperor Songtsen Gampo in the seventh century A.D. They refer to the Buddhist moral laws of India, with no relation to the Confucian canon of Chinese tradition.
Under the Mongolian Empire, Mongol military laws were occasionally enforced in both Tibet and China. During all other periods of Tibetan history Tibetan laws based on Buddhism were administered in Tibetan courts by officials of the various Tibetan governments.
The Chinese did not think of Tibetans as accepting of their laws, and the Tibetans did not even know what laws of Chinawere.
Common Sense of History
The Tibetan national sense of history has strong ties to Buddhism. Also, the Tibetan national epic, poetry, drama, and historical literature emphasizes Tibetans’ distinctness from China and other Asian nations. Tibetan classics are totally unknown to the Chinese, and, conversely, the Chinese classics and literary masterpieces were never translated into Tibetan until China’s occupation of Tibet.
Tibetans take greatest pride in their spiritual relationship with the Holy Land of India, and vast numbers of Buddhist and literary works were translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan over a period of seven centuries.
The Chinese have considered the Tibetans as uncivilized barbarians since the time of Confucius. The Tibetans were among the serious dangers to the Chinese, part of the reason for the building of the Great Wall. Tibetan armies conquered the then-Chinese capital at Chang-an in the eighth century.
Good relations with the Tibetans were considered important by Mongol emperors, such as Kublai Khan, and Manchu emperors, especially K’ang-hsi and Ch’ien Lung, who considered the Tibetans the key to staying on the good side of the redoubtable Mongols.
Thus, in historical terms, it is understandable that the Tibetans feel crushed to be under the domination of and occupation byChina. The present Chinese colonists also feel themselves to be beleaguered masters of an alien land – among savages, so to speak – and hence tend to treat the Tibetan “natives” much more harshly than they do their fellow Chinese.