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. The ordinary layperson could be further classified as a peasant farmer (shing-pa) or nomadic pastoralist (trokpa). to influence politics and religious domination, entering into monkhood and 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. 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.

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. Both Melvyn Goldstein and Geoff Childs however classified the population into three main types:

• taxpayer families (tre-ba or khral-pa)
• householders (du-jong or dud-chung-ba)
• landless peasants (mi-bo)

In the middle group, the taxpaying families could be quite wealthy. Depending upon the district, each category had different responsibilities in terms of tax and labor. 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 argues for a moderate position, recognizing that serfdom existed but was not universal in Tibet.