Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
As pastoralists living largely in environments where agriculture was impossible,
Tibetan life would have been unimaginable had it been restricted to a vegetarian diet.
Thus, animal killing was part and parcel of daily life in traditional Tibet, probably from
very ancient times.
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My own observations in both Amdo- and Kham-speaking Tibetan
areas during 1988-2006 support the view that the killing of animals is rarely viewed
with relish, and that most contemporary Tibetans (and, as I interpret from the literature,
historical ones as well) have gone to considerable efforts to minimize killing. But that
hardly justifies the erroneous view held by some that hunting of wildlife was not a part
of Tibetan life. It is consequential that hunting was probably never a ubiquitous activ-
ity, or even a major concern among traditional Tibetan pastoralists (in contrast to some
pastoral groups); they could usually rely on their domestic animals for meat, and Bud-
dhist ethics no doubt did play an important role in lessening enthusiasm for hunting.
But hunting was always present, and while efforts were sometimes made to regulate and
control it,
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there is no evidence that hunters were ostracized or considered in any way
less “Tibetan” than nonhunters. For example, earlier European-based explorers such as
L.A. Waddell reported on the large number of wild species products on offer at Tibetan
bazaars around the turn of the nineteenth century, a time when very few Han Chinese
traders visited Tibet. Other early Westerners reported the rather routine hunting of musk
deer, wolves, bears, deer, wild sheep, and gazelles by Tibetan pastoralists.
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As retold by
an early Western observer of Tibet, people in the ancient kingdom of Nangqian (located
in what is today southern Qinghai Province) in the latter half of the nineteenth century
lived “chiefly by hunting”:
In spring and summer such as possess rifles and horses hunt the stag. In the second
or third Chinese moon, say about March-April, the stag's horns bleed; and there is a
great demand in China for the bleeding horns, which are regarded as a strengthening
medicine and fetch over 100 Tls . . . a pair. In winter time they snare the muskdeer,
sending the musk to the Jyekundo market. Poor persons hunt the badger and the
fox with sticks and dogs, the badger in summer, the fox in autumn, employing the
winter in trading the fox-skins; there is nothing for them to do in spring except to
go after badger in their burrows, not an easy business, as they go so deep. . . . it is
hunted both for its skin and for food. The skin is not traded, but made into garments:
the flesh is almost as fat as pork.
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Species that are today in peril, such as wild yaks, bears, snow leopards, and chiru, were
by no means beyond traditional Tibetans' interest. While Buddhist clergy promulgated
rules to limit hunting, in some cases prohibiting it altogether, and while small nature-
reserve-like enclaves were designated, what shines in the available historical writing is
not that Tibet was exceptional in its experience with wildlife, but rather how it faced
roughly the same challenges as many other premodern cultures (and indeed, the same
challenges resonate even today). While religious leaders issued public edicts to protect
wildlife, they were not universally obeyed; while leaders in Lhasa attempted to assert their
authority, vast distances and the logistics of enforcing rules meant that they could easily
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