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 Tsangpa Dynasty (1565-1642) and Ganden Phodrang (1642-1950) law codes distinguished three social divisions: high, medium and low.

Nobles, government officials and monks of pure conduct were in the high division, only – probably – the Dalai Lama was in the very highest position.

[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] In the middle group, the taxpaying families could be quite wealthy.

[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.

[14] The treba (also tralpa or khral-pa) taxpayers lived in "corporate family units" that hereditarily owned estates leased from their district authority, complete with land titles.

Their primary civil responsibility was to pay taxes (tre-ba and khral-pa means "taxpayer"), and to supply corvée services that included both human and animal labor to their district authority.

The householder class (du-jung, dud-chung-ba[9] duiqoin, duiqion, düchung, dudchhung, duigoin or dujung) comprised peasants who held only small plots of land that were legally and literally "individual" possessions.

Ragyabpa were also divided into three divisions: for instance a goldsmith was in the highest at third feudal class, and was not regarded as being as defiled as an executioner, who was in the lowest.