Tibetan Etiquettes

Tibetan Etiquettes – Etiquette and Custom

Tibetans pay more attention to etiquettes and the etiquettes widely used in social life. In daily intercourse, we can find etiquettes everywhere. The usage of Hada can fully prove this point. Hada is the most commonly used etiquettes objects in Tibet. Tibetans will present Hada in every festival, welcome and farewell ceremony, visiting elders, expressing congratulation and greetings, honoring outstanding, worshipping Buddha and God, the wedding ceremony and many others situations. There is a series of conventional etiquettes program about customer and host, drinking butter tea and offering butter tea, drinking wine and offering wine, presenting Hada and accepting Hada.

Tibetan Etiquettes – Taboo

Folk taboo is one side of Tibetan traditional culture. Tibetan folk taboos roughly can be divided into the taboos in courtesy demands reciprocity, taboos in family life, taboos in agriculture-stock production and the taboos base on religious ideas and principles. All of the taboos are the refraction of Tibetan old cognition about people and people, people and nature, people and supernatural relationship under the inclement living environment. Among the taboos, some contents of the taboos which related with human communication and etiquettes are complementary to each other. Some taboos which reflected the morality in Tibetan traditional ideology and related to production and life include the summary of experience of Tibetan in long time practice; it is scientific in some sense.

Tibetan Etiquettes – Marriage Custom

The Tibetan marriage custom is various. The customs are different for the district and people, some of them are very luxurious, while some are simple. In general, when they discuss the marriage, the both sides should not belong to the same system, and their symbolic animal of the birth year should suit each other. When propose marriage, boy family should present Hada and some gifts to the girl's parents. If the girl's families accept the Hada, they agree with this marriage. Then, they will choose a lucky day to write the engagement. The boy family will give some money (as the feed fee) and gifts to the girl's parents. Before wedding, the boy's family will send clothes, headwear, bracelets and other things to the girl's family. On the wedding day, the groom's procession will leaded by the well-known celebrities to welcome the bride, and the girl's family will hold a ceremony to send the bride. After bride reach the groom's family, there will hold a series of ceremonies and solemn feast.

Tibetan Etiquettes – Burial Custom

The traditional Tibetan burial forms can be divided into grave burial (inhumation), celestial burial, water burial, cremation and pagoda burial. The grave burial originated very early. The ordinary people of that time got used to grave burial. Until the 11th century, grave burial also upheld by people. Later, as the Buddhism, burial custom changed. Pagoda burial is a kind of high degree burial form which used by high standing great living Buddhas. Cremation commonly used by living Buddhas and hierarch. Water burial is just less commonly used than celestial burial. Celestial burial is the most commonly used burial form in Tibet, also named bird burial, that is let the body eat by accipiter. The scale of each burial differs from man to man.