Tibetan Culture - Polyandry and Polygyny

Polyandry and Polygyny

Tibetans used to practice polyandry widely. In his memoirs about his life in Tibet in the 1940s, Austrian writer Heinrich Harrer reports encountering nomads practising polyandry: "We were astonished to find polyandry practised among the nomads." "When several brothers share the same wife, the eldest is always the master in the household and the others have rights only when he is away or amusing himself elsewhere."

Harrer also mentions the practice of polygyny in one particular case: a man marrying "several daughters of a house in which there is no son and heir." "The arrangement prevents the family fortune from being dispersed."

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