A dark and barbaric social system that existed in the history of Tibet, China, based on feudal land ownership and the serf's dependence on serf owners. It began in the 10th century, was widely established in the 13th century, and continued until the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. It was abolished during the Tibetan democratic reform movement in 1959.
Tibetan folk songs sing like this: "There are beasts without a lord on the mountain, and there is no man without a lord under the mountain." "Why can't the snubs and herders leave the land?" Modern anthropologist Melvin M. C. Goldstein, Cynthia M. Through field research, M. Bill pointed out in his "Tibet Today: Tibet in the Eyes of Americans" that "the Tibetan system made the lords very convenient by allocating labor to these territories."
Cruel laws reflect cruel systems, and cruel systems produce cruel laws. Charles Bell said in the "Chronicle of Tibet" that Tibet was still in the feudal period, its nobles held great power and great power, and the nobles and monks jointly occupied important positions in the government, and their wealth was not weaker than that of the monasteries. The nobility could exercise official power over the sharecroppers... Confiscation of livestock, fines, flogging canes, short confinement, and all other punishments were imposed by the nobles at any time.
David Macdonald wrote in his Tibetan Photographs:
The most serious punishment in Tibet is the death penalty, and the lama recreates the assumption that the soul cannot be reborn, so the heaviest death penalty is added to the tragic dissolution of the skull. Its most common criminal law, whoever commits a capital crime, can sew the prisoner into a leather bag, and throw it into the river, sinking with his death, and the leather bag is above the river surface, and it begins to fall in about 5 minutes, and then it is still alive, then it is thrown again, and when it is dead, so its body is taken out of the leather bag and dismembered, and thrown into the river with its limbs and body, and it goes with the flow...
There is no strong middle class in Tibet. The feudal lords were controlled by the monks. Because Tibetans believe in their form of Buddhism, powerful monastic forces rule everything. Even the Buddha himself, there is nothing that can be done without monks. This place was feudal. Lamas are emperors and peasants are their slaves. ...... These poor people and the little sharecroppers worked without complaint for their spiritual masters, and they had a blind admiration for them.