A -tun-tsi 57 
them—a condition to which the Tibetans seem absolutely 
indifferent. My patient appeared half starved, so thin and 
puny that he was almost a skeleton, and on enquiry I learnt 
that he immediately rejected any food the parents gave 
him—a fact which I soon verified with a little hot milk. 
Moreover he was feverish, and not knowing what to do, 
though the complaint was evidently intestinal, probably 
dysentery, I gave him a little weak chlorodyne, leaving 
some at the house with instructions as to feeding him on 
boiled milk. But I never heard whether the child re- 
covered. 
This case set me thinking. One seldom sees small 
Tibetan children, and I began to realise that the infant 
mortality amongst these people must be something phe- 
nomenal. Only the very hardiest can stand this exposure 
to all the vile diseases carried by flies, and to the rigors of 
winter in the mountains, and hardy babies develop into 
hardy men, who, without flinching, stand pain such as 
would make the European gasp. Perhaps here too we 
have one reason for polygamy, so common amongst the 
Tibetans, for it is ridiculous to assert that the so-called 
immorality of various Asiatic peoples has no other founda- 
tion than immorality for its own sake. Undoubtedly there 
are several predisposing causes which make for polygamy 
in Tibet, and this frightful infant mortality may be one of 
them, since a man is quite uncertain whether a woman can 
possibly bear him even one child who will survive, and 
he therefore mates with several women. 
Another reason commonly given, not for polygamy but 
for polyandry, which is also extensively practised in Tibet, 
is the avoidance by this means of dividing up the wealth 
of a family. Thus several brothers marry one girl, each 
living with her for a month or more at a time and signal- 
ising the fact that he is in possession by hanging his boots 
up outside the door! 
But undoubtedly the fundamental reason for polyandry 
is the fact that the Tibetans as a race are only half-way 
between a nomadic pastoral people and a settled agricul- 
tural people. The men are great travellers and leave their 
wives behind for months at a time, and these good folk 
solace themselves as best they can with other travellers. 
