Traditional customs of the Lhoba people
Lhoba people are the smallest ethnic minority group in China, with only 3000 people. It is mainly distributed in the Luoyu area of Xizang, starting from Chayu in the east and reaching Menyu in the west, with the most concentrated areas in Milin, Medog, Chayu, Longzi, Langxian, etc. There are many tribes within the Lhoba ethnic group, mainly including "Bogar","Ningbo","Bangbo","Degen","Adi","Tajin", etc. "Lhoba" is the Tibetan name for them, which means "southerners".
The Lhoba people are a hospitable people who entertain guests warmly and politely. When guests enter the door, they always sit in a seat next to the fire pond, and then entertain the guests with their favorite jerky, milk residue, wheat cakes and butter tea. The Loba people have an ancient custom of entertaining guests, that is, when the host serves food to the guests, the guests must finish it before the host is happy. Before the guests eat, the host also has to take a sip of wine and rice first to show that the wine and rice are non-toxic and sincere in their hospitality to the guests. If guests come to the village and encounter a wedding event, they must go to the host's house with the villagers to express their congratulations, drink and sing. Lhoba people regard it as an honor to be able to retain guests and make them like them. If they are not enthusiastic about treating guests or make them angry and leave, they will be condemned by public opinion and looked down upon by others.
Lhoba people live in plateau canyons. During the long-term development process, the Lhoba people have formed an aesthetic concept of praising and praising strength and courage. This aesthetic concept is prominently expressed in their costumes. The costumes of the Lhoba people fully reflect their rough and unconstrained style. Wild plant fibers and animal skins are the main raw materials for their costumes. Their clothes also show their rough and unconstrained character. Making full use of wild plant fibers and animal skins as raw materials is a prominent feature of Lhoba clothing. In the past, a kind of grass skirt called "Jiabang" was popular in the Lhoba area, which was woven from straw from Jizhao Valley. Nowadays, women wear earthen cloth dresses and are accustomed to putting a straw skirt on the outside to protect the cloth skirt.
Lhoba women like to wear linen collarless and narrow sleeve tops with double-pronged sleeves, a piece of calfskin on the outside, and a tight-fitting tube skirt that skips the knees on the lower body. The calves are wrapped in leg wraps, and the ends are fastened tightly with straps. They attach great importance to wearing decorations. In addition to silver and copper bracelets and rings, there are also dozens of rings of blue and white bead necklaces, and many round balls made of sea shells are decorated on their waist clothes. The ornaments on Lhoba women weigh several kilograms and can fill a small bamboo basket. These decorations are exchanged by each family over the years and are a symbol of family wealth. Every festival, the women dress up to compare each other with each other.
The men's costumes fully show the characteristics of hunting life in the mountains and forests. Most of them wear black hooded vests made of wool that reach their abdomen. Put a piece of wild cowhide on your back and tie it around your shoulders with a leather strap. Wearing Tibetan-style robes inside. The hats of Bogar tribe men are even more unique. They are pressed into a round shape with bearskin, similar to steel helmets with rims. There is a hairy bearskin ring over the brim of the hat, and the bear hair is spread out all around. A square bearskin should be worn on the back of the hat. This bearskin hat is very tough and can confuse prey when hunting. When a man usually goes out, he wears a bow and arrow on his back and a waist sword. His tall body is matched with other shining decorations, making him look particularly powerful and handsome.
Both men and women of the Lhoba ethnic group like to wear decorations. Men wear bracelets, bamboo pipe earrings, necklaces, and bows, long knives and other objects hung at their waists. Women especially like to wear colorful beads. Women dressed up sometimes wear dozens to dozens of strings of beads on their necks, plus bracelets, earrings, copper bells, silver coins, iron chains, knives, fire sickles, seashells and other ornaments. Weighing more than ten kilograms, it can fill a bamboo basket and is regarded as a symbol of family wealth and an indispensable dowry. Whenever the festival comes, women dress up, sing and dance, and beautiful each other.
Wearing a long knife is a hobby of Lhoba men. It is not only used as an ornament to show masculinity, but also driven by natural conditions to become a basic tool and important weapon in daily life. Not only is it used to prevent attacks by wild beasts and poisonous insects, but it is also used to cut bamboo and wood, build rattan bridges, build houses, even cut hair and cut animal skins... In addition to long knives, bows and arrows are also something that Lhoba men cannot leave. It is the main tool for hunting. The Loba people have high skills in making bows and arrows and are very skillful in using them. Loba people have been practicing archery since childhood. He is very particular about bending bamboo bows and cutting arrow shafts. Bow making not only requires selecting bamboo species and bamboo age, but also has fixed specifications for bow length and thickness. The material selection and production process of arrow shafts, arrowheads and arrow feathers are also very precise. It takes about 20 days to make a good bow and arrow.
The Lhoba people also have a kind of ground arrow called "ancient horse", which is placed in places where wild beasts often appear. Once the wild beast steps on the mechanism, the arrow will automatically shoot out and hit the vital part. The placement of the ground arrow relies entirely on rich experience. The ground arrows used by the Loba people do not use iron arrowheads, but use a kind of bamboo called "Dabai" sharpened and smoked into arrow clusters. Good shooting is a symbol of a brave hunter. A brave and outstanding young hunter will be favored by a beautiful girl. Whoever gave birth to Ding, relatives and friends from all over the country celebrated with bows and arrows. When building the rattan bridge, people shot arrows across the river, dragging ropes at the tail of the arrows, and carrying rattan ropes, brown ropes and bamboo ropes across the wide and fast-flowing river. Archery competition is one of the most popular recreational activities during the holidays.
The diet of the Lhoba people is also different from place to place. In the northern area of Luoyu, corn flour made with hot water and chicken claw valley dough are the staple food. They also like to eat a kind of buckwheat cake baked on a stone slab. This kind of buckwheat cake is very sweet and delicious when it is hot and coated with chili paste and cheese. Both men and women like to eat peppers, smoke snuff and drink alcohol. The housing of the Lhoba people varies from region to region. There are several types of long houses with rooms or large square or rectangular houses, all of which are two-story dry railings made of bamboo and wood. Build additional granaries outdoors.
All adult men of the Lhoba ethnic group wear fire scythes around their waists, obviously for the convenience of picnics or smoking to get fire. However, from some dietary customs, we can still see that the Lhoba ancestors had historical traces of raw food. For example, some tribes drink blood wine when making an oath. The Bogar people kill animals every year after the autumn harvest to celebrate, pouring the warm cow blood into butter and drinking it. They believe that raw food is most delicious when sucked out of the bone marrow of the bison. Some Loba people often chop the swerp meat into meat sauce and mix it with pepper and ginger as ingredients. Barbecue is the most common way of processing food among the Lhoba people. Whether it is plant food or animal food, you can barbecue it. The whole fish is thrown into the fire pond, buried with hot ash, and soon braised for eating. Large animals were captured on the mountains. In addition to roasting, they were also cut into meat strips and stored for a long time after roasting.
Food baked with stones is also common. Grind the buckwheat, corn and dacha (starch extracted from the processing of woody brown tree stems), mix with water to form a thin dough, spread it on a red-hot stone sheet, brown one side first, and then turn the other side. If the cake is too thick, brown it and bury it in the ashes of the fire pond to make it ripe. The Lhoba people also have unique methods of cooking food. The people of the Bengru and Sulong tribes mixed Daxie into slurry and put it in a big gourd. Then they took out the red-hot stones from the fire pond and immediately put them into the gourd, using the heat of the stones to cook Daxie. Or put the grain into the bamboo tube, add water, plug the wooden plug, and burn it on the fire. Use a knife to break open the bamboo tube when eating. This method is mostly used for traveling long distances.
Gathering and hunting are important sources of food for the Lhoba people. They have various methods to capture mountain rats, including using stone slabs to press them, setting up small ground crossbows, and laying down hoops. Some families occupy specific mouse-catching areas that outsiders are not allowed to touch. After catching mountain rats, burn the fur and cook it before eating it. If you can't finish it for a while, you can roast it dry and dry it for storage. Mountain rats in Loba area are fat and big, with delicate meat quality, and are often excellent for weddings and receptions. The Lhoba people are a very hospitable people. Guests must eat all the food served by guests. The host also needs to take a sip of wine and eat a sip of rice in front of the guests to show his sincerity. Lhoba people regard retaining guests as an honor. If they don't treat guests well, they will regret it for the rest of their lives.
The marriage of the Lhoba people is basically monogamy, and polygamy is prevalent among wealthy households in some tribes. Expatriate marriage and hierarchical intramarriage are strictly implemented, and buying and selling marriage is prevalent. There is a custom for a deceased wife to be transferred to her deceased husband's brother. The status of women is very low, and inheritance of property belongs to men. In some Lhoba tribes, a strict father-son joint name system is also implemented.
Father-son joint name system: That is, the names of male members of the clan are connected to the father's name, and the father's name is connected to the grandfather's name. Each person's name consists of two parts, the first character is the father's name and the last character is the child's name. In this way, it is strictly distinguished and connected from generation to generation to form a pedigree. This father-son joint name system can remember or say the names of ancestors from five to ten generations among men in the Hugar tribe. Know who is the closest relative within the clan. The father and son are arranged according to the method of connecting the names of fathers and sons. However, the tribe implements out-of-clan marriage, and daughters have to marry out of their own clan, so they do not occupy a dominant position in the genealogy. Men are the main ones, and the inheritance of the family continues completely through the patriline, becoming the basic cell of society.
The father-son joint name system is an important means to maintain the clan system. With this system, within the same clan, people can determine each other's blood distance and closeness according to each person's name data to clarify their rights and obligations. Therefore, memorizing the clan's pedigree is a basic education that must be provided to clan members.
站图片位置Lhoba folk songs can be divided into several categories: the dance song "Jiayi", which is often sung collectively on festivals, weddings, and festive occasions, singing while dancing; the folk song "Boli", which reflects life customs, includes "Wine Song","Crying Marriage Song", etc.;"Yali" is the tune of a wizard chanting scriptures;"Moon" is the song sung by soldiers before they set off on an expedition. The most representative of the Lhoba people is "Jiajin", the oldest folk tune, which is popular among various tribes and focuses on describing the origin of the ethnic group and the history of migration.
Except for a small number of Lhoba people scattered in Medog and Milin who spend the Tibetan calendar year with Tibetans, Lhoba people in all places have their own New Year holidays. The Lhoba New Year's Day is inferred according to the ethnic calendar. Although the festival time is inconsistent, it all occurs after a year of labor.
The Lhoba people in western Luoyu celebrated the "Xudu Dragon Festival" in February of the Tibetan calendar year. On New Year's Day,"Nubu"(wizard) held a stick covered with colorful feathers and waved scriptures in the village. The whole village gathered together to sing and dance, praying for a good harvest. During the New Year's Festival, every household took out wine and meat and had dinner together. The old man recalled the ancient history of the tribe with the song, and the young people expressed their love and affection with the song. After nightfall, beside the raging bonfire, laughter and singing rose and fell.
The Lhoba people in eastern Luoyu celebrated the "Donggengu Milk Wood" festival on December 15 of the Tibetan calendar. People chop pigs and cattle slaughtered before the New Year into pieces and distribute them to relatives and friends in the family or maternal line, retaining the ancient custom of sharing the fruits of labor. After the beef is finished, the skull is not thrown away. It is hung high on the wall of your home, as a symbol of hard work and wealth, passed down from generation to generation.
The Lhoba people living in Metuo and Milin follow the Tibetan calendar, and all festivals and sacrificial activities are not much different from those of Tibetans. However, most Lhoba people use their own inferred calendar. Due to the scattered lives of the Lhoba people and inconvenient transportation, the dates of New Year's festivals vary from place to place, generally after the annual labor. Therefore, celebrating the New Year's Festival includes celebrating a bumper harvest and welcoming the new and saying goodbye to the old.
On the eve of the New Year's Day, every family must pound rice to make wine, kill pigs and sheep, and wealthy families must also slaughter cattle. The Lhoba people in Shimeng call the New Year's Day the "Tiaogeng Grain Milk Technique" Festival. At that time, slaughtered pigs, cattle, and mutton will be cut into pieces with their skins and distributed to people of the same tribe. Many places still retain the ancient habit of "gathering clans". During festivals, village residents must bring their own wine and meat to gather together happily. The village, men, women and children sit around the ground, drinking alcohol or eating meat, singing and laughing constantly, and engaging in various recreational activities.
in the Lhoba people who call themselves "Apatani". There is a festival called "Molang" in Lhoba language. The festival is selected by wizards on the twelfth or first month of the lunar calendar. The popular area is Xibaxiaqu area in Luoyu region of Xizang. At that time, the village's male and young people lined up in a line, dressed in costumes, and led by the wizard to patrol nearby villages. When passing through the fields, the wizard sprinkled rice grains, the teenagers waved long knives and knocked copper plates, and an old man at the end of the team scattered rice noodles along the way. While passing through the land to be sown, the young man holding a bamboo male genitalia went to the field to perform a reproductive dance. Every time they visit the square of a village, they sing and dance, and the people of the village prepare wine and entertain them warmly. The parade team must visit all tribes in their tribe. This festival is intended to wish a good harvest. Because people think that the reproduction of crops and the reproduction of humans are the same, they perform the reproductive dance in the fields.
in some Lhoba areas. You can still see many male genitals made of wooden piles standing next to their houses in order to pray for prosperity. Many nationalities in our country once had reproductive worship, and now we can still see this kind of remains in some southern ethnic festivals. As long as we understand the importance of fertility, we can understand the origin of reproductive worship. The Lhoba people, the "southerners" on the roof of the world. It is said that Mother Earth gave birth to nine brothers and sisters of Jin Dong (Sun), and Jin Dong gave birth to Dong Ri (Tiger), and Dong Ri's son Abadani was an extraordinary figure. He has four sharp eyes. The front two observe the bright world, and the back two only monitor demons and monsters. He can travel to heaven and earth, and everything in the world is under his control. He was also a skilled craftsman, invented pottery making and bridge bridging, and did many good things for mankind. Abadani is the ancestor of the Lhoba people.
The Lhoba people have their own language, but they do not have their own language. They believed in the primitive religion where everything had a spirit.
Wuism is one of the primitive religions of the Lhoba people. The Lhoba people say that wizards are the only ones who can talk to ghosts. Witches are not professional religious people and do not enjoy extraordinary authority. However, when there is no religious activity, they still live an ordinary life: production, labor, and children. The Lhoba people have two kinds of sorcerers: Decisive rice and Nuubu.
Witchcraft is an important and regular activity of wizards. The Lhoba people have many sacrificial activities, and witchcraft is accompanied by large-scale sacrificial ceremonies. Whenever encountering natural disasters, people, diseases, plagues, theft, revenge, battles, etc., we must practice witchcraft and rely on the power of witchcraft to exorcise evil and punish evil, so as to eliminate disasters and transform good fortune. In history, the Lhoba people, who have been constantly harassed by disasters, have worked extremely hard to explore and seek spiritual relief in the evil winds and rain. In witchcraft activities such as prayer, summoning souls, exorcism, and curses, there are quite complex rituals. In addition to cooperating with certain behaviors, witchcraft also includes performances, singing, modeling, portraits and some magical instruments, which have had a major impact on the Lhoba mythology, songs, music, dance, painting, sculpture, costumes, and even original technology.
网站图片位Due to the differences in production environments, uneven development, and different value orientations among clans and tribes, the original religious beliefs among tribes also have complex and diverse characteristics.
There is no obvious distinction between ghosts and gods in the concepts of Lhoba. They collectively referred to "ghosts","spirits","gods" and "ghosts" as "Wuyou", which means "spirits" or "ghosts". They believe that "Wuyou" can be attached to any natural object or person, giving natural objects and people the attributes of "spirit" and "ghost". There are many types of "Wuyou", which are present in all things and are everywhere, and affect all areas of people's production and life.
Since the original religious beliefs of the Lhoba people were based on the understanding that all things are spirituality and the soul is immortal, there are many forms of worship and rich content of worship.
Nature worship: Judging from the historical development of the original religion of the Lhoba people, the worship of nature was the earliest belief and worship of the Lhoba people's ancestors. In people's minds, many natural objects and natural phenomena in nature, such as the sun, moon and stars, wind, rain, lightning, mountains and trees, all have gods. These gods each have their own division of labor, abide by their duties, and are not subordinate to each other. They have all become objects of worship by the Lhoba people.
Totemism: Because the Lhoba people do not understand their own reproductive laws, they associate human reproduction with certain animals, plants and even tools used in nature, and associate one of them as a tool used., and regard one of them as having a special and mysterious blood relationship with themselves. As one's ancestors, totem worship emerged.
The totems of the Lhoba tribe have different beliefs and worship, including tigers, leopards, bison, wild bears, bears, monkeys, otters, pigs, cows, sheep, dogs, eagles, crows, cuckoo, pigeons, snakes, sun, moon, knives, etc.
Ancestor worship: This is another important form of primitive religious belief that emerged after the patrilineal clan system replaced the matrilineal clan system of the Lhoba people. It was developed based on the concept of immortality of the soul. In its essence, it is also the worship of ghosts.