FAMILIES IN NEPAL
Traditionally joint families, with three or more generations in a household, were the norm but more and more nuclear families are common. A typical rural Nepalese family consists of three brothers, their wives and 20 children who live together in three houses on about an acre of land fenced in by thickets and stone walls. As subsistence farmers, they tend vegetables, grow rice and raise a few cows and goats. [Source: Alfred Pach III, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 3: South Asia,” edited by Paul Hockings, 1992 |~|]
Almost all families belong to a patrilineal descent system that has a hand in may decisions regarding marriage, inherence and rituals. Members of clans consider themselves related through a common, usually unknown, ancestor. There are often certain rituals that honor this ancestor. Members of these clans celebrate life-cycle events together. Men and women are born into the father’s clam. When a woman gets married she joins her husband’s clan.
In addition to immediate family members, there is also a larger network of relatives, which occasionally is involved sharing food. This network is also an important means of support that supplies farm labor when needed, especially during the planting and harvesting seasons when extra help is needed. Older people are viewed as valuable source of household labor and sometimes serve on village councils.
Inheritance as defined by Nepalese law is equally divided among sons. How this interpreted is often complicated and is the source of disputes. Fathers are legally obliged to leave equal portions of land to each son. Daughters do not inherit property unless they are unmarried after the age of 35. Sons are supposed to manage their father's land jointly but this often doesn’t happen and familial land is divided, with the parcels of land shrinking with every generation. [Source: “Countries and Their Cultures”, The Gale Group Inc., 2001]
Paribar (Family) Issues
The basic social unit in a village was the family, or paribar, consisting of a patrilineally extended household. The extended family system should not, however, be construed as a necessarily harmonious form of village life. Many extended families broke apart as sons separated from parents and brothers from each other. At the time of separation, the family property was equally divided among the sons. If parents were alive, they each received a share. [Source: Andrea Matles Savada, Library of Congress, 1991 *]
Family separation generally occurred in cases where the head of the household was less assertive and domineering, when the father died, or when all the sons married. Unmarried sons normally did not separate from their parents; if the parents were deceased, unmarried sons usually stayed with their older brothers. Because family separation always resulted in a division of family landholdings, landholdings were extremely fragmented, both geographically and socially. Sometimes, family separation and resulting land fragmentation turned into a bitter feud and led to legal disputes.
Among landholding Hindu castes, joint family arrangements have traditionally been held in high regard. In this family arrangement, sons — along with their wives and children — live with their parents, sharing resources and expenses together. Within these households, old people have power over young people, and men have power over women. Usually, daughters and wives of the sons occupy the lowest positions. Until a daughter-in-law gives birth she often forced to work the hardest and is criticized and insulted. Older women usually wield a lot of influence in the family. Filial piety, loyalty and group concerns over individualism are all valued family traits. [Source: “Countries and Their Cultures”, The Gale Group Inc., 2001]
Married Life in Nepal
After marriage the couple typically moves in with the husband’s’s extended family. New brides have traditionally been bullied by their mother-in-laws until they give birth to a child, preferably a son. Married women sometimes have tikas on their foreheads.
It is not uncommon for a young wife to leave here husband and go back and live with her family. Nor it is uncommon for a young husband to leave his wife and form a union with a new wife. If this happens often times the dowry or bride price has to be returned. [Source: Alfred Pach III, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 3: South Asia,” edited by Paul Hockings, 1992 ]
Couples often live with the husbands family until the father dies At that time the father’s property is divided among the brothers and the extended family starts to split up. Tensions between different brothers and their wives often leads to one brother leaving the village and seeking some other kind of employment.
In cases of adultery the man is often let off lightly and required only to take a ritualized purifying bath while the woman is regarded as polluted for the rest of her life. Other punishments might be imposed depending on the caste of the man and woman involved. Under Nepalese law the adulterous man and woman are supposed to pay a fine and spend two months in jail.
Men in Nepal
Rural men have traditionally done the heavier, more labor intensive chores such as plowing, fixing terraces and irrigation systems, building homes and and doing work that requires the most strength. Some engage in trade or some other income-generating work such as buying and selling animals.
Men often sit around all day smoking drinking tea and playing games of chance. Many have traditionally carried a “khukuri”, a traditional curved-blade knife, tucked into a long waist sash. In some poor areas, alcoholism is widespread and men sometimes drink away what little money a family has. .
Men often leave home to find work. According to the “Encyclopedia of World Cultures”: “There may be many tensions and status considerations within the household among brothers and their wives. These conditions and the increasing need for household economic diversification often lead one of the brothers, with or without his wife, to seek employment or engage in trading outside the village, and sometimes outside the country, in order to provide cash and be able to act with a degree of autonomy. Polyandrous households appear to have more continuity and stability than extended families made up of monogamous couples. [Source: Alfred Pach III, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 3: South Asia,” edited by Paul Hockings, 1992 |~|]
Kin Groups in Nepal
Patrilineal kin groups lie at root of family and household structure. They operate almost like corporations and determine inheritance and other family and village issues. A man belongs permanently to the kinship group of his father, while a woman changes membership from kin group she was born into to the kin group of her husband after she gets married. Since family ties are closely linked to political influence and economic opportunities, marriage alliances are carefully planned to expand kinship networks and strengthen social ties. Although women join their husband’s family, they still maintain remain close touch with their birth families. If a woman is abused in her husband’s home, she often escape to her father’s house and is support ed by her male relatives. For this reason, women usually prefer to marry men from the same village and have their birth families close by. [Source: “Countries and Their Cultures”, The Gale Group Inc., 2001]
Alfred Pach III wrote in the “Encyclopedia of World Cultures”: “Almost all Nepalis belong to patrilineal descent systems which organize marital, Inheritance, and ritual behavior to varying degrees. A few groups along the Tibetan border recognize bilateral relations and function largely in terms of named households and kindreds. Most villages are dominated by one ethnic group and consist usually of a number of exogamous — and, in some northern regions, endogamous — patriclans. A few groups such as the Sherpa and Gurung have ranked, endogamous phratries or moieties, which consist of a number of clans that are associated with an aristocratic or ritual status. [Source: Alfred Pach III, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 3: South Asia,” edited by Paul Hockings, 1992 |~|]
“Members of clans consider themselves related through a common, though unknown, ancestor. Local descent groups or lineages form active, functioning agnatic units. Affiliation in a local descent group is marked by recognition of a common ancestor, observance of birth and death pollution, and, often, participation in mutual-aid groups. Men and women are born into their fathers' clans, though upon marriage a woman becomes a Member of her husband's clan. Ties to matrilateral households and kindred may often be important sources of support, ritual relationships, and, at times, status (e.g., among Nyinba).” |~|
Magar Kin Groups and Family Descent
Magar are the third largest ethnic group in Nepal. According to the CIA Factbook in 2020 they make up 7.1 percent of the population of Nepal. They are a Hindu people who live in the middle Himalayas and Terai and west-central and southern Nepal.
According to the “Encyclopedia of World Cultures”: “Clans are made up of local patrilineages. A Magar man conceives of his local patrilineage as a group flanked on one side by one or more patrilineages that have provided his own lineage with wives and on the other side by one or more patrilineages to which his lineage has given wives. This configuration results from a rule that defines marriage to a woman from a wife-receiving lineage as incestuous. The rule is an important aspect of Magar identity, serving, for instance, to differentiate Magar society from Gurung society, which permits marriage with either flanking lineage. The configuration also serves to allocate to specific patrilineages a number of ceremonial duties connected, for example, with marriage, funeral, and certain other rites. [Source: John T. Hitchcock, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 3: South Asia,” edited by Paul Hockings, 1992 |~|]
“The Thapa clans of Sinjali, Makkim, and Sunari are represented in Banyan Hill [pseudonym for a Magar village]. Members of the same clan believe they are all descended in the male line from a shared (but unknown) male ancestor, and clan members cannot marry one another. Locally, the Thapa Sinjalis are divided into three patrilineages, each tracing descent through male links to a known ancestor. Lineage members share common pollution at the time of birth or death and observe related taboos. Birth pollution lasts eleven days, during which lineage members cannot participate in any kind of religious ceremony. The period of pollution after the death of an adult is thirteen days, and there is a taboo on eating salt. If a child dies before it is named, only the mother is polluted; a named child, dying when less than 3 years old, pollutes only the parents. The death of a child older than 3 years counts as an adult death and pollutes the whole lineage. An unmarried daughter living at home is not polluted by the death of her father or of her father's lineage members because she is not regarded as belonging to the lineage. When married, she becomes a member of her husband's lineage. She is polluted by death in the same way as its members and has to observe the same taboos they do. |~|
“A deceased man's sons, closest lineage brothers, and occasionally the husband of a daughter or sister take turns carrying his bier to the cremation site. When a wife dies, her sons and her husband's lineage brothers, but not the husband, perform this task. Most lineages, as defined by men who are communally polluted by births and deaths, correspond to a group of men called hukdar, which is determined by tracing male links from a common ancestor in the sixth ascending generation. The hukdar are important in the inheritance of land, especially if a widower dies without surviving sons and without previously willing some of his property to a daughter. |~|
“Banyan Hill Magars speak of daughters and sisters who have married and left home as cheli-beti and call the men they have married kutumba. More broadly, they sometimes use the latter term to refer collectively to their married daughters and sisters, the husbands of these women and the husbands' Lineage brothers, and even the hamlet areas where they all live. Girls refer to their fathers' lineages and their natal hamlets as maita. Magars say that when they celebrate an auspicious occasion such as the fall festival of Dashain, they call together the cheli-beti, but when it is a question of help to be rendered on an inauspicious occasion, such as a funeral, they call the kutumba. |~|
“When possible, a man prefers to marry a daughter of his mother's brother, or mama. If his mama has no daughter, the next choice is any girl from a family in mama's lineage who is younger than the prospective groom. Since any such girls are potential wives, their potential husbands are allowed and even expected to joke with them about sex and to touch them freely. Marriage to a mama's daughter is only a preference and is not in the same category as the strict rule forbidding Marriage to a father's sister's daughter. As explained earlier, a patrilineage that becomes a source of wives cannot in the next generation become a receiver of wives, because such an Exchange is regarded as incestuous. The rule sometimes is expressed using the metaphor of milk: a wife-giving patrilineage identified in the local context as the "milk side," the source of wives and mothers, is not a suitable source of husbands. |~|
“During the 1961 fieldwork in Banyan Hill, residents were queried about their kin relationship to each of their spouses, past or present, living or dead. Of the 58 marriages recorded, 17 were between a man and a woman who was either his mama's daughter or daughter of his mama's lineage. The remaining marriages were the result of a search for girls Generally not more than a day's walk away, who belonged to a clan other than the potential groom's and to a lineage other than the one to which girls from the groom's lineage had in recent memory gone as wives. The result was a multiplex, fairly dense, and localized pattern of affinal ties. The groom who made such a marriage spoke of his wife's family, lineage, and hamlet as his susural. His son, though, spoke of it as his mamali — the family, lineage, and hamlet of his mother's brother. Both he and also his lineage mates now felt that they had a strong claim on marriageable girls in this lineage, which sometimes led to a run on brides from a particular and heretofore unallied patrilineage. |~|
Newari Families
The Newars are an ethnic group associated with the Kathmandu Valley. Regarded by some as the earliest inhabitants of the valley, they are both Buddhists and Hindus. They speak a Tibetan language with many Sanskit and Nepali loan words. The word “Nepal” is believed by some to have been derived from word “Newar,” or possibly the other way around. The Newar are the sixth largest ethnic group in Nepal. According to the CIA Factbook in 2020 they make up 5 percent of the population of Nepal.
Newar household are typically made up of joint families with 20 or more members spread over three generations. Each household is led by a patriarch who makes decision that affect the whole group. When a woman gets married she enters the household of her husband. An ideal patrilineal extended family is made of married brothers living with their parents. This is is not always the case for demographic, economic, and social reasons. As for inheritance, property is divided equally among sons. Daughters are given a certain amount of the family property as kwasa in the form of utensils, furniture, clothes, money, etc. at the time of marriage. [Source: Hiroshi Ishii, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 3: South Asia,” edited by Paul Hockings, 1992 |~|]
According to the “Encyclopedia of World Cultures”: “Descent is patrilineal. Patrilineally related males call each other phuki, a term usually equated with daju-kija (brothers), but it is secondarily applied to brothers' and cousins' family members also. Those who call each other phuki form an exogamous lineage. The lineage members form a group to worship a common tutelary deity, digu dya (represented by crude or carved stones), to observe birth and death pollution, and to carry out many rituals together. They may form the core of a labor exchange group in rural areas. In urbanized areas, there is a trend toward digu dya-worshiping units, often called digu dya pūja guthi, splitting into smaller groups. Agnates split ritually and socially are called bhu or ba phuki. Affines reciprocate by repeated prestations at life-cycle rituals and at some festivals.
“Although children are taken care of by many members of the family, mothers have very close ties with their children. A child is often fed from his or her mother's breast for more than three years. Physical punishment is not Common. Girls are required from the age of 7 or 8 to help in cooking, carrying water, and looking after small children. Boys are freer to play when small but they too work in agriculture, shopkeeping, etc. when the family is busy. Formal schooling has become more important recently.”
Gurung Family and Dating Customs
The Gurung is an ethnic group that live primarily the Himalayan foothills of central Nepal around Pokhara and the Annapurna, Lamjung and Himalchuli regions. They speak Gurung — a tonal language related to Tibetan — and have traditionally been Tibetan Buddhists but have been strongly influenced by Hinduism. Gurung are the 11th largest ethnic group in Nepal. According to the CIA Factbook in 2020 they make up 2 percent of the population.
Cross cousin marriages are preferred with girls generally getting married in their late teens (they used to get married at between ages 9 and 12). Bride wealth in the form of gold jewelry has traditionally been given from the family of the groom to the bride. The couple has traditionally gone to live with the groom’s family after marriage. [Source: Ernestine L. McHugh, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 3: South Asia,” edited by Paul Hockings, 1992]
Teenage Gurung form groups called rodi with a dozen or so boy and girl members. Members of the rodi work with each other in fields during the day and share a dormitory supervised by a chaperone at night. The teenagers entertain themselves with songs, dance and stories. As they grow older they are expected to pair off with the person they expect to marry. The rodi dissolves when the majority of its members get married.
According to the “Encyclopedia of World Cultures”: “Among Gurungs, the domestic unit changes over time. A household will begin as a nuclear family, and, as sons reach adulthood and marry, their brides come into the parental home and remain there while their first one or two children are small. The domestic unit is then an extended family for a period of five to ten years. As the son's children grow, he will build a separate residence, usually next to that of his parents. Divorce can be initiated by either the man or the woman. If the husband initiates a divorce without due complaint, such as adultery, the wife has the right to keep the bride-wealth. However, if the wife causes or initiates the divorce she is required to return the bride-wealth to her husband. |~|
Limbu Family
Limbu are the 14th largest ethnic group in Nepal. According to the CIA Factbook in 2020 they make up 1.5 percent of the population of Nepal.. Resided in eastern Nepal between the Arun River and the border of Sikkim, India, they are a Mongolian people who speak a dialect of Tibetan, practice Hinduism mixed with traditional folk religion
According to the “Encyclopedia of World Cultures”: “Families related "by the bone" make up patrilineal lineages and clans. Death of a member brings pollution on the local agnatic descent group. During this time adults refrain from eating meals cooked with salt and oil. Wives who have taken their husband's family name also take their impurities by eating leftovers from their meals. Lineage and clan groups are exogamous, so men and women with the same clan name are forbidden to marry or have sexual relations. Today, lineages do not have a great influence on marriage, though payments are made to the chief of the clan. In general Limbu families are economically and ritualiy independent of each other.” [Source: Saideh Moayed-Sanandaji, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 3: South Asia,” edited by Paul Hockings, 1992 |~|]
“Women play a great and very active part in the marriage, in part because in many households the man serves in the army for many years and the woman is the decision maker concerning the house, children, marriage, and business. Women also influence the stability of a marriage. The mother-in-law phobia is strongly felt, and in most cases the mother-in-law is the prime reason for a bride's departure. Language is also a barrier if the bride is from a different region.
“The Limbus, like many Nepalese, are hesitant to address one another directly. Calling out a name in public is taboo and creates embarrassment; therefore the new bride is called "you" or "the wife of so-and-so" (teknonymy) and she does not have full status as a woman until she bears a child. Until full acceptance by the mother-in-law, the marriage is uncertain, as the wife can return to her natal home if she is made to feel uncomfortable. Polygamy is not widely practiced; it is practiced only if the wife is barren or has failed to produce sons. Kinship is very important in a marriage. A union with kin is considered successful and ideal.”
Nyinba Family and Kinship
The Nyinda are a small Tibetan ethnic group that lives in Humal Karnali, a rugged area between 2,850 and 3,300 meters in elevation in Nepal near the Tibetan border. There are only a few thousand of them. They have traditionally raised high elevation crops like buckwheat and millet and were involved in the Tibetan salt trade. They are also known as Barthapalya (in Nepali), Bhotia, Bhutia and Tamang.
What is significant about the Nyinda is their widespread adoption if polyandry (a wife with multiple husbands). Traditionally, all Nyinda brothers married the same woman. Over time some of the marriages became monogamous as brothers died and occasionally divorced.. A survey in the 1980s found that 70 percent of all marriage began as polyandrous but only half remained that way. Tensions between brother is minimized by granting them equal sexual access to the common wife and the designation of paternity, which give all brothers a chance to be a father, Divorce is rare. Some marriage are both polygynous and polyandrous. Sometimes brothers jointly marry sisters. Men whose wives are childless are encouraged to take second wives. Unions are sometimes shaped depending on whether individuals are descendants of slaves or slaveowners.
Nancy E. Levine wrote in the “Encyclopedia of World Cultures”: “Households are large and multigenerational, including, on average, 7.7 members and 2.6 generations in 1983. The wealthier households tend to be larger and to include a relatively greater proportion of men than the poorer ones. Membership in households accrues only through marriage or by legitimate birth (due to polyandry and polygyny, the children may have different parents). Polyandry also has the effect of creating low dependency ratios. Household membership presumes cooperation in productive labor and a share in what the household produces, both of which vary with age and gender. [Source: Nancy E. Levine, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 3: South Asia,” edited by Paul Hockings, 1992 |~|]
“At the core of Nyinba kinship is the concept of ru — literally, "bone" — which describes hereditary substance transmission through men and provides the basis for a system of patrilineal clanship. Clan Membership is important principally for marking social ranks within the community and for guiding marital choice through rules of exogamy. It has no economic and virtually no religious dimensions and does not generate any effective corporate groups. Although patrilineal descent appears important in several ethnic Tibetan societies in Nepal, it had minimal significance among agriculturalists in Tibet proper. Nyinba maintain that women transmit ru to their offspring through the medium of blood; these blood relationships provide a complementary, or matrifiliative, link to the mother's clan. |~|
“Property is inherited jointly by all sons of the previous property-holding generation. When daughters marry, they receive a dowry of household goods, agricultural tools, and occasionally a domestic animal or rights to a small plot of land for lifelong use. Traditionally, never-wed women had rights to lifelong maintenance; now Nepali law entitles them to lifelong use rights in half the share given a son. In the rare cases of partition among brothers, property is divided according to per stirpes (equally between the branches of a Family) reckoning, a custom that may be due to Hindu Nepali Influence. Any household produced in partition that fails to maintain itself passes to the partitioners' brothers or their successors. |~|
“Boys and girls are raised differently, as are first and later-born sons. Girls, for example, begin productive work at an earlier age and are expected to help care for their younger siblings. First-born sons are encouraged to take a leadership role in the family, to prepare them for later Household headship, and are taught to treat their brothers fairly, which is particularly critical for polyandry.
Sherpa Marriage, Family, Men and Women
Sherpas are a Tibetan Buddhist people that are essentially Tibetans who have lived in Nepal long enough to develop some of their own unique traits and characteristics. They are quite different from Hindu Nepalese. The Sherpas of the Khumbu valley near Mt. Everest are famous mountaineers and guides.
These days many Sherpa men work in the mountaineering and trekking industry while the women work the fields, raise children and take car of household chores. The Sherpa sense of family is much different than our own. Sherpa men think nothing of spending six to eight months away from their families and when they return their wives often look up from what they are doing, say "hi," then return to their task. Sherpa men and women have a history of spending long period of time apart. Even before the mountaineering and trekking industry took hold many Sherpas spent months away from home on long distance trade missions.
Marriage is generally monogamous. Polyandry is practiced. Polygamy is rare. Sherpas generally get married in stages. The marriage process is long and involves the exchange of gifts and labor. Women receive a dowry. Sons often receive their share of inheritance and often a house when they get married. When the couple have children or the dowry is paid off they live together. Before that time their time together is often in the form of periodic visits. Divorce is common, in some cases occurring in a 30 percent of all marriages.
Nuclear families often live together in a single houses. Extended families often share agriculture duties. Childrearing is generally done by women and older sisters. Young men often leave home at an early age to participate in trekking work. Sometimes old people live alone because their children have moved to Kathmandu or died in climbing or trekking accidents.
According to the “Encyclopedia of World Cultures”: “The treatment of children could be described as being on the indulgent-to-negligent side, though it varies by Individual temperament. Girls are incorporated into the Household economy earlier than boys, as child-care helpers and kitchen workers, while boys play in multiage groups. [Source: Robert A. Paul, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 3: South Asia,” edited by Paul Paul Hockings, 1992 ]
Thakali Marriage, Family
The Thakali is an ethnic group that lives in the Jomson area near Annapurna, a major trekking area. Occupying a fairy inhospitable area between the Tibetan highlands and the Hindu lowlands, they number around 13,000 to 14,000 and have been powerful merchants since the 1850s when they provided the Nepalese rulers with vital intelligence during a war with Tibet and was rewarded with a monopoly on the lucrative salt trading routes with Tibet.
According to the “Encyclopedia of World Cultures”: “The Thakali community is endogamous and is composed of four exogamous patrilineages: Timtsen (Sherchan), Choeki (Gauchan), Burki (Bhattachan), and Salki (Tulachan). The four patrilineages are again subdivided into a number of family groups called ghyupa. Each of the four patrilineages has its own clan deities: the Lion for Timtsen, the Dragon for Choeki, the Yak for Burki, and the Elephant for Salki. Each respective patrilineage has its own "clan grave" called khimj in which a throat bone is placed on the death of a patrilineage member. In spite of the high mobility of Thakali merchants, the ethnic identity has been well maintained thanks to the elaborate ritual activities based on family, patrilineage, and tribe levels. [Source: Shigeru Iijima, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 3: South Asia,” edited by Paul Hockings, 1992 |~|]
“Marriage was traditionally initiated by capturing a bride with her informal consent, like the custom among some of the Himalayan groups. It is, however, the Contemporary tendency for young Thakalis to prefer arranged marriages in the Hindu style. The rule of postmarital residence is Generally patrilocal, and the youngest son tends to stay with the parents even after his marriage. In many cases, the elder sons go out and set up new families after their marriages (neolocal residence). Traditionally, divorce and remarriage were not encouraged but also not prohibited; today, however, the remarriage of widows is becoming somewhat unpopular among the Thakalis who have been brought up in the Hindu lowlands of Nepal. |~|
“The younger sons are apt to form extended families with their parents, but elder sons generally set up nuclear families in new localities after their marriages. The property of the parents is inherited by the sons, but the younger sons obtain most of it. |~|
“Traditionally, the socialization of the Thakali children was quite well balanced by a laissez-faire attitude and hard training systems in Thakhola. The shoben lava initiation ceremony used to be performed in Thakhola. A similar rite is also performed in the Hindu lowlands in a modified fashion under the Hindu name of a kumar jatra. As for the modern education of Thakali children, the parents have been very active not only in urban settings but even in Tukuche. Formerly, only the affluent families could afford to send their children to the elite schools in urban centers, but many families have now started to send their children to such schools both in Nepal and foreign countries.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Nepal Tourism Board (ntb.gov.np), Nepal Government National Portal (nepal.gov.np), The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Wikipedia and various books, websites and other publications.
Last updated February 2022