Sino-Platonic Papers, 73 (June 1996)

Blue Cloth and Pearl Deer: Yogur Folklore

translated by Zhang Juan et al.

edited by Kevin Stuart

Pre-Liberation Yogur Wedding Customs

Introduction

The Yogur are a minority group among our great family of nationalities and have unique customs, especially wedding customs. Wedding customs before Liberation preserved older wedding forms.

According to Engles, extant wedding forms of a particular nationality are living social fossils. Investigating and studying these surviving wedding forms are of great significance to the study of history and social patterns.

This article only examines wedding forms remaining before Liberation according to my own conclusions from research and information from elders.

I

A notable characteristic of primitive wedding forms is marriage between maternal cousins. Weddings were arranged between two or more clan groups from one generation to another. Preference of marriage between maternal cousins became a fixed common rule. This phenomenon existed among certain Ran, and in certain minority nationality regions, but was very pronounced among the Yogur.

Eastern Yogur had a sash exchange wedding known as lexiyao. When a girl reached the age of fifteen to seventeen and, if no young men had proposed marriage, this type of wedding was held with a ritual of becoming an adult. A small white tent was pitched beside the parents' tent and relatives, lamas, and the tribal chief were invited on an auspicious day. Two married women were requested to help the girl arrange her hair in a toumian and her twelve hair braids were changed into two braids and tied to the toumian. The toumian was called cenpee and consisted of pearls, agate, and silver. It was divided into three parts. Two parts were in front and the third was at the back. The cenpee indicated that the girl was now adult and could attend social activities. Afterwards, lexiyao was held, which entailed taking the girl's sash to an unmarried son of her maternal aunts or uncles and returning with a boy' s sash. During the ceremony someone shouted that X's daughter's sash had been give to Y, to make this public. The marriage disregarded the boy's age or whether he was a lama. He might, for example, have been a three year old child. If, among her cousins, none were unmarried, the sash was given to a married maternal cousin or brother. If her uncles and aunts were childless, the sash was given to another man. On the second day of the changing sash rite, the girl moved back home from the small white tent to live with her parents. Afterwards, she was allowed to sleep with males and bear children whose surname was that of the man she had exchanged sashes with.

"Wife" in Eastern Yogur is posicei that means "one having no sash" because she had sent hers to a man and had thus lost it. The condition of being without a sash was used by a man to refer to his wife and vividly depicts the sash exchange marriage.

At first the preference for marriage between maternal cousins was taken as a rule. Exchanging sashes was nothing but the wedding ceremony. Time passed and there were exceptions to the old rule of marriage between maternal cousins. Girls married males who were not maternal cousins, thus, nothing remained of the preference for maternal cousin marriage but a framework.

Western Yogur had a "tent-pole" marriage similar to the above. On the day before the "reaching adulthood" ritual the girl, who had reached the age of fifteen to seventeen, had both her cenpee and sash hung from a tent pole. This signified the girl now could have intercourse with males. When this signal was observed, males slept with the girl. Children so conceived were not denigrated.

After putting up the cenpee the girl could live with males. Children they had were considered legitimate. If the relationship was harmonious between mother and father, or if the man lived for quite some time with the woman, the children called their father "papa." If the relationship was provisional and less intimate, the father was called "maternal uncle." Some tent-cenpee women lived all their lives with one man, while others separated and later lived with other males because their relationship could not endure. Sometimes a husband left. The male partner had to help the family he lived with labor in agricultural fields. Otherwise, he was not welcomed, especially by the bride's parents. If he were lazy, he was not allowed to continue to live with the girl. Generally, while "setting up a tent," the girl lived with males -- one today, and another tomorrow, and it was possible that she might be living with several simultaneously. Some males came by appointment and sometimes, to stay a long period with the woman, they quarreled and fought among themselves. Couples who married in such ways had sexual freedom and were not required to be faithful to one another. Parents asked nothing about the matter nor did society condemn them. A notable characteristic of this wedding was that the males lived with the woman in the bride's family. The marriage was also unstable, showing considerable similarity to the azhu wedding of the Naxi in Yongning, Yunnan Province.

There were three results of the sash exchange. First, a woman stayed at home for a long period and lived with many males over a short time. During cohabitation the male was expected to help the bride's family. The girl continued living in her parents' home when she had children. When the children reached adulthood she either lived with her parents or lived with her children as an " old girl" (unmarried old woman) by receiving tents, animals, pasture, and cooking utensils. Secondly, among her sexual partners the one with whom she had the best affiliation was invited to live with her. If someone took care of her parents then, several years later, the "couple" left and lived by themselves. At this time the woman asked for property from her parents. Usually, in the past, elderly women spent their remaining years with their daughters. Presently, even if they have sons, most old women prefer to live with their daughters' families. This might be explained by the custom of the old wedding form dictating that the bride's side play the major role. Lastly, if the male whom she got along with well was willing to marry her, he was required to give a horse or a cow to the maternal cousin who had kept her sash to redeem it and then they could marry .The latter establishes that there were conditions related to relinquishing the privilege of marriage between maternal cousins. It also corroborates that these wedding conventions had the rudiments of a "buying and selling marriage" as related by Engles.

Another Yogur wedding form known as the "formal marriage" was achieved with a matchmaker who called on the girl's family to make a marriage offer. Once permission was granted the groom presented many betrothal gifts. Among Eastern Yogur he was required to present the bride's father and uncle each with no less than a horse and her mother with a cow. Among Western Yogur far more gifts were requested. However, before Liberation this type of marriage accounted for only a small portion of unions. Most marriages were "informal," as exemplified by the "sash exchange marriages" and "setting up the tent pole marriages." The formal marriage was rare in Kangle Commune where we investigated. A fifty year old man confided that he had only witnessed the formal marriage once or twice. Before Liberation, formal marriage was thought to demand too much in the way of betrothal gifts. Its expense made it impossible for most people. The reason most Yogur could not formally marry was that they were short of money. In terms of wedding history the sash exchange and "setting up the tent pole" weddings were much older and typical of the more common wedding.