Nyinba of Nepal

Intro

("Nepal Map")

The Nyinba are a small ethnic group located in northwestern Nepal. They consist of about twelve hundred individuals (as of the 1970’s) who live in villages high in the mountains and hills of the Himalayas (Levine 1980:284). They subsist primarily off of agriculture, herding, and trade (Levine 1997:378). Because of the intense climate and landscape in which they live, the Nyinba are particularly unique in their cultural practices. One of the most famous aspects of Nyinba culture is their practice of fraternal polyandry, one of the rarest forms marriage in the world. You can find a brief profile of the Nyinba here. Much of our modern anthropological knowledge of the Nyinba comes from the ethnographic work of anthropologist Nancy Levine.

The Himalayas of Nepal (Inside Himalayas 2016)

Cultural Characteristics

The Nyinba speak a dialect of Tibetan and practice the Nyingmapa form of Tibetan Buddhism (Levine 1980:284). Their location in Nepal affects these as well as their living practices and family structures. The Nyinba practice fraternal polyandry, patrilineage, and patrilocality. Melvyn C. Goldstein describes the practice in his piece “Polyandry: When Brothers Take a Wife,” writing, “Two, three, four, or more brothers jointly take a wife, who leaves her home to come and live with them. Traditionally, marriage was arranged by parents, with children, particularly females, having little or no say” (Goldstein 2012:173). Because the wife leaves her family to live with the family of her husbands, lineage is traced through the husband’s family.

A Nyinba Family (HowAfrica 2017)

Living Arrangements

The Nyinba have four villages that are set up with between 58 and 27 households each (encyclopedia.com). The houses are large with several different rooms, and up to three stories tall. They are built of stone and timber covered with a mud plaster. The houses are relatively close together and are surrounded mostly by agricultural land. Every village has a gompa temple as well. Each member of the village possesses some land, but richer households have more land and poorer have less, and land is rarely bought and sold as it is very limited and quite expensive (encyclopedia.com).

Nyinba and Fraternal Polyandry

Advantages

As with most aspects of culture, marriage practices stem from environmental factors and shape to the needs of the people. While fraternal polyandry is one of the rarest forms of marriage in the world, the unique environment and living style of the Nyinba make it advantageous and fitting. Due to the high altitude and mountainous landscape that the Nyinba inhabit, it is impossible for newlywed couples to live on their own land. Therefore, keeping land and an estate within a family line is crucial to survival. In Goldstein’s ethnography, he speaks with a young Nyinba man named Dorje about why he adheres to the poyandrous customs of his culture: “[W]hen I asked Dorje why he decided to marry with his two brothers rather than take his own wife, he…said it prevented the division of his family’s farm (and animals) and thus facilitated all of them achieving a higher standard of living” (Goldstein 2012:173). The fragmentation of the Nyinba family by individual marriages would damage the quality of life for all parties of the family; fraternal polyandry is economically advantageous in their society.

Disadvantages

Despite its benefits, fraternal polyandry comes at the cost of marital tension and stress on wives. If a woman is infertile, an additional wife may be brought into a marriage as well (Levine 1980:289). Nancy Levine says in her piece “Belief and Explanation in Nyinba Women’s Witchcraft,” “Men on the average outnumber women in their households by approximately 1.5 to 1. Customarily, the men of a household are related, have common economic interests and can rely on one another. In contrast, the women tend to be unrelated, are competitors for the limited resources needed by their separate nuclear families and rivals for positions of domestic influence and authority. A woman's only allies initially are her husbands and later those children who remain in the home, usually sons, so that women seek islands of support among the men related most closely to them. This reinforces the isolation and disunity of a household's wives” (Levine 1982:261). Additionally, brothers who share a wife may begin to resent one another if they perceive inequalities within their relationships with the wife, especially for younger brothers who are considered subordinate to the eldest brother (Levine 1997:377). Even with the tension that fraternal polyandry can cause within families, the Nyinba value it as a beneficial marital practice that they continue to observe into modern day.

Another Nyinba Family (Borzoni)

LEARN MORE

Overview of the Nyinba: https://www.everyculture.com/South-Asia/Nyinba.html

Nyinba Witchcraft: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2801812.pdf

Mutiple Husbands | National Geographic:

Women take multiple husbands in Nepal:

Works Cited

Asia Calling. 2014. "Women take multiple husbands in Nepal." YouTube. Video. Retrieved Nov. 6, 2020 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlKGHAHSOtI&t=91s).

Borzoni, Michele. “Polyandry in Nepal.” TerraProject. Image. Retrieved Nov. 6, 2020 (http://terraproject.net/portfolio/Eyua0WVn/polyandry-in-nepal#/).

Goldstein, Melvyn C. 2012. “Polyandry: When Brothers Take a Wife.” Conformity and Conflict: Readgins in Cultural Anthropology. 14th ed. NJ: Pearson. Retrieved Nov. 6, 2020 (https://sakai.bradley.edu/access/content/group/ANT101S40T2020FA/Goldstein%20Polyandry%20When%20Brothers%20Take%20a%20Wife.pdf).

HowAfrica. 2017. “Everything You Need To Know About “Nyinba”, A Tribe Where Brothers Share The Same Wife…” HowAfrica. Image. Retrieved Nov. 6, 2020 (https://howafrica.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-nyinba-a-tribe-where-brothers-share-the-same-wife/).

Inside Hamalayas. 2016. “The Nepal Himalayas.” Inside Himalayas. Image. Retrieved Nov. 6, 2020 (https://www.insidehimalayas.com/the-nepal-himalayas/).

Levine, Nancy E. 1982. “Belief and Explanation in Nyinba Women’s Witchcraft.” Man 17(2):259-274. Retrieved Nov. 6, 2020 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2801812.pdf).

Levine, Nancy E. 1980. “Nyinba Polyandry and the Allocation of Paternity.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 11(3):283-298. Retrieved Nov. 5, 2020 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41601137.pdf?ab_segments=0%252Fbasic_search_solr_cloud%252Fcontrol&refreqid=excelsior%3A9189f95f04ffcb464d6c03e28f4d90fe).

Levine, Nancy E. and Joan B. Silk. 1997. “Why Polyandry Fails: Sources of Instability in Polyandrous Marriages.” Current Anthropology 38(3):375-398. Retrieved Nov. 5, 2020 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1086/204624.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A9bea0520ea0d499db7cfd14c352eeaab).

National Geographic. 2007. "Multiple Husbands | National Geographic." YouTube. Video. Retrieved Nov. 6, 2020 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4yjrDSvze0&t=21s).

“Nepal Map.” Infoplease. Image. Retrieved Nov. 6, 2020 (https://www.infoplease.com/atlas/asia/nepal-map).

"Nyinba." Everyculture.com. Retrieved Nov. 6, 2020 (https://www.everyculture.com/South-Asia/Nyinba.html).

"Nyinba ." Encyclopedia of World Cultures. . Encyclopedia.com.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/nyinba.

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