Taxation in Tibetan Societies: Rules, Practices and Discourses: Rules, Practices and Discourses(53 Brill's Tibetan Studies Library)

The study of taxation is fundamental for understanding the construction of Tibetan polities, the nature of their power – often with a marked religious component – and their relationships with their subjects, as well as the consequences of taxation for social stratification.
This volume takes the analysis of taxation in Tibetan societies (both under the Ganden Phodrang and beyond it) in new directions, using hitherto unexploited Tibetan-language sources. It pursues the dual objective of advancing our understanding of the organisation of taxation from an institutional perspective and of highlighting the ways in which taxpayers themselves experienced and represented these fiscal systems.
Contributors are Saadet Arslan, John Bray, Kalsang Norbu Gurung, Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy, Berthe Jansen, Diana Lange, Nancy E. Levine, Charles Ramble, Isabelle Riaboff, Peter Schwieger, Alice Travers, and Maria M. Turek.

About the Author :
Alice Travers is a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS, CRCAO, Paris), where she works mainly on the social history of Tibet in the 19th and 20th centuries and on the history of the Ganden Phodrang army, in the framework of the ERC-funded TibArmy Project (“The Tibetan Army of the Dalai Lamas, 1642–1959”).

Peter Schwieger is emeritus professor of Tibetology at the University of Bonn, Germany. His research covers history, literature and language of Tibet. His publications include Handbuch zur Grammatik der klassischen tibetischen Schriftsprache (2009), The Dalai Lama and the Emperor of China (2015) and Conflict in a Buddhist Society: Tibet under the Dalai Lamas (2021).

Charles Ramble is Directeur d’études at the EPHE - PSL University, Paris. His book publications include The Navel of the Demoness: Tibetan Buddhism and Civil Religion in Highland Nepal (2008), as well as three volumes in a series entitled Tibetan Sources for a Social History of Mustang (Nepal) (2008, 2015, 2019).

Review :
"Taxation in Tibetan Societies is a major contribution to the study of the history of the sociology and economy of Tibetan societies, a field of study which is coming increasingly into focus among researchers, but also among a wider audience with an interest in Tibet and the Himalayas. This excellently edited volume, with its original and substantial articles, deserves a wide readership." - Per Kværne, Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, no. 70, Avril 2024.