ABSTRACT
In premodern Tibet, as in many similar societies, people categorized and related to wild animals in many different ways. By ‘premodern’ here I mean pre-1959, a date which not only marks the full Chinese colonial occupation of Tibet but also the beginning of a period of intensive structural changes, such as social and land reforms, technical modernization and later infrastructure developments. By ‘Tibet’ here I mean ‘ethnographic Tibet’ as described by Goldstein (1994: 76–77) and Samuel (1993: Chapters 1–8). It is an area comprising the Tibetan plateau, its eastern marches and various high-altitude Himalayan valley systems, and inhabited by peoples with a manifestly high degree of linguistic similarity who share cultural and social patterns and historical experience. But it is not coterminous with any historical or modern political boundaries.
