Tibetan Refugees Research Articles

The Mathematics of Tibetan Rol Mo

by lineages of carefully trained and selected professional leader-directors (dbu mdzad, umdze), it had developed by the middle of the 20th century into a vast repertoire of named and notated compositions. Many of the hundreds of pieces that once existed are still played today in the Tibetan refugee monasteries of India and Nepal. Yet, rol mo remains a strangely unexplored form of musical art. Some Western writers deny altogether that much of it is music, claiming rather that it is magical sound created for (usually unspecified) reasons. Tibetan musicians and educated listeners, with detailed standards of musical esthetics used to support their judgments, reject such ethnocentric speculations. Rol mo is indeed performed in a ritual context, in order to make a sensually pleasing offering (mchod pa) to the Buddhist (Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Protectors, Yi dam). For precisely this reason, it must be both skillfully executed (mkhas pa) and aurally pleasant (snyan pa). If such considerations suggest an of the alien, designed to please the ears of gods rather than of men, it must be remembered that the themselves are visualized by Tibetans as idealized representations of human qualities. Rol mo esthetics simply represent human esthetics in an extreme form. Music appropriate to such an esthetic will have both extremely heightened emotional effect and extremely elaborated formal structures, to please the emotional and cognitive faculties of its idealized audience. This paper focuses on the latter aspect, that of the extreme elaboration of formal structure in rol mo. We will deal with one aspect of this subject: the complex mathematical organization of rhythmic structures. If it is possible to generalize about rhythmic structure in different world musical systems, we might say that most music is rhythmically organized in one of two ways: 1) cyclically, with groups of a specific number of beats recurring in regular cycles (Western measures, Indian tdla, Java-

Rejoinder

Many of Mr. van Walt's criticisms are based solely on fabrications of his own making. For example, I am accused, twice, of referring to myself as a “scholar” and to my article as “scholarly.” I could find no trace of either. I am further accused of considering all Tibetan refugee accounts as “unreliable.” To be sure, I believe that one cannot base the study of historical events solely on refugee accounts, but that does not make all of these stories “unreliable.” After all, Dawa Norbu, a refugee himself, wrote in Red Star Over Tibet, “I never saw or heard of any case of misconduct by a Red soldier.” I would never argue that this statement was unreliable. We are further told that I refer to Tibetans as Chinese when in the second paragraph of my review I wrote, “… Tibetans [are] only one of 56 minority nationalities.” Chinese citizens yes, ethnic Hans no. A final example, although there are many more, is Mr. van Walt's attempt to attribute to me the opinion that… the only importance to the Western academic world is that the situation in Tibet can teach us how to eliminate a “mystical religion” and that “it gives clues as to how Peking will integrate a capitalist Taiwan into a Communist China in the future”. (emphasis added)

Incidence of Glucose-6-phoshate Dehydrogenase Deficiency and Correlation with Some Other Laboratory Findings among the Tibetan Refugees in Orissa

Incidence of Glucose-6-phoshate Dehydrogenase Deficiency and Correlation with Some Other Laboratory Findings among the Tibetan Refugees in Orissa

Growth and development in high altitude populations: a review of Ethiopian, Peruvian, and Nepalese studies.

The effects of altitudinal variation on child growth and development have long been a focus of research for students of biocultural mechanisms of adaptation to high altitude. Early studies in Peru showed that children born and raised at altitudes above 3500 m tended to exhibit reduced birth mass, slower growth rate, longer overall period of growth, poorly defined adolescent growth spurt, and delayed onset of certain aspects of psychomotor development; it is difficult to state with certainty whether these phenomena reflected developmental acclimatization to hypoxia or represented an inherited pattern of development. In contrast, more recent studies in Ethiopia showed that children living at high altitudes were taller and heavier, and matured earlier than their genetically similar counter-parts living at low altitudes. The degree of hypoxic stress encountered at the altitude of the highland communities in Ethiopia (3000 m) may not be great enough to adversely affect growth; however, other environmental variables, such as the increased incidence of infectious disease at lower elevations, may be involved. In order to further clarify the effects of genetic and environmental influences on growth among high altitude populations, the growth characteristics of peoples of Tibetan origin living in Nepal were studied. Anthropometric, radiographic, and demographic data were collected from residents of various Sherpa communities in the Everest region of Nepal, and from a group of Tibetan refugees living in the vicinity of Kathmandu. Results of this study indicate that the growth of both groups is extremely retarded by U. S. and European standards. Although the refugee children were slightly more advanced in most growth indicators than the Sherpas, the difference was probably not as great as that existing between high and low altitude populations in Peru. Moreover, the refugee children lived under more favourable conditions in terms of nutritional and health benefits than the conditions of the Sherpas, but were considerably more retarded in all growth indicators than the indigenous inhabitants of highland Peru or Ethiopia. The Nepal data demonstrate that the growth characteristics of Himalayan peoples may reflect the presence of an extremely ancient Tibetan gene pool. A comparison of the three studies shows that, while hypoxia and other environmental agents do influence certain growth parameters, specific effects demonstrated in one high altitude population cannot be directly applied to another. Some differences in the growth characteristics of these populations may be caused by the interaction of as yet undetermined environmental agents, but genetic influences on growth may be more important among high altitude populations than hitherto suspected.

The Tibetan Community in Exile

FIFTEEN YEARS have now elapsed since the flight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet in March i959. The Tibetan refugees who accompanied him in large numbers into exile in India and its neighbouring states of Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim have now lived for half a generation in their new surroundings. Their children have been born and educated without contact with their homeland, depending solely on the memories of the older generation for their knowledge of the Land of Snows. Since the present Chinese rulers of Tibet have virtually sealed the country off from the outside world, only a handful of individuals have in recent years been added to the original group of 8oooo to ioo,ooo refugees. An earlier report in this journal (Vol. XLIII, no. 3, Fall 1970, p. 410) outlined the initial stages of the relief and rehabilitation programmes undertaken on behalf of this refugee community.' It is now possible to give an account of the later stages of these projects undertaken by the governmental and voluntary associations of many countries, and to evaluate their success. No accurate statistics are available on the number of Tibetan refugees. The official estimates made by the Indian government are undependable, and in any case do not include the number of children born since the refugees arrived in India. The situation in the mountain states, Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim is even less calculable, since in these countries many refugees have remained in remote mountain regions that are difficult of access. But it is clear that the birth-rate has exceeded the death-rate, especially in the more settled communities. Although small numbers of Tibetans have emigrated to Switzerland, Canada and-in still smaller numbers-to other Western countries, the vast majority remain in the Indian sub-continent. It has been there that the principal efforts of the relief agencies have been concentrated. There, too, the attempt is being made to keep alive the traditions of ancient Tibet, and to maintain, in a free and independent atmosphere

ABO blood groups, PTC tasting and dermatoglyphics of Tibetans at Chandragiri, Orissa.

AbstractABO blood groups and PTC taste tests determined on 230 Tibetan refugees, and finger print patterns of the 184 males among them, indicate their essential Asiatic Mongoloid affinity.

Management of hydatid disease.

Hydatid disease is seen quite frequently in the sheep-raising areas of the world, such as South America, Australia, Greece, and certain Arabian countries. In India, this disease seems to be less common, but a few published series 1-3 and reports of isolated cases 4-6 from various parts of the country do show that the disease is endemic. Similarly, the endemic nature of the disease in North America has been reported. 7 It occurs frequently enough to be considered in the differential diagnosis of abdominal masses and certain chronic respiratory symptoms. Over the past few years, we have had the experience of treating some Tibetan refugees who had this disease. This prompted us to review all our cases from the Christian Medical College Hospital. There was a total of 33 proven cases from 1957 to 1967. This communication is based on the analysis of these cases and their treatment. Patients Among

Occipital hair whorl as a racial criterion: a critical assessment.

AbstractReports on the incidence of single clockwise occipital whorls as opposed to double and counterclockwise whorls reveal no consistent geographical pattern. Earlier workers arrived at different conclusions. While Bernstein ('25b) and Schwartzburg ('27) suggested a dominant inheritance of counter‐clockwise whorls, others like Winchester ('58) and Montagu ('63) believed the clockwise condition to be dominant. In the light of these and some other studies, Scheinfeld's ('56) remarks that chance factor in prenatal development may influence dominance, seem appropriate. The results of present study indicate that clockwise and anti‐clockwise conditions show inconsistent variation which may be the result of change element rather than any specific mode of distribution. Two groups from India: 164 Pandits of Kashmir, pre‐dominantly Caucasian and 95 Tibetan refugees, predominantly Mongoloid are contrasted. The incidence of a single clockwise whorl among Pandits is 67%, whereas among Tibetans it is 78%. A review of other populations studied shows greater variance within than between the so‐called major racial stocks.

Aid to Tibetan Refugees: An agricultural colony in Nepal

In 1960 the Government of Nepal requested the International Committee of the Red Cross to lend assistance in order to attend to the besetting problem which arose from the arrival in that country of Tibetan refugees. In response, the ICRC decided, apart from other measures, to establish an agricultural colony in a highland valley in central Nepal.

Thomas Dooley Foundation Expands Health Programs in Laos, Nepal, and India

Expanded health programs in Laos, Nepal and northern India are planned by the Thomas A. Dooley Foundation, Inc. Dr. Verne Chaney, Jr., executive director of the foundation, who recently returned from a three-month tour of the Dooley hospitals and clinics, described the projected programs. In Laos, a 150-bed hospital already built at Pakse will be staffed and equipped by the foundation. It will serve both as a treatment and a training center. In addition, a 20-bed hospital will be established on the island of Khong in the Mekong River to serve three Laos provinces about 100 miles south of Pakse. This center will serve as a base for additional river-boat clinics for the Mekong villages. In India, a third mobile health unit, equipped with an X-ray unit, will bolster the existing two units in serving Tibetan refugees. In the next six months, Chaney said, 10 new clinics, each with an