BHUTIA

also spelled Bhotia, or Bhote, also called Bhutanese, Himalayan people who are believed to have emigrated southward from Tibet in the 9th century or later. The Bhutia constitute a majority of the population of Bhutan and form minorities in Nepal and India, particularly in the Indian state of Sikkim. They speak various languages of the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The Bhutia are mountain dwellers, living in small villages and isolated homesteads separated by almost impassable terrain. They practice a terraced agriculture on the mountain slopes, their main crops being rice, corn (maize), and potatoes. Some of them are animal breeders, known for their cattle and yaks. Their religion is Tibetan Buddhism, with an admixture of the pre-Buddhist shamanism known as Bon. They recognize the Dalai Lama as their spiritual leader. Their traditional society was feudalistic, with most of the population working as tenants of a landowning nobility, although there were few marked differences in ways of life between landowners and tenants. There were also slaves, most of them descended from captives taken in raids on Indian territory. In the 1960s the Bhutanese government formally abolished slavery and sought to break up the large estates; the nobility were also deprived of their hereditary titles. The Bhutia trace their descent patrilineally. They are predominantly monogamous, but polygamy is still practiced in some areas.