Water Sheep Survey of 1943

This website is an extension of a master's thesis entitled Sovereignty and Taxes: The Water Sheep Survey and the Iron Tiger Survey Compared. The thesis compares the 1943 Water Sheep Survey and the 1830 Iron Tiger Survey (ལྕགས་སྟག་ཞིབ་གཞུང), examining data, structure, and narrative. The Iron Tiger Survey is a conventional taxation document detailing corvée obligations, horse taxes, revenue assessments, and the parties responsible for collection. The Water Sheep Survey yielded 53,292 records cataloging household members, land holdings, and residential structures, with little attention to taxation. The Iron Tiger Survey is an update to the tax roles with data organized around the parties responsible for tax collection, while the Water Sheep Survey's preface asserts the Ganden Phodrang's (དགའ་ལྡན་ཕོ་བྲང་) sovereignty over Monyul, with data organized around individual households.

This is a free site that allows the user to view and download data gleaned from the two volumes of the Water Sheep Survey, alongside the earlier 1830 Iron Tiger Survey of Mon Yul.

The combined dataset comprises over 50,000 records across four tables for the Water Sheep Survey, and more than 2,000 records for the Iron Tiger register. There are errors and limitations: the original 1943 document is in Ume (དབུ་མེད་) script on paper in poor condition. Researchers transferred the text into Uchen (དབུ་ཅན་) and published it.

The Buddhist Digital Resource Center scanned both documents. OCR and a structured AI parsing prompt produced the tabular records you can browse and download here. Physical copies were consulted at Emory University.

This is a work in progress — started in late 2025 and improving over the coming years. If you wish to process the original document yourself, please get in touch.