Lanna people (, ), also known as Khon Mueang ( ), or Tai Yuan (, , ), are a Tai ethnic group native to nine provinces in Northern Thailand, principally in the area of the former Lanna Kingdom.See: Forbes, Andrew, 'The Peoples of Chiang Mai', in: Penth, Hans, and Forbes, Andrew, A Brief History of Lan Na (Chiang Mai City Arts and Cultural Centre, Chiang Mai, 2004), pp. 221-256. As a Tai group, they are closely related to Tai Lü and Tai Khün with regard to common culture, language and history in contrast to Thailand's dominant Thai ethnic group (referred to as Siamese or Central Thai). There are approximately 6 million Lanna. Most of them live in Northern Thailand, with a small minority 29,442 (2005 census) living across the border in the Bokeo Province of Laos. Their language is called Lanna, Kham Mueang (คำเมือง), or Northern Thai.
Exonym and endonym
Endonyms The modern Lanna people refer to themselves colloquially as Khon Muang (คนเมือง), meaning "people of the (cultivated) land," "people of our community" or "society" (mueang is a central term in Tai languages that has a broad meaning and is essential to the social structure of Tai peoples). With that name, they historically identified themselves as the inhabitants of the alluvial plains, river valleys and plateaus of their native area, where they lived in local communities, called muang (เมือง), and cultivated rice on paddy fields. That distinguished them from the indigenous peoples of the area ("hill tribes"), like the Lua', who lived in the wooded mountains practicing slash-and-burn agriculture and is called Khon Doi (คนดอย) meaning "people of the mountains". Membership of the Lanna was therefore defined by lifestyle, rather than genetics. At the same time, it was a term of dissociation from the Burmese and Siamese, who held suzerainty over the Lanna Kingdom for centuries and who were not "people of our muang".
For the same reasons, the Lanna people call their language Kam Muang (กำเมือง) or Kham Muang (คำเมือง) in which kam (กำ) or kham (คำ) means language or speech, and muang means town; hence, the meaning "town language", contrasts those of the many hill tribes in the surrounding mountainous areas.
Exonyms The exonym Tai Yuan (ไทยวน) is likely derived from Sanskrit yavana meaning "stranger," which itself comes from the name of the Greek tribe of the Ionians, or from Pali . In everyday speech, "Tai" prefixed to some location is understood as meaning "Tai person" of that place. Predecessors to the term "Yuan" were used by the Chams, Vietnamese, and Khmer as exonyms for other ethnic groups in the region. The Khmer form is still used today, as a pejorative exonym for the Vietnamese. The Burmese historically referred to the Northern Thai people as the Yun (), which in turn is now the Burmese word for "lacquerware."
The British colonial rulers in neighbouring Burma (now Myanmar) referred to them as Siamese Shan to distinguish them from the Shan proper, whom they called Burmese Shan.
Until the 20th century, the Siamese considered Lannas to be "Lao", due to linguistic and cultural differences, or more specifically as Lao phung dam, or black-bellied Lao because of their tradition of tattooing their abdomens (phung), which contrasted with the Lao to their east, who did not have that custom. According to Jit Bhumisak, a prominent Thai historian, Lannas consider themselves Tai-Thai and do not refer to themselves as Lao. That is reflected in various inscriptions in which the term "Thai-Tai" is used to refer to themselves. The term "Lao" is seen as an insult by Lannas, as it is associated with a savage and uncivilized culture. Therefore, the use of the term Khon Muang is a way for Lannas to assert their distinct identity and cultural heritage and to distance themselves from the negative connotations of the term "Lao".
The Lanna also call Central Thais "Thai" and add the word "South" to refer to Southern Thais or "Southerners." However, they do not use the term Tai/Thai to refer to other ethnicities that interact more closely with Lanna society, such as Tai Yai, Tai Khoen, Tai Lue people, which reflects the fact that they see themselves and those ethnic groups as distinct entities.
History Origin
According to a shared legend amongst various Tai peoples, a possibly-mythical king, Khun Borom Rachathiriat of Mueang Then begot several sons that settled and ruled other mueang, or city-states, across Southeast Asia and southern China.Eliot Joshua et al. (2002). Laos Handbook. London: Footprint Publishers. Descended from ancient peoples known to the Chinese as the Yue and the Ai Lao, the Tai tribes began migrating into South-East Asia by the beginning of the 1st millennium, but large-scale migrations took place between the 7th and the 13th centuries AD, especially from what is now Sipsongbanna, Yunnan Province and Guangxi. The possible reasons for Tai migration include pressures from Han Chinese expansion, Mongol invasions, finding suitable land for wet rice cultivation and the fall of the states in which the Tais inhabited.Edmondson, J. A. (2007). The power of language over the past: tai settlement and tai linguistics in southern china and northern vietnam. Harris, J. G., Burusphat, S., Harris, J. (ed). Studies in southeast asian linguistics. Bangkok: Ek Phim Thai Co. Ltd.Church, P. (ed). (2006). A short history of South-East Asia. Vol. XII. Singapore: John Wiley and Sons Asia. According to linguistic and other historical evidence, Tai-speaking tribes migrated southwestward to the modern territories of Laos and Thailand from Guangxi sometime between the 8th and the 10th centuries.Pittayaporn, Pittayawat (2014). Layers of Chinese Loanwords in Proto-Southwestern Tai as Evidence for the Dating of the Spread of Southwestern Tai . MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities, Special Issue No 20: 47–64. The Tai assimilated or pushed out indigenous Austroasiatic Mon–Khmer peoples, and settled on the fringes of the Indianized kingdoms of the Mon and Khmer Empire. The blending of peoples and the influx of Indian philosophy, religion, language, culture and customs via and alongside some Austroasiatic element enriched the culture of the Tai peoples, but the Tais remained in contact with the other Tai mueang.Wyatt, D. K., (2003).
The presence of the Yuan in what is now northern Thailand has been documented since the 11th century. The core of their original settlement area lies in the basin of the Kok and Ing rivers in what is now Chiang Rai province. Since the Yuan, like other Tai peoples, traditionally live from wet rice cultivation, they settled only in the river plains of northern Thailand, not in the mountain ranges that run through it and make up three quarters of the area. They formed small-scale principalities (Mueang). The geography of the settlement area prevented the formation of larger communities.Grabowsky: Bevölkerung und Staat in Lan Na. 2004, S. 66.
Kingdom of Hiran The Kingdom of Hiran was a state formed in the 7th century AD in what is now northern Thailand. There are no written records of Hiran prior to the reign of King Mangrai, the founder and ruler of Lanna from 1296 to 1317. In the 8th century, the city of Yonok was founded in the area of today's Chiang Saen district by subjugating the pre-existing Khmu and Lawa populations.. After the city of Yonok was destroyed in an earthquake, the Tai Yuan rebuilt the city at Vieng Prueksa in present-day Mae Sai district (Chiang Rai Province), where they formed an elected monarchy. Vieng Prueksa came under the sphere of influence of the Lavo Kingdom, now Lopburi, which was a vassal state of the Khmer state of Chenla.
The king of Lavo forced the accession to the throne of Lawachangkarat, who became ruler of the new kingdom in 638 and changed the name of the capital to Hiran. Around the year 850, the seventh king of Hiran, Laokiang, had Yonok rebuilt on the current site of Chiang Saen, which took the name of Ngoenyang and became the new capital. From then on, the Kingdom of Hiran was called the Kingdom of Ngoenyang and expanded significantly, subsequently by occupying the Laotian territories of Meuang Sua and Mueang Theng, today's Luang Prabang and Dien Bien Phu.
Independent state of Lanna Mangrai, the ruler of Mueang Ngoenyang, united a number of these principalities after his accession to the throne around 1259 and founded the city of Chiang Rai in 1263. Around 1292 he conquered the Mon kingdom of Hariphunchai, which had dominated large parts of what is now northern Thailand in political, economic and cultural terms. That laid the foundation for the new Kingdom of Lanna ("One Million Rice Fields") when its capital, Mangrai, founded Chiang Mai in 1296. The remaining Mueang, which were dependent on Lanna, retained their own dynasties and extensive autonomy, but had to swear loyalty to the king and pay tribute (mandala model). Lanna was ethnically very heterogeneous and the Lanna did not constitute the majority of the population in large parts of their domain.Grabowsky: Bevölkerung und Staat in Lan Na. 2004, S. 89.
However, the different cultures converged, so the originally animist and illiterate Tai Yuan adopted their religion, Theravada Buddhism, and their writing system from the Mon of Hariphunchai (the Tai Tham script is developed from the Old Mon script).Grabowsky: Bevölkerung und Staat in Lan Na. 2004, S. 90. As a result, a common identity among the peoples of Lanna became increasingly common in the 14th century, and the non-Tai peoples largely assimilated to the Tai Yuan.Grabowsky: Bevölkerung und Staat in Lan Na. 2004, S. 94. Anyone who integrated themselves into the communities in the river valleys and plains (Mueang) was regarded as Tai, regardless of ethnic origin, hence the self-designation Khon Mueang. Only the indigenous peoples such as the Lawa, who lived outside the Mueang in the highlands of the mountains and practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, were not included. They were grouped together by the Tai as kha. Ethnicity was defined less by descent than by way of life.Cholthira Satyawadhna: A Comparative Study of Structure and Contradiction in the Austro-Asiatic System of the Thai-Yunnan Periphery. In: Ethnic Groups Across National Boundaries in Mainland Southeast Asia. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapur 1990, S. 76.
The Tai Yuan had very close ties with the Lao kingdom of Lan Xang. In 1546, Setthathirath, a Lao prince, was elected king of Lanna.Grabowsky: Bevölkerung und Staat in Lan Na. 2004, S. 61. By the middle of the 15th century, at the latest, they had the technology to manufacture and use cannons and fireworks rockets.Grabowsky: Bevölkerung und Staat in Lan Na. 2004, S. 106. The expansion of the sphere of influence of Lanna reached a climax in the second half of the 15th century under King Tilok. The sphere of interest of Lanna clashed with that of the central Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya, which resulted in several wars over the Mueang of Sukhothai, Phitsanulok and Kamphaeng Phet, that lied between the two kingdoms.Grabowsky: Bevölkerung und Staat in Lan Na. 2004, S. 99–102.
The first decades of the 16th century are considered to be the heyday of the Lanna literature. The classical works of the time, however, were written not in the native language of the Tai Yuan but in the scholarly language of Pali.Grabowsky: Bevölkerung und Staat in Lan Na. 2004, S. 103. At the same time, however, Ayutthaya was expanding north and Siamese troops penetrated deep into the Yuan-inhabited area of Lanna. The fighting was extremely costly, and a number of high-ranking generals and nobles of the Yuan perished. In addition to the population losses of men of armed age as a result of the war, much of the population also fell victim to natural disasters and epidemics around 1520, which initiated the decline of Lanna.Grabowsky: Bevölkerung und Staat in Lan Na. 2004, S. 107. In 1558, Lanna came under the rule of the Burmese Taungoo dynasty (Kingdom of Ava).