The Tai peoples are groups of people who speak the Tai languages. There are a total of about 93 million people of Tai ancestry worldwide, with some of the largest groups being the Thai, Lao, Shan, and Zhuang. Tai groups are scattered throughout much of Mainland Southeast Asia, southern China, and Northeast India, and make up the majority of the population in Thailand and Laos.
Their languages belong to the Kra-Dai family, whose most probable starting point is the Guangxi–Guangdong coast of southern China. A dated tree of the family puts its first split at about 4,000 years ago and its spread into mainland Southeast Asia within the last 2,000 years. Layers of Chinese loanwords date the southwestward movement of Southwestern Tai speakers more narrowly, to the 8th to 10th centuries. Genetic work places Tai-Kadai populations in Thailand closer to Iron Age samples from Taiwan and southern China than to ancient samples from Southeast Asia. The chronicle traditions make dynastic claims of their own, among them the legends of Khun Borom and the descent the Siamese court claimed in 1684 from a king of 756 or 757.
Tai groups moved into mainland Southeast Asia over several centuries, a movement the sources connect with Chinese expansion and with the revolts that followed it. They formed small city-states called mueang and built the irrigation works their wet-rice farming required. They assimilated and intermarried with the Austroasiatic populations already in the country, and their speech took on an Austroasiatic profile that their relatives in southern China did not. From the thirteenth century Tai rulers founded Lan Na, the Sukhothai Kingdom and Lan Xang.
Names Speakers of the many languages in the Tai branch of the Tai–Kadai language family are spread over many countries in Southern China, Indochina and Northeast India. Unsurprisingly, there are many terms used to describe the distinct Tai peoples of these regions.
According to Michel Ferlus, the ethnonyms Tai/Thai (or Tay/Thay) evolved from the etymon *k(ə)ri: 'human being' through the following chain: kəri: > kəli: > kədi:/kədaj (-l- > -d- shift in tense sesquisyllables and probable diphthongization of -i: > -aj). This in turn changed to di:/daj (presyllabic truncation and probable diphthongization -i: > -aj). And then to *dajA (Proto-Southwestern Tai) > tʰajA2 (in Siamese and Lao) or > tajA2 (in the other Southwestern and Central Tai languages by Li Fangkuei). Michel Ferlus' work is based on some simple rules of phonetic change observable in the Sinosphere and studied for the most part by William H. Baxter (1992).
The ethnonym and autonym of the Lao people together with the ethnonym Gelao ), a Kra population scattered from Guìzhōu (China) to North Vietnam, and Sino-Vietnamese 'Jiao' as in Jiaozhi, the name of North Vietnam given by the ancient Chinese, would have emerged from the Austro-Asiatic *k(ə)ra:w 'human being'.
The etymon *k(ə)ra:w would have also yielded the ethnonym Keo/ Kæw kɛːwA1, a name given to the Vietnamese by Tai speaking peoples, currently slightly derogatory. In fact, Keo/ Kæw kɛːwA1 was an exonym used to refer to Tai speaking peoples, as in the epic poem of Thao Cheuang, and was only later applied to the Vietnamese. In Pupeo (Kra branch), kew is used to name the Tay (Central Tai) of North Vietnam.
The name "Lao" is used almost exclusively by the majority population of Laos, the Lao people, and two of the three other members of the Lao-Phutai subfamily of Southwestern Tai: Isan speakers (occasionally), the Nyaw or Yaw and the Phu Thai.
The Zhuang in China do not constitute an autonymic unity. In various areas in Guangxi, they refer to themselves as powC2 ɕu:ŋB2, pʰoB2 tʰajA2, powC2 ma:nA2, powC2 ba:nC1, or powC2 lawA2, while those in Yunnan use the following autonyms: puC2 noŋA2, buB2 dajA2, or buC2 jajC1 (=Bouyei, bùyi 布依). The Zhuang do not constitute a linguistic unity either, because Chinese authorities include within this group some distinct ethnic groups such as the Lachi speaking a Kra language.
The Nung living on both sides of the Sino-Vietnamese border have their ethnonym derived from clan name Nong, whose bearers dominated what are now north Vietnam and Guangxi in the 11th century AD. In 1038, a Nong general named Nong Quanfu established a Nung state in Cao Bang, however was quickly annexed by Annamite king Ly Thai Tong in the next year. In 1048, Quanfu's son Nong Zhigao revolted against Annamese rule, and then marched eastwards to besiege Guangzhou in 1052.
Another name that's shared between the Nung, the Tay, and the Zhuang living along the Sino-Vietnamese border is Tho, which literally means autochthonous. However, this term was also applied to the Tho people, who are a separate group of indigenous speakers of Vietic languages, who have come under the influence of Tai culture.
History
Origin
James R. Chamberlain (2016) proposes that the Tai-Kadai (Kra-Dai) language family was formed as early as the 12th century BC in the middle of the Yangtze basin, coinciding roughly with the establishment of the Chu state and the beginning of the Zhou dynasty. Following the southward migrations of Kra and Hlai (Rei/Li) peoples around the 8th century BCE, the Yue (Be-Tai people) started to break away and move to the east coast in the present-day Zhejiang province, in the 6th century BCE, forming the state of Yue and conquering the state of Wu shortly thereafter. According to Chamberlain, Yue people (Be-Tai) began to migrate southwards along the east coast of China to what are now Guangxi, Guizhou and northern Vietnam, after Yue was conquered by Chu around 333 BCE. There the Yue (Be-Tai) formed the Luo Yue, which moved into Lingnan and Annam and then westward into northeastern Laos and Sip Song Chau Tai, and later became the Central-Southwestern Tai, followed by the Xi Ou, which became the Northern Tai).
Wilaiwan Khanittanan notes that Tai and Muong material culture in northern Vietnam resemble each other closely, the houses raised on posts and the women's dress alike in both. She reads this as the result of a language shift, some ancient Tai groups there having taken up Muong speech. She adds that Black Tai and some Muong groups share the surname .
Comparative linguistic research seems to indicate that the Tai peoples were a Proto-Tai–Kadai speaking culture of southern China and dispersed into mainland Southeast Asia. Some linguists proposes that Tai–Kadai languages may descended from the Proto-Austronesian language family. Laurent Sagart (2004) hypothesized that the Tai–Kadai languages may have originated on the island of Taiwan, where they spoke a dialect of Proto-Austronesian or one of its descendant languages. Unlike the Malayo-Polynesian group who later sailed south to the Philippines and other parts of maritime Southeast Asia, the ancestors of the modern Tai-Kadai people sailed west to mainland China and possibly traveled along the Pearl River, where their language greatly changed from other Austronesian languages under the influence of Sino-Tibetan and Hmong–Mien language infusion. However, no archaeological evidence has been identified which would correspond to the Daic (Tai-Kadai) expansion in its earliest phases. Aside from linguistic evidence, the connection between Austronesian and Tai-Kadai can also be found in some common cultural practices. Roger Blench (2008) demonstrates that dental evulsion, face tattooing, teeth blackening and snake cults are shared between the Taiwanese Austronesians and the Tai-Kadai peoples of Southern China.
Revolt and pressure in southern China
Chinese historical texts record that, in 726 AD, hundreds of thousands Lǎo (獠)The term Lǎo (獠) used in this context refers to Tai-Kadai speaking peoples resided in what are now Guangdong, Guangxi, and northern Vietnam in general. It is unnecessarily applied solely to the ancestors of Laotians (ລາວ). rose in revolt behind Liang Ta-hai in Guangdong, but was suppressed by Chinese general Yang Zixu, which left 20,000 rebels killed and beheaded. Two years later, another Li chief named Chen Xingfan declared himself the Emperor of Nanyue and led a large uprising against the Chinese, but was also crushed by Yang Zixu, who beheaded 60,000 rebels. In 756, another revolt led by Huang Chien-yao and Chen Ch'ung-yu that attracted 200,000 followers and lasted four years in Guangxi.
In the 860s, many local people in what is now north Vietnam sided with attackers from Nanchao, and in the aftermath some 30,000 of them were beheaded. In the 1040s a matriarch-shamaness named A Nong, her chiefly husband and their son Nong Zhigao raised a revolt. They took Nanning, besieged Guangzhou for fifty seven days and slew the commanders of five Chinese armies sent against them. They were defeated and many of their leaders were killed.
Pressure from the north continued into the 13th century. Raids by the Chinese frontier states of Nanzhao and Dali and by the Mongols may have pushed part of this stream south along the rivers, particularly the Shweli, the Salween and the Mekong. Kublai Khan attacked south towards Pagan in the 1250s, and in the 1290s Mongol forces attacked Chiang Rung and Chiang Mai, subdued more than twenty kingdoms and sent an embassy to Angkor; a further attempt in 1312 collapsed from disease and other hardships.
The warrior culture those centuries produced is described in some detail. The Nong, who rebelled in the 11th century, bred horses for cavalry, tattooed their bodies, fought with swords and crossbows, built hilltop forts and recruited women as warriors. They fought in teams of three, one man carrying the shield that covered the body while the other two threw spears from behind. The Chiang Mai chronicle describes a successful warrior taking domains at an uneven rate, ruling those he took and killing their rulers, and afterwards installing one of his own officers or leaving the previous ruler in charge.
Du Yuting and Chen Lufan from Kunming Institute Southeast Asian Studies claimed that, during the Western Han dynasty, ancestors of the Tai people were known as Dianyue (in today Yunnan). Tai peoples migrated far and wide: by the Tang and Song periods, they were present from the Red River to the Salween River, from Baoshan to Jingdong. p. 36 Du and Chen linked the ancestors of the Thai people in particular to a 2nd-century Shan kingdom (Shànguó 撣國) mentioned in the Book of Later Han. That text places the Shan kingdom at the end of the boundaries of what is now Baoshan and Deihong prefectures, and has Shan ambassadors reaching the Han court from beyond Yongchang and beyond Rinan.Du & Chen (1989), p. 38Hou Hanshu vol. 5 "九年春正月，永昌徼外蠻夷及撣國重譯奉貢。"Hou Hanshu vol. 6 txt: "十二月，永昌徼外撣國遣使貢獻。"Hou Hanshu vol. 7 txt: "十二月，日南徼外葉調國、撣國遣使貢獻。" Additionally, Du & Chen rejected the proposal that the ancestors of Tai people migrated en masse southwestwards out of Yunnan only after the 1253 Mongol invasion of Dali.Du & Chen (1989). p. 38. quote: "The Thai people in the north as well as in the south did not in any sense "migrate en masse to the south" after Kublai Khan's conquest of the Dali Kingdom." Luo et al. (2000) proposed that Proto-Tais originated most likely from Guangxi-Guizhou, not Yunnan nor the middle Yangtze river.
Migration into mainland Southeast Asia