Dai Nationality

The Dai ethnic minority, which numbers 1,158,989, is distributed throughout the Dai Autonomous Region and the Dehong Dai-Jingpo Autonomous Region in Xishuangbanna in the southern part of Yunnan Province. In the past, they were called 'Baiyue', meaning a vast living area. Therefore, they have established a close relationship with ethnic groups like the Zhuang, Dong, Shui, Bouyei and Li, who are said to be the descendants of the Dai people.




Language

The Dai language belongs to the Zhuang-Dai branch of the Zhuang-Dong group of Sino-Tibetan languages. The written language was derived from Devanagari and differs from region to region.


Dehong Dai / Tai Le script

Origins

The Dehong Dai or Tai Le script developed from a script known as Old Dai, which developed from a script called Baiyi. The Dehong script is used mainly by the Tai Ne/Le people in the Dehong region in southwestern Yunnan province. It has also been used on occasion by the Jingpo people.


Notable features:

Each consonant has an inherent vowel /a/. Other vowels are indicated by separate letters.
Words are not separated by spaces. Instead spaces appear between clauses and sentences.
Used to write:
Dehong Dai, a Tai language with about 443,000 speakers mainly in Dehong Prefecture of Yunnan province in the southwest of China. It is also spoken in northern Vietnam, France, Laos, Myanmar, Switzerland, Thailand. The language has many names, including Tai Nua, Tai Neua, Tai Le, Chinese Shan and Chinese Tai.





Dehong Dai Script

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/tainua.htm


Religion

The religion of the Dai people is Southern Buddhism, which was adopted in the 6th to 8th century and had a profound influence on their politics, economy, culture and arts. According to records, Pali Buddhism was introduced to Yunnan in the middle of 7th century via Burma but it lasted only four centuries. No temples were built and the sutras were passed on orally. Thus, Southern Buddhism faded and monks fled during the war around the 11th century. The existing Southern Buddhism entered Yunnan from Burma and Thailand after the wars.

In 1277 a written Dai language was created and the Pattra sutra appeared. In the Ming Dynasty a Burmese princess was married to a local ruler in Dai area and Burmese monks were sent to Yunnan. A large quantity of Buddhist temples were built in Jinghong . All these helped to popularize Southern Buddhism among the common people. Religious activities are so common that most 8 to 10-year-old boys, in particular in Xishuangbanna, are sent to temples where they learn sutras for one to five years. They then leave the temple and spend their lives as secularized monks.

Resources

Thanks to the area's favorable climate, agriculture and horticulture developed very early. An abundance of rice won for Xishuangbanna the title 'barn of south Yunnan'; local tea, bamboo, and sugar cane are also of high quality. According to historical records, Pu'er Tea was presented to the emperor as tribute as early as the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644). Now the Dai region has become an important producer of rubber.

Other resources are also abundant. There are wild apples, bananas and Chinese gooseberries, rare animals like gibbons and peacocks, and minerals like gold, silver, iron, and crystal.

Arts

The Dai people are quite good at singing and dancing. Their achievements in music are well-known among all the ethnic groups. Their folk and traditional musical instruments include the elephant-foot drum, bronze gong, clarinet, and hulusi.



Xishuangbanna is the home of the peacock, which the Dai people revere as a symbol of good fortune, happiness, beauty and kindness. Thus the Peacock Dance is their most popular folk dance. Performers in clothes with peacock patterns imitate peacocks with lively, flexible and graceful movements in a dance that is a popular part of the Water-splashing Festival.



The Elephant-foot drum dance is another well known dance for men. This unique instrument is made of carved mango or ceiba trunk covered with cowhide, and looks just like an elephant foot. The drum can be long, medium-sized, or short. The dance done with a long drum appears very graceful, with the medium-sized one, it is vigorous with broad, sweeping movements; and with the short one, flexible and bright.

Architecture



The architecture of the Dai region is distinctive, known especially for the Dai-style temples, bamboo bridges and houses. The temples combine the styles of South Asian and Chinese culture and can be shaped like pavilions, thrones, bells, and so on. Bamboo houses are designed based on local conditions. Made entirely of bamboo, the houses have two floors - downstairs for livestock and upstairs for people - a clean, light and well - ventilated design.


a miansi temple

The Theravada Buddhist monastery is called a miansi temple. There is at least one such temple in almost every Dai village. According to religious discipline, every male must become a monk once during childhood, learning to read and write in the monastery. The Miansi Monastery provides a place not only for religious activities, but also for celebrations, election of leaders and mediation of disputes. The monastery has gone beyond pure religious significance, and people cherish a special cordial feeling for it. Therefore, the Miansi temple is quite different from a Buddhist monastery in Han areas and the Lamaist temples of Tibetan Buddhism. It is not so strict and solemn as the former, nor as magnificent and uninhibited as the latter; rather, it appears closer to the people. It is exquisite in shape, beautiful in posture and simple and unaffected in character.



Festivals

Important Dai festivals are the Water-splashing Festival, the Door-closing Festival and the Door-opening Festival, all of which are related to Buddhism. The Water-splashing Festival is the New Year of the Dai ethnic minority. On the 24th to 26th day of the sixth month of the Dai calendar, people engage in traditional activities such as water-splashing and dragon-boating, hoping to pacify evil spirits and ensure a good harvest in the coming year.It usually lasts for 3-5 days. Ceremonies are held to pray in Buddhist temples and clean dust off Buddhist statues. Also a Peacock dance is performed, sports competitions are organized, and people sprinkle water on each other as an expression of good wishes.



The Door-closing and Door-opening Festivals are the two longest and grandest periods--one in mid-September and the other in mid-June. People worship Buddha by sacrificing food, flowers, sutra, clothes and other wealth. They also take advantage of the holidays to preach Buddhist teachings and have a good time.

The Huajie Festival (Flower Street Festival) is held on the seventh day of the first lunar month to say farewell to the past year and to greet the new one. On that morning, men and women, old and young, wear flowery new clothes and bathe in the hot spring. Unmarried young people also sing to each other in an attempt to find their future better half.

very interesting

thanks for sharing Zaw.

Looks like they use the same numerals as Burmese do.

New Tai Lue script

Origin

The New (Simplified) Tai Lue script was developed in China during the 1950s. It is based on the Old (Traditional) Tai Lue script, which had been in use since about 1200 AD. Between 1950 and the early 1980s the Chinese government promoted the new script as a replacement for the old script. However since the 1980s the Tai Lue in China have been allowed to choose to teach either the new or the old script. This has led to considerable confusion with some being literate only in the old script and some only in the new script.

In Burma, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam the traditional Tai Lue script is still used.

Notable features
New Tai Lue is a phonemic alphabet with separate letters for vowels and consonants.
Each consonant letter has a high and low form, which combined with the presence or absence of the two tones marks, is used to indicate the six tones of the Lue language
Some consonants have a final form which is used at the end of a syllable.
The consonants are arranged in traditional Indic order.
The letters lae and the laew are shorthand for writing the /l/ plus the /ae/ and the /l/ plus the /aew/.
Used to write:
Lue (a.k.a. Tai Lu, Lü, Lu, Dai Le, Xishuangbanna Dai, Pai-i) a language spoken mainly in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan by about 260,000 people. There are also 265,000 speakers in Burma, 70,000 in Thailand, 20,000 in Laos and 3,000 in Vietnam.








^^ This is also used in Yunnan

Compare with old LanNa






and Burmese . Shan , Mon which all use the same script

here are a couple videos of the dance of the dai, i think this is the dehong dai. “Dehong” Dai would include the Tai Mao, Tai Nua, and Shan (Tai Yai, or Tai Long). the dai are known for their peacock dance


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZj_O2f3HLI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt-V38eP13g

peacock dance performed by a famous chinese dancer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTnJqD2SnPs

The Shan ruled Ava Kingdom, now called Burma, till 1555, when it fell to the Toungoo Burmese.


GLORIOUS PAST
Shans under the leadership of King Surkhanfa the Great (1291-1364) carved a large empire in South Asia


shans and their cousins

Thank you for your contribution


I frst came across these people in a documentary I saw about 15 years ago . They seemed very Shan but with lowland Burmese influence as if they were the descendants of the lowland Shan who once ruled Upper Burma which indeed they probably are. What it brought home was that although much divided by language and rivalry ( and current stupidity on the part of the current top brass) , the people who have fought for supremacy within Burma's borders ( Mon , Shan , BUrman) actually share a western SE asian culture ( dress , dance , architecture , food , script ) which is quite distinct from the very Khmer influenced cultures of central SE Asia. This westernness is also seen in LanNa culture and script .

Both Lanna and northern Lao are seen as Shan . Central Thailand is seen as non Shan. I've yet to see enough of Lao culture to see where it sits . It seems at times to be very Khmer either directly or indirectly through Thai domination. You must educate me on this . it's the reason i post on Lao chat.


Those maps from Shanland.org are fascinating . Of course no one knows the true extent of Surkhanfas empire which emerged after the fall of Bagan to the Mongols. The colour one is quite unlikely as it seems to include Arakan , Pegu and the tai polities of Sukhotai , LanNa and Luang Prabang . Even the b&w one is probably too nationalistic. Howver it illustrates the current hardships suffered and the dissatisfaction of Shans in Burma that past glories from 500 years spent are "remembered" in this way.

Although the majority of people in Burma see themselves as Burman most are mixed as Burma's history is that of assimilation and counter assimilation. Although I can see independence and separation as goals desired by the marginalised, disenfranchised and desperate I can also see that there is shared cultural identity from a thousand years of common history . This is the nature off all modern states including all of our modern neighbours . Indeed the Shan rulers or sagaing and ava are seen just as much as rulers of burma as were the mon kings of pegu.


I hope for peace and the well being of all 50-60 million people within Burmas borders and proper autonomy for all the nation states .

is the writing the ancestor to burmese scripts?

No it is likely that the writing came from Burmese which came from Pyu via Mon. This is the current theory / assumption.


The Mon were the original civilised settlers in Burma and develped their script from contact with Buddhism in about 3rd or 2nd century BC. The Pyu settled in about 1st century BC and came from southern China / eastern Tibet . Pyu script was likley borrowed from Mon. By 6th century their civilisation was firmly established but consisted of 18 small polities rather than a large united empire.

In the 8th century the Pyu dominance was ended by Nan Zhao . The Burmans ( Bama ) seemed to appear about the 9th - 10th century from the Yunnan / Eastern Tibet area . Burmese tradition maintains that the Pyu were one of the 3 original Burman tribes and indeed when the Burmans appeared the Pyu "disappeared" and were totality absorbed in to the Bama ethnicity. The alternative theory is that the Pyu were austro-asiatic like the Mon and Khmer .


Similarly Pyu script totally disappeared in the 12th century with Bama script appearing in about the 10th or 11th century. The myazedi inscription in Bagan has the same information inscripted in MOn , Bama , Pyu and Pali. It is called the Rosetta stone of Myanmar.


The Tai ( Shan ) being relatively late coming into Burma developed their script in about the 13th - 14th century after Tai chieftains filled the void left in Upper Burma after the fall of NanZhao ( Dali ) and Bagan to the Mongols in 1270s to 1290s .


The Tais who settled further East developed their scripts from old Khmer.

Thanks for sharing the videos and info, very interesting. I'm trying to figure out what they were saying in the videos, were they speaking Dai?

Interesting, the original inhabitants of Southern China were Southeast Asian peoples- Austronesians, Tai, Mon-Khmer. Heck some scholars even argue that the modern day Han originated from this region, a bit of a stretch but southern Chinese people are definitely closer to SE Asians than anyone else.

dai is the clustering of many different similar tai tribes from yunnan. dehong dai's like you see in the video are close to shans of burma. shans in china are called dai. the sipsonpanna dai who are the tai-lue are close to the people of laos. in the video they are speaking the dehong dialect of tai-mao or tai-nua. i can pick some of it up as a lao speaker...you can see the burmese influence in their dance. oh, you notice how at the end of their sentence they say the word aww? northern lao people also speak like that.


most southern chinese from the coastal region carry alot of tai blood. heck, alot of southern chinese are sinized tai. the land of southern china was the land of the tai as you can see the tai-kadai people still makeup the largest minority. southwestern tai's have alot of mon-khmer blood and alot of them are tai-nized mon-khmer.

WOW.. so the original inhabitants of burma are the:

pyu, mon, and who else?

these were all mon-khmer ethnicity or jsut the pyu and mon..

anyways wow... ur so smart!

LOok! i contribute to this topic: but its in spanish =/

http://www.proel.org/alfabetos/pyu.html

The original inhabitants of the islands and coast of SE Asia were likley Austroloid / Melanesian ( similar to Papua New Guineans , Andaman aboriginals or the Aetas of today ) . There have been successive southerly pushes first from the proto Malays and then from Mongoloid Malays . The next push seemed to be from the Austroasiatic group ( Mons Khmer and similar peoples ) followed by the Tibeto- Burmans and Tai peoples.

So I guess the original inhabitants were Australoid .

Some of those Australoid people are still alive today that I know of in Changwat Sa Kaeo in Eastern Thailand and more in Western Cambodia. If I have the Know how with technology I will show the photos whith you guys. Some of their characteristics still persist in our Khmer people of today; like having very curly hair and very tall, dark and very Aboriginal looking.

That's totally false, while it's true that many Southern Chinese are mixed with southern aboriginals, the majority Han factor cannot be ignored. Han migrations south was a huge reoccuring theme throughout Chinese history. Southern Chinese today are not just sinicized Tai peoples, they are a mixture of Han migrants as well as southern aboriginals who stayed and assimilated.

Yeah you also get that phenotype in the way some Burmese look . Sometimes though it comes from Indian I think rather than Melanesian.