Tai peoples
The group of the Tai peoples brings together ethnicities in Southeast Asia and South China who speak languages from the Tai branch of the Tai Kadai language family (which are assumed to be derived from a common Proto Tai language) and partly follow similar traditions and customs.
Tai peoples form the majority population in Thailand and Laos , where the eponymous peoples of the Thai and Lao dominate. Significant minorities of Tai peoples live in southern China, Myanmar, Vietnam and northeast India . The largest populations are the Zhuang (especially in the Guangxi Autonomous Region ), Bouyei ( Guizhou Province ) and Dai ( Yunnan Province ) in China, the Shan in the Shan state of Myanmar named after them , the Tay and Thái in northern Vietnam and the Ahom in the Indian state of Assam . Overall, it is estimated that the Tai peoples number around 100 million people. In the course of time, the individual peoples were influenced or even assimilated by their neighbors , so the Zhuang in China were partly Sinised .
Tai or Thai is the self-name of many Tai peoples, especially the central and south-western group. The Etymon * daj A originally only meant “population” of “people”. The meaning “ free ”, which it has today in some Tai languages (e.g. Thai), only got it later, in connection with the development of feudal structures among certain Tai peoples.
Origin of the Tai
The original home of the Tai languages is suspected on the basis of comparative linguistics research in the area of today's Chinese province of Guizhou . Some researchers argue that even earlier ancestors of the Tai were of Austronesian origin , a connection with the Formosa languages in Taiwan is being discussed or even a re-migration from the northern Philippines via Hainan to the Chinese mainland. However, even their proponents describe these theses as speculative, as archaeological evidence is scarce. The further spread of the Tai Kadai speakers may have taken place from around 1500 BC. BC, presumably in search of better conditions for agriculture. It is a matter of dispute whether they lived mainly from rice or from tuber vegetables like taro .
The further expansion of the Tai to Southeast Asia probably did not take place until the end of the 1st and the beginning of the 2nd millennium AD, which is supported by the very close relationship between the geographically extensive southwestern Tai languages, while in China (Guangxi, Guizhou and Hainan) as well as North Vietnam in a smaller area gives a much greater diversity among the Tai Kadai languages.
Geographical distribution
The Tai peoples never lived in a single nation-state. In several independent states, the population identified themselves as "Tai"; B. in Siam .
The Tai peoples have historically settled in China, India, and the continental part of Southeast Asia since their early migration. Their main geographical distribution can be imagined in the form of an arc that extends from northeast India through southern China down to Southeast Asia. Recent migrations have brought greater numbers of the Tai to Ceylon , Japan , Taiwan , Australia , New Zealand , Europe , the United Arab Emirates , Argentina, and North America . The greatest ethnic diversity among the Tai peoples can be found in China, which is considered to be the prehistoric homeland of the Tai.
During his reign in the 1930s and 1940s, the Thai Prime Minister and Field Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhram sought to create a state that would unite all areas inhabited by the Tai peoples. The renaming of Siams in Thailand in 1939 takes this into account.
Settlement areas in East and Southeast Asia
There is great ethnic diversity among the Tai peoples in China, India and also in Southeast Asia. They colonize most of Thailand (over 60 million) and Laos (3 million), the east of Myanmar (4 million Shan , mainly in the Shan state of the same name ), the north and northwest of Vietnam (3 million Tay and Thái ), the North and west of Cambodia (about 100,000 Thai and Lao) and the northernmost sultanates of Malaysia (several tens of thousands of Thai). About 25 to 30 million members of the Tai peoples live in southern China: the most important of these are the Zhuang (primarily in the Guangxi Autonomous Region ), Bouyei (in Guizhou Province ) and Dai (in Yunnan Province ). The approximately 2 million Ahom in the Indian state of Assam gave up their original language in the course of the 19th century and now speak Assamese , which is an Indo-European language , so that the assignment of this ethnic group to the Tai peoples is not clear. But there are also a few thousand members of the smaller Tai peoples in Assam who still speak their original languages.
Tai peoples in the Diaspora
- Asia
More than 10,000 Thai people each live in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
- Europe
The largest groups of the Tai (mostly Thais and Laotians) settle in Germany , Great Britain , France , Sweden , the Netherlands and Switzerland .
- North America
Around 320,000 Thai-Americans and 265,000 Lao-Americans live in the United States . There are also groups from Tai Kao , Isan, Phu Thai , Tai Dam , Tay and Shan . Around 25,000 people with Laotian and 19,000 people with Thai roots live in Canada .
- Oceania
In Australia there are a larger number of Thais, while in New Zealand there are predominantly members of the Isan ethnic group.
- Laotians in Argentina
After the Lao Civil War, more than 250 Laotian families moved to Argentina .
Culture
language
The languages spoken by the Tai peoples are known as the Tai languages . The most common of these are Thai , the official language of Thailand, Lao , the official language of Laos , the Shan language in Myanmar and Zhuang , a language group in southern China. All these languages are tonal languages , a changed tone can change the meaning of a syllable (word).
religion
The traditional belief of the Tai peoples can be described as animistic . Spirits play an important role (in several Tai languages, including Thai and Lao, called phi ), which on the one hand can represent personal embodiments of natural phenomena or places, but also restless souls of the deceased . These spirits are treated like people for whose favor one woos or whose disfavor one z. B. with offerings must appease or avert. Also ancestor worship is widespread. The ethnic religion of the Zhuang is Mo (ism) , that of the Tày is called Then .
A large part of the Tai peoples, especially of the southern branch, adopted Buddhism (usually of the Theravada direction) around the 13th century , namely the Thai, Lao, Shan and Dai. The traditions of the animist Phi cult are not excluded or suppressed by Buddhism, they rather exist alongside Buddhist beliefs or are integrated into the Buddhist worldview. About 1.5 million Thai in southern Thailand are Muslim.
Festivals
Certain festivals are celebrated by several Tai peoples, the most famous of which is Songkran , the New Year celebrations of the Dai, Lao, Shan and Thai, which originally heralded the vernal equinox , but is now celebrated between April 13th and 15th.
literature
- Tai Culture. International Review on Tai Cultural Studies. SEACOM Southeast Asia Communication Center, Berlin since 1996. Overview of the editions published so far
- Andrew Walker (Ed.): Tai Lands and Thailand. Community and State in Southeast Asia. NIAS Press, Copenhagen 2009.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Michel Ferlus: The Thai Dialects of Nghệ An, Vietnam (Tay Daeng, Tay Yo, Tay Muong). In: The Tai-Kadai Languages. Routledge, Abingdon (Oxon) / New York 2008, p. 298.
- ^ A b Laurent Sagart: The higher phylogeny of Austronesian and the position of Tai-Kadai. In: Oceanic Linguistics Volume 43, 2004, 411-440.
- ^ Roger Blench: Stratification in the peopling of China: how far does the linguistic evidence match genetics and archeology? Paper for the symposium Human migrations in continental East Asia and Taiwan. Genetic, linguistic and archaeological evidence. Geneva 2004, p. 12.
- ^ Roger Blench: The Prehistory of the Daic (Tai Kadai) Speaking Peoples and the Hypothesis of an Austronesian Connection. ( Memento of October 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Presented at the 12th EURASEAA meeting, Leiden, 1. – 5. September 2008, p. 8.
- ^ Roger Blench: Stratification in the peopling of China. 2004, pp. 12-13, 20.
- ^ Asian alone or in any combination by selected groups. American Community Survey, US Census Bureau, 2017.
- ↑ Laotians in Argentina. Voice of America, May 24, 2007.
- ↑ a b Gerald W. Fry, Gayla S. Nieminen, Harold E. Smith (Eds.): Historical Dictionary of Thailand. 3rd edition, Scarecrow Press, Lanham (MD) / Plymouth 2013, p. 294, entry: Phi Cult.
- ^ Nguyễn Thị Yên: An Investigation into Objects of Worship in Then belief. In: Religious Studies Review , No. 3, Volume 2, 2008, pp. 61–71.
- ^ Charles F. Keyes: Why the Thai Are Not Christians. Buddhist and Christian Conversion in Thailand. In: Conversion to Christianity. University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles / Oxford 1993, pp. 259-284, at p. 263.
- ↑ Yos Santasombat: Lak Chang. A Reconstruction of Tai Identity in Daikong. 2nd edition, Australian National University Press, Canberra 2008, p. 107.
- ↑ Paul Hattaway: Peoples of the Buddhist World. Piquant Editions, Carlisle 2004, p. 311.