I was looking at a geographical text from the late nineteenth/early twentieth century called the Việt Nam dư địa chí. The Viện Hán Nôm’s catalog entry for this text states that it contains information about “the customs and languages of 45 minority nationalities” (phong tục và tiếng nói của 45 dân tộc ít người).
In actuality, it contains a section on “savage and aboriginal human types” (蠻土人種, man thổ nhân chủng). It lists 45 different groups: 22 in the north, 15 in the center, and 8 in the south.
I’ve never found a text in classical Chinese which lists different “ethnic groups” in such detail. That they are referred to as “man” and “thổ” should be an indication that the discourse on “ethnic minorities” in the nineteenth century was quite different from what it is today. From what this text indicates, it most certainly was.
The Việt Nam dư địa chí says, for instance, says the following about a group called the Lao: “The faces of men and women are like indigo. If they come across a person, they kill him with a poisoned arrow and steal his goods. They also cut off the person’s hair to make women’s clothing.”
As for a group called the Xá, it says that “Women are the leaders of the động (this is the name of an administrative unit in a minority area). They wear a tricolored turban on their heads and a tricolored belt around their waists. They carry bows and daggers like men. They often harm people with black magic.”
Ah, but we shouldn’t let old texts like this one deceive us. Of course it is actually the case that the “54 minorities” and “the Kinh” have lived in harmony for centuries.
This Post Has 12 Comments
Interesting stuff! I think many states in mainland SEA (in the pre-colonial period) might have geographical documents which described about the different ethnicities. I used to read somewhere that the court of Siam also wrote this kind of stuffs. It mostly describes about the general information such as culture, way of life, foods, cloths and religions.
For Vietnam, when I was reading the post, I wondered that how the Vietnamese classified and/or differentiate those ethnic groups to the “man” and the “thổ”. I think the Vietnamese probably have some criteria to define someone as the man and the thổ. Could you please clarify it? Thank you very much.
I need to look into this more, but at the moment my sense is that people were categorized based on how culturally close they were to (or how culturally distant they were from) the people who compiled texts like this one. The person who compiled this text obviously knew classical Chinese, and my guess would be that there were many other aspects about his life that were “Sinitic” in origin. That cultural world was then the standard by which other people were judged. “Tho” shared some of the same cultural practices, whereas “Man” did not. Further, from other texts which I have looked at, it is clear that a category like “Tho” was a continuum. The Dong Khanh dia du chi divides people into the 3 categories of “Han” (referring to what we would today call the “Kinh” – although it is unclear if all of the people who we today refer to as “Kinh” were considered “Han” by the compilers of that text), “Tho,” and “Man.” When it compares different “Tho,” it indicates that some were more “Han” than others, by which it means that the degree of cultural similarity between various “Tho” groups and the people who compiled the text varied. At other times the text mentions that the leaders of a “Tho” group were more “Han” than the rest of the members of the group. So the difference seems to be the degree to which people shared the Sinitic culture of the Vietnamese elite. If they shared some of it, then they were “Tho.” If they shared very little or none, then they were “Man.”
The Chinese had a similar way of viewing people. There was a difference between “Yi” (barbarians) and “Man” (savages). Barbarians followed some Chinese cultural practices, whereas savages did not.
Thank you very much for your clarification. Things are much clearer.
I still wonder that what kind of cultural similarity that the “Tho” shared with the Vietnamese elite. And also there are other words like “Di”. I’m not sure if it’s different from Man. And is it the same meaning between “Yi” and “Di”?
Just small point here that I think there is still a differentiation from the other ethnic groups to the Viet (Kinh). When I’ve been to Dien Bien phu and talked to Black Thai people, they obviously differentiated themselves from the Kinh. And they described more about the characteristics of the Kinh such as the Kinh live in one-story house and etc. The Black Tai people mentioned more that they feel closer to the Tai in Laos and the North of Thailand than the Viet (Kinh). Anyway, it’s great that both of the Black Tai and the Kinh can live peacefully together.
Sorry, yes “Di” is the Vietnamese pronunciation of “Yi” (barbarian). Yea, I don’t recall seeing the Vietnamese use that term much to refer to actual people in their area.
That’s interesting what you say about the Black Tai. While that is how they think now, it would be interesting to know if they thought the same way say 100 or 200 years ago. Obviously they must have recognized a difference between themselves and others, but I wonder if they saw differences in the same way then as they do now.
The Black Tai wrote a lot, and there are apparently a lot of Black Tai writings in the Vien Han Nom in Ha Noi. However, I don’t think they let people see them. The last thing I heard was that they were trying to get people in the institute to learn enough Black Tai to be able to read them first. That seems like a real waste to me because someone who knows say Lao could read those sources with a lot more ease than a Vietnamese with limited knowledge of Black Tai. (obviously it would be best if Black Tai themselves could read these, and could be allowed to read these materials)
In any case, historical sources exist. Whether or not there is anything in them which can tell us how the Black Tai thought about the Vietnamese is unknown. And if they said bad things about the Vietnamese, you can be sure that no Vietnamese will ever tell the world about that. . .
That’s very interesting if one can research by comparing past and present attitudes of the Black Tai. But it’s like what you say, studying anything from the ethnic groups’ perspective, which is especially related to the Vietnamese, will NEVER tell to the world. That’s very pity. And again, it’s related to a political issue!
That’s pretty interesting. Are there any mentions of Cham people in this text? Some 19th century texts, when referring to Chams of Bình Thuận, do not use the word “Chăm” at all but rather the word “thổ danh” (native people) is used.
I just checked this text again, and don’t see any reference to people who I can see as Cham. I’ll look at it more closely later, but that’s my first impression, which of course would be interesting.
It is common of a Chinese view that people were either Man or Di because they lived in either south or west of the Central Kingdom. Where do you have the below information?
“The Chinese had a similar way of viewing people. There was a difference between “Yi” (barbarians) and “Man” (savages). Barbarians followed some Chinese cultural practices, whereas savages did not.”
Also, do you think the concepts of “Tho” and “Man” changed over time when “Vietnamese” used them?
Yea, there is the one saying which connects the different terms with different directions, but in practice that is not how I’ve found the terms used. There are comments in I think the Analects which make it clear that the Yi had rituals (li) and were therefore “semi-civilized.” Wasn’t emperor Shun from the Dong Y, for instance? (I think he’s the one) I have never found a reference anywhere which would suggest that “Man” were ever seen to be civilized at all.
If you look at the debates at the Chinese court in the early 1400s, the Vietnamese are usually referred to as Yi, but when a writer gets angry, he refers to them as Man.
When Vietnamese envoys went to pay tribute at court, they were referred to as Yi (never as Man), and this made them angry, as they felt that they were Hoa/Hua.
Many people don’t realize this, but in English the words “barbarian” and “savage” have the same connotations as Yi an Man.
Interesting document, could you elaborate a bit how the term “nhân chủng” [人種] was used in this text? Any definition, criterion, or geographical distribution for this? Among those peoples, could you find “Mường”?
Thanks!
This text has a section called “Races of Man and Thổ from the Three Regions” (三畿人蠻土人種) . What I have translated as “races” is “nhan chung.” I’ll try to translate some of what it says about the people and post it. It is clear that this is a transitional text from the premodern to modern periods. It divides people into different “nhan chung” but the way it describes people is very traditional.
For instance it says this about one people called “Cẩu savages” (狗蠻): “In the day they are people, but at night they transform into things. They like to rob. Every year they move to a new place. They live in the forests of Mai Mộc (?) in Hưng Hóa.”
Yes, there is a Mường people mentioned, however all it says about them is that they are deceitful, they poison people, and they live in mountain caves in Bắc Cạn (?).
Thank you.
Looking forward to new posts related to this document.