History of Shan Churches in Burma 1861-2001 - Khamkoo

Shan people and their culture 1
CHAPTER ONE
SHAN PEOPLE AND THEIR CULTURE
SHAN is the Burman appellation for those races who call themselves Tai (wB;
wB;).
They are probably the most numerous and widely diffused Indo-Chinese race and occupy the valleys
and plateau of the broad belt of mountainous country that leaves the Himalayas and trends
Southeasterly between Burma proper on the west and China, Assam and Cambodia on the east, to the
Gulf of Siam. 1
The Origin of Shan
Tai are people of mainland Southeast Asia, including:
The Thai or Siamese (in central and southern Thailand),
The Lao (in Laos and northern Thailand),
The Shan (in northeast Myanmar @ Burma),
The Dai (in Yunnan province, China, Myanmar, Laos, northern Thailand and Vietnam) and
The Tai (in northern Vietnam).
Some historians claim that Tai people are, in BC 3000, the inhabitants of Asia, central part of
the land now known as China. 2 Rev. William C. Dodd, a Christian missionary, stated that the Tai
settled in the land now known as China before Chinese arrived, based on Chinese annals of 2200 BC. 3
The history of contact between the Tai and Han (Chinese) peoples dated back to 109 BC, when
Emperor Wu Di of the Han Dynasty set up Yizhou Prefecture in southwestern Yi (the name used to
signify the minority areas of what are now Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces). The Tai, in
subsequent years, sent tribute to the Han court in Luoyang, among the emissaries were musicians and
acrobats. The Han court gave gold seals to the Tai ambassadors and their chieftain the title “Great
Captain.” According to Chinese documents of the ninth century, the Tai had a fairly well developed
agriculture. They used oxen and elephants to till the land, grew large quantities of rice and had built an
extensive irrigation system. They used kapok for weaving, panned salt and made weapons of metal.
They plated their teeth with gold and silver. 4
According to Chinese annals, the “Ta Muong” (Great Muong) lived in the northwestern part
of Szechwan province, in western central China, even before Chinese migrated from the west. Ta
Muong would have been the ancestors of the “Ai Lao” or “Tai” race known as Pa, Pa Lao or PaYi in
China who later founded the powerful “Nan Chao Kingdom” in Yunnan province. In BC 1558 the Tai
had spread over a vast territory almost across the whole width of modern China. Tai have never been
called Chinese, nor claimed to have any ethnic links with the Chinese race. Throughout Chinese
historical records the Chinese name for the Tai has constantly been changed. 5 According to American
Missionary Rev. William W. Cochrane, Tai means Free. 6 Sometimes it is also written as Dai when refer
to Tai in China. The Dai ethnic group in China, with a population of about 1.2 million, mainly lives in
Dehong Dai-Jingpo Autonomous Region and Xishuangbanna (SipSongPanNa), which mean twelve
1 Rev. J. N. Cushing, D. D. Boston, American Baptist Missionary Union 1893, p3
2 History of Tai and Tai Country by Khoe Sean, (Shan) Published by Mok Ko Soi Leng Printing Press, Yangon, 1996 p1
3 The Tai Race, by William Clifton Dodd, published by Torch 1932, p5
4 http://www.china.org.cn/e-groups/shaoshu/shao-2-dai.htm, Apr 21, 2006
5 Tai Groups of Thailand by Joachim Schliesinger, Published by White Lotus, 2001, Vol 1, pp20-21
6 The Shans by W.W. Cochrane, published by Government Printing, Burma, 1915, Vol I, p15