The Dai people (Burmese: ရှမ်းလူမျိုး; ; ; ; , ; , ; ) are several Tai-speaking ethnic groups living in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture and the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture of China's Yunnan Province. The Dai people form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. By extension, the term can apply to groups in Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar when Dai is used to mean specifically Tai Yai, Lue, Chinese Shan, Tai Dam, Tai Khao or even Tai in general. For other names, please see the table below.
Name ambiguity
The Dai people are closely related to the Lao and Thai people who form a majority in Laos and Thailand. Originally, the Tai, or Dai, lived closely together in modern Yunnan Province until political chaos and wars in the north at the end of the Tang and Song dynasty and various nomadic peoples prompted some to move further south into modern Laos then Thailand. As with many other officially recognized ethnic groups in China (See Gaoshan and Yao), the term Dai, at least within Chinese usage, is an umbrella term and as such has no equivalent in Tai languages, who have only more general terms for 'Tai peoples in general' (e.g., Tai Lue: . This term refers to all Dai people, not including Zhuang) and 'Tai people in China' (e.g., '), both of which include the Zhuang, for example, which is not the case in the Chinese and more specific terms, as shown in the table below. Therefore the word Dai, like with the aforementioned Yao, is a Han Chinese cultural concept which has now been adopted by other languages such as English, French, and German (see respective Wikipedias). As a solution in the Thai language, however, as in English, the term Tai Lue can be used to mean Dai, despite referring to other groups as in the table below. This is because the two main groups actually bear the same name, both meaning 'Northern Tai' (lue and nüa are cognate).
Although they are officially recognized as a single people by the Chinese state, these Tai people form several distinct cultural and linguistic groups. The two main languages of the Dai are Dai Lü (Sibsongbanna Dai) and Dai Nüa (Daihong Dai); two other written languages used by the Dai are Tày Pong and Tai Dam. They all are Tai languages, a group of related languages that includes Thai, Lao and Zhuang and part of the Tai–Kadai language family. Various languages of the Tai-Kadai language family are spoken from Assam in India to Hainan and Guizhou in China. The Dai people follow their traditional religion as well as Theravada Buddhism and maintain similar customs and festivals (such as Songkran) to the other Tai-speaking peoples and more broadly, in regards to some cultural aspects, to the unrelated dominant ethnic groups of Myanmar, Cambodia and Sri Lanka. They are among the few native groups in China who nominally practice the Theravada school of Buddhism. The term Tai in China is also used sometimes to show that the majority of people subsumed under the "Dai" nationality are mainly speakers of Thai languages (i.e. Southwestern Tai languages). Some use the term Daizurian to refer specifically to the sinicized Tai people living in Yunnan. The term is derived from the Chinese term 傣族人; pinyin: Dǎizúrén which is translated in Shan as တႆးၸူး taj4 tsuu4 meaning "the Tai who are in association/united".
Tai subgroups
Languages
Peoples classified as Dai in China speak the following Southwestern Tai languages.
Tai Lü language () Tai Nüa language (; Shan language) Tai Dam language () Tai Ya language () or Tai Hongjin ()
Yunnan (1998:150) lists 4 major Tai language varieties. Tai Lü language (): 400,000 speakers in Sipsongpanna, Menglian County, Jinggu County, Jiangcheng County, etc. Tai Nüa language (): 400,000 speakers in Dehong, Gengma, Shuangjiang, Tengchong, Baoshan, Longling, Changning, Cangyuan, Lancang, Zhenkang, Jingdong, etc. Tai Rui (): 40,000 speakers in Jinping, Maguan, Malipo counties, etc. Tianxin (): 20,000 speakers in Wuding, Luquan, Yongren, Dayao counties, etc. Representative dialect: Tianxin (), Wuding County
History
Early period
In 109 BCE, the Han dynasty established the Yizhou prefecture in the southwest of Yi (modern day parts of Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guizhou). In the twelfth century, the Dai (called Dai-Lue or Tai-Lue at this period) established the Jinghong Golden Hall Kingdom in Sipsong Panna (modern Xishuangbanna). Jinghong was the capital of this kingdom. The population of the kingdom was over one million and recognized the Chinese as their sovereign according to local records. The king had political and economic power and controlled most of the land and local water system.