Bo people (China)

The Bo people (Chinese: 僰人; pinyin: Bó rén) are an extinct people from the Yunnan and Sichuan provinces of Southern China. They are famous for their hanging coffins.[1] They were one of the various now extinct non-Sinitic peoples from Southern China known collectively in Chinese records as the Baipu.

History

The Bo people are native to southeastern Sichuan. By the Zhou dynasty, they were called Pu (濮). The Hundred Pu (百濮) was a designation of non-Chinese peoples living in the upper Yangtze river area, similar to the Hundred Yue of south Yangtze. The Hundred Pu was eventually conquered by the Ba state. The Qin dynasty invaded the Ba state in 316 BC and absorbed into its empire.

The Bo fortress of Lingxiao (凌霄城) on Bowangshan Mountain in Xingwen County were the last hold out in China against the Mongol conquest. It fell to the Mongols in 1288, more than 11 years after the end of the Song dynasty. In 1573, Lingxiao and Gong County was besieged by Ming imperial troops, the Bo were massacred and have disappeared since then (Tapp 2003:69-70).[2]

Culture

Hanging coffins carved from a single log and bronze drums are widely found in the areas once inhabited by Bo people.[1][3][4]

Possible descendants

According to Edmondson (2003:165), the Lachi people of Vietnam and China may be descended from the Bo, based on the archaic exonym Labo (喇僰) in Chinese records.[5] The Lachi language belongs to the Kra subgroup of the Kra-Dai language family. Today, the Lachi refer to themselves as qu31 te341, with qu31 meaning 'people' (from Proto-Kra *khraC1 'people').[5]

The Ku of Qiubei County currently speak a Loloish language, and still practice hanging coffin traditions. According to their own records, the Ku people's ancestors had migrated from Yibin, Sichuan province a few centuries ago in order to escape wars.

Languages

Languages spoken by the Bo people(s) may have included:

Words of Bo origin that still exist in the local dialect (tuhua 土话) of Gong County, Sichuan include máng máng 牤牤 or alternatively niōng niōng ('pig 猪'), and gà gà 尬尬 ('meat 肉') (Huang & Li 2006:25).

See also

References
  1. "Suspended Coffins of the Bo People". ChinaCultre.org. Archived from the original on 2008-08-30. Retrieved 2008-12-13.
  2. Tapp, Nicholas. 2003. The Hmong of China: Context, Agency, and the Imaginary, 69-70. Leiden: Brill.
  3. 僰为越论
  4. 兴文县境内民族 Archived September 27, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  5. Edmondson, Jerold A. and Shaoni Li. 2003. "Review of Lajiyu Yanjiu by Li Yunbing." In Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, 26 , no. 1: 163-181.
  • Huang Hualiang 黄华良; Li Shiwen 李诗文. 2006. Xuanya shang de minzu: Gongxian Boren ji xuanguan 悬崖上的民族：珙县僰人及悬棺. Chengdu: Bashu shushe 巴蜀书社. ISBN 7-80659-916-9
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