Funeral Rites among the Lama Priests of the Monguor

In all cultures across the world, death and the traditions bound up in death are important aspects of one’s culture. Among the Monguor (also known as the Tu), one of the 56 officially recognised ethnic groups in China, there are certain funerary rites that must be adhered to in order to safeguard the community. In addition to this, deaths are categorised into different groups; those who have died a natural death, an unnatural death or the death of a lama.

A lama is a Tibetan or Mongolian priest of Lamaism (Tibetan Buddhism) and the death of one of these priests is of great concern among the Monguor. Death and the spirits are considered with great seriousness as if the proper rites are not performed correctly, then the spirit can raise havoc among the community.

If a lama is advanced in years or is clearly seriously ill, a coffin is built for him in advance. The coffin is constructed sloping at the top and is painted red with a sun and moon symbols. The box is built on a small scale, usually only big enough “accommodate the corpse, which is set in the box in a squatting position just prior to being carried to the cremation ground”.

As the lama dies, his clan and immediate family are invited to join in the ‘death watch’. As soon as the lama dies, his ajiu (important male maternal relative) is informed. The rest of his family and village are then told. On the first day of his death there are endless burning of symbolic paper money and flat pieces of fried bread (which are only used during the Spring Festival, the Day of Pure Brightness, and the anniversary of the death of the deceased, and are never eaten).

The body is then prepared. The body is generally tied in a squatting position, dressed in his finest clothes. His face is white-washed and covered in yellow silk. The head is crowned with a five-directional hat and then the body is placed in the centre of the north room facing the door. A table or chest is placed in front of him where offerings of fruit, money, large sugar crystals, a bowl of rice in which crossed chopsticks are inserted, bread, joss sticks, oil lamps, etc, are placed upon. The body will stay here until the third day of his death.

On the third day, the ajiu arrives to visit the deceased with a group of people. Several old women will walk behind him, singing loud laments. As soon as the ajiu arrives, family members rush out of the home and kneel outside on the ground, and, as the ajiu draws near, they kowtow, holding incense sticks. It is the older family members, and those who are closely related to the lama, that will kowtow and the entire family will wail before the ajiu enters the home.

After this, the body is then placed in his coffin. The windows are closed in order to prevent the curious looking in. As this happens, a retinue for wailing women set off for the cremation site, singling laments about the deceased. The woman going in front carries a wicker basket containing crumpled funeral bread and bits of "sacred paper" burned for the deceased. As she walks to the site, she will gradually throw out the contents of the basket. The women have effectively, “opened a road for the deceased to follow”.

The coffin is then brought to the site. The ajiu walks in front of the coffin and the rest of the family and community behind them. Once they reach the site, a screen of several blankets are placed around the oven before the corpse is placed seated upon it in privacy. “The coffin sedan is smashed to pieces and the pieces placed in the oven bottom, above a basin of liquefied butter and cypress needles”.

On one side, a group of lamas will assemble. Usually they number seven but any up to twenty will arrive. “After the lamas assemble and begin chanting, a lama hands the oldest xiaozi a long tree-branch, the end of which has been tied with cotton, dipped in butter, and set ablaze. The xiaozi accepts the torch, kowtows to the dead lama, then kneels and lights the fuel inside the cremation oven through the four small openings at the bottom”.

At this point the women leave and only the men remain. After an hour the rest of the villagers will leave as well so that only a few xiaozi (male relatives) and lamas remain. After the lamas have finished their chanting, they too depart.

The fire then burns out and after three days the oven is opened, and the bones are removed using red chopsticks, wrapped in yellow gold paper, and placed in a small container. This container may then be buried locally or sent to Kumbum (Taer Temple). The mourning period of the nephew of a lama lasts for 100 days. In this time they should not cut any facial hair or brush their hair. In addition to this, they are should not wash their faces until after the coffin is taken out.

The funerals and traditions surrounding the deaths of lamas among the Monguor are fascinating; it has been pondered by scholars as to the reasons why they are cremated and never buried in their ancestral burial grounds. It has been suggested that this is because they die childless and if they were buried in ancestral ground it could bring bad luck to the community – which future generations may not reproduce.

Bibliography:

Stuart, Kevin & Hu, Jun (1992) Death and Funerals among the Minhe Tu (Monguor), Asian Folklore Studies, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.

A look at the Salar’s Samarkand Origins

China is a country made up of 56 officially recognised ethnic groups, the Salar being one of them. They are a Turkic-speaking Islamic people who live mainly in Xunhua County in eastern part of Qinghai Province. Along with the other ethnic groups, they have their own distinct dialects, culture, history and origins.

The Salar themselves claim that their ancestry lies in Samarkand, in modern day Uzbekistan. In the 13th century, they moved eastwards until they reached modern day Qinghai Province. Scholars have agreed with the Salar and their migration from Central Asia to China has been met with much interest.

According to one scholar, Mi Yizhi, claims that there are three possible explanations of the Salar’s migration from Samarkand. In the first, he says that the Salar were once an Oghaz tribe known as the Qaluer. The Oghaz were the descendants of the eldest son of Dagh Khan, one of the six sons of Oghaz Khan who gave his name to the people.

Sometime between the 9th and 12th centuries the Qaluer changed their name to the Saluer and followed other Oghaz tribes from the Saihun River basin, Yili, and Rehai (Isighgol) to Hezhong (Transoxania), Hualazimo (Khorarim), Huluoshan (Khorasam in Northern Iran), and eastern Anatolia.

However, during the Selzuk Empire (c. 1055 – 1258) the Saluer were forced into moving once more to the west. There were some who stayed in Marou and Sarakhs (modern day Turkmenistan) are known as the Turkomans. Between 1370 and 1424 the Saluer came to Samarkand and then passed through the Turpan Basin (present day Xinjiang), and Suzhou, ultimately reaching the Salar's present home in the region known today as Xunhua.

The second explanation draws on the work of Mula Sulaiman's investigations into the Hui ethnic’s group origins. Mi has suggested that the Salar were the descendants of the brothers Kharaman and Akhman who lived near Salark in Turkmenistan. When they moved to Qinghai they took 170 families with them, and these were the ancestors of the Salar.

The third explanation lies in linguistic similarities. Scholars have suggested that the similarities in the languages of the Salar, the Turkoman and the Uzbek suggest that they were all one people at one time.

The Salar celebrate their heritage with the doye oyna, a play which traces their migration from Samarkand to China. It is a way for these remarkable people to remember their Central Asian heritage.

Bibliography:

Jianzhong, Ma & Stuart, Kevin (1996) "Stone Camels and Clear Springs" The Salar's Samarkand Origins, Asian Folklore Studies, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.

The History of the Dai People in China

The Dai people are one of the 56 officially recognised ethnic groups in China. According to the national census they have a population of around 1.2 million, living in the Dai Autonomous Prefecture and the Dehong Dai-Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture in Xishuangbanna in the southern part of Yunnan province.

Like with the rest of the ethnic groups in China, the Dai have their own oral language, belonging to the Zhuang-Dai branch of Zhuang-Dong Austronesian of Chinese-Tibetan Phylum and it has its own written script. The Dai have four forms of written script, however they only use the standard characters used in the Xishuangbanna and Dehong scripts.

The origins of the Dai people are said to have originated with the native aboriginal people on the southeast Yunnan-Guizhiou Plateau. These indigenous people are also the ancestors of the Bouyei, the Dong, the Shui, the Li and the Zhuang ethnicities.

The first mention of the Dai in Chinese records can be found during the reign of Wu Di of the Han Dynasty in 109 BCE. The emperor established the Yizhou Prefecture and in later years the Dais sent tribute to the Han court in the form of gold seals. The emperor was said to have called the Dai leader ‘Great Captain’. The Dai were, at this time, named ‘Dianyue’ or ‘Shan’. During the Tanf and Song dynasties they were called Jingchi, Huaman or Baiyi and Baiyi or Boyi during the Yuan and Ming dynasties. The Dai call themselves ‘Dai’ to express their devotion to peace and freedom.

During the ninth century, the Chinese recorded the livelihoods of the Dai people. Mainly agricultural, they developed a sophisticated method of irrigation farming, grew rice and used oxen and elephants to till the land. Records also stated that they used gold and silver to plate their teeth.

During the 12th century, the Dai were able to establish their own regime under the leadership of a Dai man named Bazhen. He united all the local tribes and established Jinghong as the capital. “According to local records, the kingdom had a population of more than one million, and was famous for white elephants and fine-breed horses. It recognized the Chinese imperial court as its sovereign. When Bazhen ascended the throne, he was given a ‘tiger-head gold seal’ by the Emperor, and the title ‘Lord of the Region’”. The Dai had even established the Mengmao Kingdom in earlier years with Ruilijiang as the capital.

The Dai are a truly remarkable people. In 638 CE, they created their own calendar and there are books in the Dai language to calculate solar and lunar eclipses. Theravada Buddhism is the main religion of the Dai and they have many festivals. These include the Door-Closing Festival in mid-June by the lunar calendar, the Door-Opening Festival in mid-September, and the Water-Splashing Festival in spring. The Water-Splashing Festival is still the most important festival where they splash water on each other and hold dragon-boat races in order to cleanse illnesses bad fortune and bring about a good harvest and weather for the following year.

Bibliography:

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/ljzg/3584/t17878.htm

A History of the Lahu in China

China is a united country made up of various ethnicities; indeed, there are 56 officially recognised ethnic groups that call China home. The largest numbers of these minority groups are the Zhuang, the Han and the Manchus, but the smaller groups have just a rich and fascinating history of their own.

As of 1990, the Lahu has a population of 411,476 and can be found across Yunnan's Lancang Lahu Autonomous County and neighboring counties such as Menglian, Shuangjiang, and Simao. The Lahu have their own language which belongs to Yi branch of the Tibeto-Burman Austronesian of the Chinese -Tibetan Phylum. For a long time, messages were passed by woodcarving the western alphabets that western priests had used. However, in 1957, an alphabetical script was created for them. Due to their frequent contact with the Han and Dai people, a large amount of the Lahus can also speak Chinese and the language of the Dais.

There are several branches of the Lahu family; the main groups are the Lahu Na, the Lahu Shi, the Lahu Nyi, and the Lahu Shehleh. All refer to themselves as Lahu instead of their individual sub-group identities. Lahu is the name they have given to themselves due to their long practice of hunting tigers. ‘La’ means ‘tiger’ and ‘hu’ means the method of roasting and eating. ‘Lahu’ in their own language can be translated as ‘roasting tiger-meat on a fire’.

The agricultural living of the Lahu is a combination of farming, raising domestic animals, gathering, hunting, and fishing. While many Lahu have engaged in altering degrees of intensive agriculture (irrigated wet-rice), slash-and-burn cultivation of hill rice, wheat, and buckwheat stays a noteworthy pattern of Lahu livelihood, especially for those in Burma and Thailand. The growth of cash crops, such as tea in Lancang, has also been increasing since the 1980.

There is a saying which is common among the Lahu, “"Hus-band and wife do it together" (phawd mawd nud ma ted gie te) and the often cited metaphor," Chopsticks work only in pairs”. These sum up the gendered allocation of labour among the Lahu. Married couples tend to own their properties jointly and practice a monogamous marriage. “The Lahu kinship system is fundamentally bilateral, although there are varying degrees of matrilineal or patrilineal skewing in different regions or subgroup”.

The main god of the Lahu is Xeul Sha and they practice an animalistic faith, although Mahayana Buddhism was introduced in the Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1911 CE), only a small proportion has converted to this. According to Lahu creation myths, the supreme god is actually a pair of male and female deities who emerged simultaneously. Since they exist only as a pair, they are frequently addressed in the Lahu vernacular by the single proper noun, Xeul Sha.

The Lahu are descended from the ancient Qiang tribe, who immigrated to present day northern Yunnan from northwestern China early in the third century CE. The emergence of the Nanzhao Kingdom forced the Lahu to move south. From the 18th century onwards, the Lahu are first mentioned in Imperial records as a distinctive ethnic group.

Like with many of the other ethnic groups in China, the Lahu underwent significant changes during the period when Chairman Mao was in power and the Cultural Revolution. These changes were not only political, but they suffered radical socioeconomic changes as well. But despite these, the Lahu have “since the dissolution of communes in Lancangi n 1982 Nevertheless, since the dissolution of communes in Lancang in 1982 Lahu married couples have regained their authority in managing the production and labourers of their households, reviving their ideal of "husband and wife do it together."

Bibliography:

Du, Shanshan (2000) “Husband and Wife Do It Together”: Sex/Gender Allocation of Labor Among the Qhawqhat Lahu of Lanchang, Southwest China, American Anthropologist, Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association.