Baima Zangzu wei Dizu shuo xintan (The Baima Tibetans and the Di people of Chinese historical records: Challenging the link)

Ekaterina Chirkova (1)

1 CRLAO - Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l'Asie Orientale

This paper addresses a long-standing controversy surrounding the ethnicity of the Baima Tibetans, a Tibeto-Burman people in Western Sichuan Province whose ethnic and linguistic origins are yet to be satisfactorily ascertained. It focuses on one popular view, which attempts to link the present-day Baima Tibetans with the Di, an ancient Tibeto-Burman group documented in the Chinese historical records who inhabited roughly the same area until their gradual assimilation into the Han and the Tibetans during the Tang Dynasty. The paper examines and refutes all three types of evidence proffered in the literature in support of making such a link: geographical distribution, cultures and customs, and language. Focusing on the linguistic evidence, including autonyms and certain names of the Di contained in the historical texts, and two alleged Di loan words recorded in the ancient Chinese character dictionary《说文解字》, the paper makes use of first-hand fieldwork material to bear on the issue. It concludes that it is immature to say anything definite about the identity of the mysterious Di language or languages, let alone to directly link them with the speech of the modern Baima people, which is predominantly a Bodic language.

Baima yu (Baima hua, Baima zangyu) fenbu zai Sichuan sheng de Pingwu, Jiuzhaigou (yuanming Nanping), Songpan deng xian yiji Gansu sheng de Wenxian, shiyong renkou dayue 1 wan ren.

Cong 70 niandai yanjiu Baima yu zhijin, weirao Baima yu de guishu wenti, xueshujie yizhi cunzai zhe hen da de fenqi, zhuyao you Dizu shuo he Zangzu shuo.

Benwen zhongdian taolun Dizu shuo de yuyan genju: Tongguo shishu shang jizai de Diren de zicheng he mingzi, yiji "Shuowen jiezi" li tidao de Diyu de yixie ci lai gouni qi Gu Hanyu de mianmao, bing yu dangjin de Baima yu jinxing bijiao. Zuihou benwen dechu de jielun shi cong yuyan jiaodu lai kan, Baima Zangzu wei Dizu shuo hai quefa zugou de zhengju.

Mots clés: Baima; Di; Old Chinese; transcription

Domaines: Linguistique

Ekaterina Chirkova. Baima Zangzu wei Dizu shuo xintan (The Baima Tibetans and the Di people of Chinese historical records: Challenging the link). Bulletin of Chinese linguistics, 2008, 3 (1), pp.167-180. ⟨halshs-00104621v2⟩