The Bo people () are an ancient extinct people from the

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the ...

and

Sichuan Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of t ...

provinces of Southern China. They are famous for their hanging coffins. They were one of the various now extinct peoples from

Southern China South China () is a geographical and cultural region that covers the southernmost part of China. Its precise meaning varies with context. A notable feature of South China in comparison to the rest of China is that most of its citizens are not n ...

known collectively in Chinese records as the Baipu.

History

The Bo people were native to southeastern

. By the Zhou dynasty, they were called Pu (濮) (

Old Chinese Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 12 ...

( B-S): *''pˤok'') and mentioned among allies of Zhou against

Shang The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty founded by Tang of Shang (Cheng Tang) that ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and ...

. The Pu or Hundred Pu (百濮) was a designation of different 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 The Qin dynasty ( ; zh, c=秦朝, p=Qín cháo, w=), or Ch'in dynasty in Wade–Giles romanization ( zh, c=, p=, w=Ch'in ch'ao), was the first dynasty of Imperial China. Named for its heartland in Qin state (modern Gansu and Shaanxi), ...

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 The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last orthodox dynasty of China ruled by the Han pe ...

imperial troops, the Bo were massacred and have disappeared since then. Some descendants of the Bo were reportedly found in 2005 in Xingwen County,

Culture

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

Possible descendants

The Lachi people of Vietnam and China may be descended from the Bo, based on the archaic

exonym An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group ...

Labo (喇僰) in Chinese records. The

Lachi language The Lachi language (, Vietnamese: La Chí; autonym in China: '; autonym in Vietnam: ', where ' means "person") is a Kra language spoken in Yunnan, China and in northern Vietnam. There were 9,500 Lachi speakers in Vietnam in 1990. Edmondson (200 ...

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 *khra^C1 'people'). 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 Yibin (; Sichuanese Pinyin: nyi2bin1; Sichuanese pronunciation: ) is a prefecture-level city in the southeastern part of Sichuan province, China, located at the junction of the Min and Yangtze Rivers. Its population was 4,588,804 inhabitants, a ...

province a few centuries ago in order to escape wars.

Possible languages

Languages spoken by the Bo people(s) may have included: * Greater Bai languages ** Caijia language ** Longjia language *

Kra languages The Kra languages (also known as the Geyang 仡央 or Kadai languages) are a branch of the Kra–Dai language family spoken in southern China (Guizhou, Guangxi, Yunnan) and in northern Vietnam (Hà Giang Province). Names The name ''Kra'' comes ...

Loloish languages The Loloish languages, also known as Yi in China and occasionally Ngwi or Nisoic, are a family of fifty to a hundred Sino-Tibetan languages spoken primarily in the Yunnan province of China. They are most closely related to Burmese and its rel ...

** Ku language ** Luoji language 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').

References

* * *{{cite book , last=Tapp , first=Nicholas , year=2003 , title=The Hmong of China: Context, Agency, and the Imaginary , location=Leiden , publisher=Brill , isbn=9004121277 Ethnic groups in China Ethnic groups in Yunnan Ethnic groups in Sichuan

History

Culture

Possible descendants

Possible languages

See also

References