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

Yunnan Yunnan; is an inland Provinces of China, province in Southwestern China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 47.2 million (as of 2020). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the Chinese provinces ...

and

Sichuan Sichuan is a province in Southwestern China, occupying the Sichuan Basin and Tibetan Plateau—between the Jinsha River to the west, the Daba Mountains to the north, and the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau to the south. Its capital city is Cheng ...

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

Southern China Northern China () and Southern China () are two approximate regions that display certain differences in terms of their geography, demographics, economy, and culture. Extent The Qinling–Daba Mountains serve as the transition zone between ...

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 language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones ...

( B-S): *''pˤok'') and mentioned among allies of Zhou against Shang. 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 ( ) was the first Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China. It is named for its progenitor state of Qin, a fief of the confederal Zhou dynasty (256 BC). Beginning in 230 BC, the Qin under King Ying Zheng enga ...

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 The Song dynasty ( ) was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 960 to 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song, who usurped the throne of the Later Zhou dynasty and went on to conquer the rest of the Fiv ...

. In 1573, Lingxiao and Gong County was besieged by Ming 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 (also known as autonym ) is a common, name for a group of people, individual person, geographical place, language, or dialect, meaning that it is used inside a particular group or linguistic community to identify or designate them ...

Labo (喇僰) in Chinese records. 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 *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,

province a few centuries ago in order to escape wars.

Possible languages

Languages spoken by the Bo people(s) may have included: * Macro-Bai languages ** Caijia language ** Longjia language * Kra languages ** Lachi language *

Loloish languages The Loloish languages, also known as Yi (like the Yi people) and occasionally Ngwi or Nisoic, are a family of 50–100 Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily in the Yunnan province of Southwestern China. They are most closely related to Bur ...

** 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