Review of the Historical Sources Оn the South and Southwest of Yunnan Province

The paper aims to replenish the lacuna existing in the unique hand-written album stored at the academic library of the Saint-Petersburg State University (No. Xyl.F-25), the album introducing Yunnan province comprises 1 map of the entire Yunnan and 75 maps of its administrative units, but the album lacks maps and detailed descriptions of the southern and southwestern areas of Yunnan. The province has historically been populated by the non-Han ethnic groups, the areas not shown in the album have been bordering on Burma, Tai polities, Laos and Vietnam. The reason for absence of these areas in the album is that its original texts and maps are dated by approximately the 60s of the XVII century, a period when the southern areas have not yet been completely incorporated in the Chinese administrative system. Importantly, the area named  ‘Sipso`ng Panna’ (Ch. Xishuangbanna) inhabited by the Tai has been preserving its comparative independence from the Chinese state starting from its foundation in the XII century until 1950, yet it had to accept a status of a tributary state of both Burma and China. The paper first broadly outlines the facts of the regional history, further introduces the main sources in Chinese and Tai languages helpful for understanding the area under study. The author suggests sorting the sources into two groups: 1) Chinese sources focusing on Tai ethnic groups living in different parts of Yunnan; 2) sources on the south of Yunnan (Xishuangbanna, Puer etc). The largest bulk of sources are not surprisingly in Chinese, mostly being gazetteers and other official documents produced from Tang to Qing periods, while chronicles and genealogies of Xishuangbanna written in the local Tai language and translated into Chinese and English offer an alternative view of the region. The paper concludes that the Chinese sources tend to name the Tai using different terms and mix up the Tai, the Burmese and the Yizu. The sources addressing the south of Yunnan hardly contain mentions of the sovereign Tai polity that existed in Xishuangbanna.

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