Tai People and Their Languages:

Theories Concerning the Origin of the Tai Language and the Tai Homeland*

As we all know, language and humankind are inseparable. One cannot imagine a fullfleshed
human being unfurnished with speech, devoid of a means of communication of
thought. Simplistic theories about primitive people who were only able to gesticulate with
an occasional grunt have been long abandoned since the dawn of linguistic science.
Assuming that people have inhabited the Earth for more than one million years, one must
recognize that language, one of man’s greatest intellectual accomplishments, is ancient.
Historical time and written records however, does not date back more than 7,000 years.
Consequently, discussions of the origin and evolution of language, any language, have
been taboo in the field of linguistics for a number of years. For example, in the French
Société de Linguistique, if some bold soul dares invoke this question, the best that he or
she could hope to get is contemptuous raised eyebrows. One can sympathize with the
French scholars, for their silence is caused by our inadequate knowledge on the subject ofthe evolution of language. No fossil cries were ever found at the Ban Chieng1 dig. Morris
Swadesh’s (1971, p. 158) tongue in cheek remark emphasizes this fact, “because sounds
do not turn to stone”. The science of today enables us to date the earliest bones in Ban
Chieng around 4430 B.C. (Charoenwongsa & Diskul, 1978, p. 45), but it cannot tell us which language those ėarliest jaws formulated even though some Thai scholars, in their
nationalistic enthusiasm, readily saw the resemblance between the skeletons of Ban
Chieng and the present-day Thai people. Having thus phrased the caveat, the writer asks for the reader’s understanding that this is not an attempt to answer the unanswerable: the
origin of the Tai language. However, the question about the homeland of the Tai people,
albeit a human attempt to probe the unsubstantiated past, still permits a variety of research
possibilities. Theories put forth by different researchers will be enumerated
chronologically (the oldest theory first) in the following. Again I must caution that all of
these are still theories, not proven facts.

1. The Altaic Homeland

This theory may be recorded as one of the most unlikely ideas of the century, yet it had
won the official sanction of the Thai government until recently. Even today there are still
diehard believers who consider those who question this theory unpatriotic. How is it that
locating the homeland of the Tai-speaking people at the foot of the Altai Mountains
amounts to patriotism? This concern regarding Tai nationalism is better understood if we
put this theory into the time frame in which it was first conceived. In the later years of the
reign of King Rama VI (1910-1926 A.D.) and in the early years of King Rama VII (1926-
1934 A.D.), there was a strong movement of nationalism in Thailand and particularly an
anti-Senitic movement. King Rama VI wrote an essay in which he called the Chinese “the
Oriental Jew” and in many plays that he wrote he depicted Chinese men as “bad guys” or
“spies of the (some unspecified) enemy”.
The idea underneath the Altaic homeland theory was that the Thai people had suffered
much under the hands of the Chinese intruders who plundered our land and forced us to
move down from the Altai mountains in Mongolia to the present site of Thailand. Simply
put, this theory claims that Thais migrated to their present location as a last ditch from
where there could be no possible retreat (further migration would put the Thai people into
the Gulf of Thailand). Understanding this idea underneath the Altai theory, also gives a
clearer explanation for why government sponsored lectures among the village-scouts, in
the campaign against the communist insurgents a decade ago, held tightly to the theory
about the Altai origin of the Thai people. Unfortunately they discredited themselves by
stating the theory as a sacred-fact and not as a possible theory.
Who was responsible for putting forth this theory? It would be difficult to pinpoint the
originator. While the theory revealed ideas prevalent among educated Thais in the early
part of this century, the man who put the theory in writing was Khun Vichit-Matra, a jurist
and man-of-letters. His book entitled Lak Thai (literal translation is Thai Pillar), written
under his penname “Kancanakaphan”, won the Thai government award as the best essay
of the year in 1928 A.D. In this book, the Altaic homeland of the Tai-speaking people
was described and the time frame was speculated at 7,000 years ago. As it reflected the
ideas of the period, so the theory caught on rapidly.
In 1937, the Royal Survey Department of the Ministry of Defense printed a map of the
historical movements of the Tai-speaking people depicting the starting point of the
journey to be the Altai Mountains. The Altaic idea and the map showed an elephant
moving down along a vertical line from the Altai mountains, following the longitude of
100° across the Kansu and Szechuan provinces of China to Yunnan, and finally into
present day Thailand. This map of migration routes was repeated in many books that
followed Khun Vichit-Matra’s Lak Thai, such as in Phra Barihan-Thepthani’s Prawat
Chat Thai (History of the Thai Nation) which was printed as late as 1968 A.D. (though the
manuscript was written much earlier as Phra Barihan-Thepthani is a contemporary of
Khun Vichit-Matra). Some dissenting voices were raised among Khun Vichit-Matra’s
own contemporaries, notably Phya Kosakorn-Vicarn. In the Silpakorn Journal in 1948
A.D., Phya Kosakorn-Vicarn questioned the theory that he said was based on such little
things as the likeness of the names between the Altai and the Tai people. However,
dissenting voices have been feeble for many years, at least among the Thais. The arrival
of western anthropologists brought individuals who could point out the obvious without
suffering the tarnish of looking unpatriotic. B.J. Terwiel (1979) summarized the
improbability of the Altaic theory in these terms:
Although nobody is as yet certain where the ancestors of the Tai peoples lived several
millennia B.C., it is highly unlikely that it was anywhere near Mongolia. The Tai peoples
are everywhere intimately associated with rice-growing in the relatively warm and flat
lowlands of southern China and mainland Southeast Asia. Their traditional houses are also
adapted to suit the wet lowlands: these are built on stilts. A culture which originates from
Mongolia and travels during the last millennia B.C. through the northern Chinese deserts to
warmer regions cannot be associated with irrigated rice and houses on stilts. There is no
historical or archaeological evidence which makes it plausible that the Tai ever were within
a thousand miles of Mongolia or the Altai mountains. (p.5)

2. The Nan Chao Homeland

Nan Chao is the name of the ancient kingdom in Yunnanwhose court was centered at
Tali-fu during 2205 B.C. – 1253 A.D. The history of the kingdom of Yunnan, as reported
by M. Carthew (1952), was written by the Chinese scholar Yang-Tsai in 1537 A.D. and
discovered and translated into English by G.W. Clark in 1894 A.D. This book, History of
the Southern Princes, is extremely obscure as G.W. Clark published it by his own means
in a very limited edition for distribution to his friends. Carthew writes that only four
copies are now known to exist and they are all in the hands of one owner. Carthew did
not identify that owner, saying that, “at any rate at the present date this book is unknown
in the libraries of Europe and America” (Carthew, 1952, p. 2). If we are willing to believe
the stories in this book, we have only Carthew (now deceased) to trust. History of the
Southern Princes, as related by Carthew, gives a detailed accọunt of the Thai “race” in
Yunnan from the earliest times. The beginning is compiled from local legends, but the
recorded history commenced only in 280 B.C. The document gives the name of every
king who ruled the Nan Chao kingdom and the chief events of each reign until the
kingdom ceased to exist independently after its conquest by Kublai Khan in 1253 A.D.
There are two problems concerning this book. First of all, its rarity, more accurately its
non-existence, does not permit further research. Secondly, even if we trust that Carthew
accurately copied the History of the Southern Princes and trust that Clarkfaithfully
translated Carthew’s work and also trust that the Chinese scholar Yang-Tsai adequately
described the historical events in Nan Chao, there is still the question of identifying: the
“Tai-ness” of the Nan Chao kingdom. Carthew admits that, “In the whole history there is
no single trace of a Thai name with the exception of the word “Chao” or chief. Every
name sounds like a Chinese” (Carthew, 1952, p. 2). But he also tends not to question too
much and seems content with the lack of certainty, “If however one examines the Chinese
records of pilgrimages, embassies, etc., to foreign countries from the beginning of the
Christian era down to the end of the 19th century, all names, even English names, are made
to sound as if they were Chinese.” (Carthew, 1952). Carthew was proud to present to the
Siam Society in 1952 that the History of the Southern Princes was in fact the history of
the Thai in Yunnan. Apart from the History of the Southern Princes, Carthew also
mentioned Gerini as the first person to connect the kingdom of Nan Chao with the Thai of
Thailand. Unfotunately he did not specify which Gerini? And which pieces of work by
Gerini?
The Gerini question is not too difficult to trace. In all the historical and philological
literature concerning ancient Siam, there is only one researcher by the name of Gerini.
Major G.E. Gerini wrote and exchanged views with E.H. Parker concerning the question
of the terms Shan and Siam. Digging up all known pieces of work by Gerini listed inbibliographies reveals a quite unexpected result. Instead of championing the opinion that
the Thai of Thailand are descendants of the Nan Chao people, Gerini, in his article entitled
Shan and Siam, claims a belief that Siam (the present country of the Thai people) has
always stood in its present place on the Gulf of Siam.2 He also explains his belief that this
is the country identified by Ptolemy as Samaradê. Gerini was absolutely certain in his
opinion and wrote in the strongest of terms that are too long to quote here. Suffice may be
this example:
… I have yet another argument which is decisive on the point and throws the name of Siam
right back into the very first century of our era. This argument was the outcome of my
researches on the ancient geography of Indo-China which resulted in the identification of
most places named by Ptolemy in the India Extra-Gangem, and enabled me to show that the
city or district of Samaradê, located by the eminent Alexandrine geographer on the shores of
the Gulf of Siam, is nothing more nor less than Samaratthe or Syamarastra, i.e., Siam
6 Tai people and their languages
proper. This identification is absolutely certain and no possible muddling and shuffling of
Ptolemy’s data can shake it. (Gerini, 1898, p. 148)
Gerini may be proved right in his opinions, but is definitely not one of the champions of
the Nan Chao homeland for the Tai people. On the contrary, Gerini may be interpreted as
the precursor of the idea that the Tai people have always been on the present site of the
kingdom of Thailand. Noting one finer point of difference, Gerini identifies the place
name of Siambut does not say much as to the ethnic group which occupies the area with
any of the names “Tai,” “Thai” nor “Siamese.”
The idea about the Nan Chao Homeland of the Tai people is based not only on the evasive
History of the Southern Princes already mentioned, but also on the work of one famous
scholar of the last century, Terrien de Lacouperie. Unfortunately this scholar is often
quoted, sometimes second-handedly or even third-handedly, without bothering to read
closely what he says. Had modern scholars scrutinized Lacouperie closely in the context
of our modern knowledge of the ethnic groups and languages of Southeast Asia, they
doubtfully would have continued to quote him. Consider Lacouperie’s ideas about the
“Tai Shan race”:
Their ancestors seem to have been more than anything else, mere offshoots of the great Mon
race, settled westwards that is to say in the north of modern Setchuen, where their racial
characteristics slowly developed…An ethnological hypothesis which would make the Tai
Shan race the outcome of an intermingling in irregular proportions of Mon, Negritos, and
Chinese, would not be objectionable in any way, linguistic, historical, or physiological. (De
Lacouperie, 1885, p. 1)
Nowadays it would be quite difficult for ethnologists to view the development of a race in
this way, still more difficult to find linguists who would view the formation of the Tai
language as the outcome of an intermingling in any regular or irregular proportions of
Mon (which belongs to the Austroasiatic language family), Negritos (which, taken to
mean the languages of the negritos-like people of Malaysia, belongs also to the
Austroasiatic language family), and Chinese. If this idea is not sufficiently boggling, de
Lacouperie continues about the Shan,I am not indisposed to say that the continue Shang (i.e., traders) who overthrew the Hia
dynasty and gave their name to the following one, were connected with the Shan race, and
that their very name (or a form of it) is perhaps the antecedent of that of Shan or Siam.
Many names much like these, such as Tchang, Siang, Shen, Sien, etc., etc., are met with in
the nomenclature of native clans and tribes of the same stock in its earlier seats in central
China, and leave no doubt that they all represented one original name. (de Lacouperie,1885)
In his flowing enthusiasm in etymological exercise, de Lacouperie equated the Shan with
the Mung thus,
The great Mung, or Ta Mung, are obviously of the same race, in which we cannot fail to
recognize the Mung, the Shan …their exact spot was in the Western part of the Setchuen
province …They formed the leading family of the Nantchao agglomerations as well as that
of several others in later times. (de Lacouperie, 1885)
Oddly enough the dissenting voices3 opposing the theory that the Nan Chao people were
Thai did not spear-head their attacks at de Lacouperie’s flimsy etymological exercise (the
connection of the Shan people and the Chinese dynasty of Shang) nor on his view that Tai
Shan was a métis language resulting from the mix of Mon, Negritos and Chinese. Michael
Blackmore (1967) and B.J. Terwiel (1978, 1979) have done excellent worksummarizing
why one should not view Nan Chao or the area around Tali in Yunnan as the Tai
homeland. They refer to the great traveler H.R. Davies’ (1909) experience, in Yunnan,
that the Shan and Mon-Kmer languages were hardly spoken north of the latitude 25° N.
As Tali, the capital of Nan Chao, is situated well to the north of 25° 50' N, it was not
likely to be the dwelling place of the Tai speaking population. Later the German
geographer Wilhelm Credner (1935) supported Davies by stating his finding that the
present-day habitat of the Shans of Yunnan was restricted to the tropical valleys of
Southern Yunnan. Credner also noticed that the Shan of Yunnan cultivated only rice
during the summer while in winter they preferred to relax at home and not take up the
cultivation of temperate grains such as wheat and barley, which were cultivated by their
neighbors who came from the north. Blackmore paraphrased Credner in this way:
Credner stated this could only happen with people long accustomed to a tropical climate
with rice as their traditionally cultivated food plant. Their migration into the tropical valley
and valley plains of southern Yunnancould not have taken place from the north, but only
from the east, from the tropical lowland of the river plains and coastal regions of South
China. (Blackmore, 1967, p. 64) The Yunnanese Shan, as viewed by Davies and Credner, are thus very far removed from the descendants of the Shang dynasty in central China as proposed by de Lacouperie. Another supporting weight against the Nan Chao homeland for the Tai people comes from the evidence of the names of the kings of Nan Chao. In The Legends of Nan-Chao
complied by Yang Shên and quoted in Lo Ch’ang-P’ei (1945, p. 361), the genealogy of the kings of Nan-Chao, according to Pa’s Ancient History, isPyo-tso-ti, Ti-mung-tso, and Mung-tso-tu. After that there are thirty-six generations down to the following:

1. Si-nu-lo 8. Sün-lo-k’üan

2. Lo-ch’êng 9. K’üan-lung- ch’êng

3. Ch’êng-lo-pi 10. Ch’êng-fêng-you

4. P’i-lo-ko 11. Shih-lung

5. Ko-lo-fêng 12. Lung-shun

6. Fêng-kia-yi 13. Shun-hwa-chen

7. Yi-mou-sun

Lo Ch’ang-P’ei (1945) points out that the genealogical patronymic linkage system is a dominant cultural trait of Tibeto-Burman speaking tribes, and he shows that this patronymic linkage system existed among the Burman, the A-chit, the Moso or Na-khi, the Lolo, the Woni and the A-ka. This added testimony of the patronymic linkage system of the names of the Nan Chao rulers seems to put the Tai out of the ruling house of Nan
chao. There has never been throughout Tai history such a record of name linkage. Nor are there records of three-syllable names, first-middle-final, such as quoted. Names of earlier Tai kings (prior to the Sanskrit-Pali and Khmer influences) usually consisted of only one syllable, but not this was not obligatorily and began with the same consonant (with a remarkable incidence of the /1/ initial consonant) from father to sons such as Hkun
8 Tai people and their languages

Long4 and Hkun-Lai (Gogoi, 1976, p. 3) or Kun-Lung4, Kun-Lai, Koun – Borom4 or Bolom
and Koun La (Lefevre-Pontalis, 1909, p. 497) or Lo T’ai Lü T’ai or Li T’ai (names of Kings of Sukhodaya (Coedes, 1924, 1978, pp. 13, 61, 76, 91). At present, in scholastic circles at least, the idea that the Nan Chao State during the 7th - 13th century was ruled by a Tai dynasty has been discredited. However, there are some fierce patriots who view the fall of this theory as equal to the shrinking of Thai territory. Take for instance the poignant question from one Thai dramaturgist to a Thai scholar, “Why did you want to cease our great territory of Nan Chao at the instigation of foreign

researchers?”

3. The Coastal Regions of South China and North Vietnam

There are so many scholars who ascribe to this theory, basing their reasoning on several  cademic disciplines over a long span of time, that it is necessary for researchers to look at some of the important works proposing this theory.5 Prince Damrong Rajanubhab, the father of Thai historians, considers that Tai poeople at one time inhabited the whole region in the southern part of China from Hu-Nan, Kuei-Chou, Kuang-Tung and Kuang-Hsi (1924, p. 13).6 Prince Damrong does not indicate his source but probably considered the San Kuo, or Romance of the Three Kingdoms7 as his point of reference since he alludes to this book and claims the year 400 of the Buddhist Era (143 B.C.) as the first time the Chinese began to push the Tai, under the chief Beng

Hek, from their homeland. This view of Prince Damrong has had a profound effect on many Thai scholars, notably the former Prime Minister, M.R. Kukrit Pramoj who popularized the heroic struggle of Beng Hek under the hands of the Chinese strategist Chu-Ko Liang. Kukrit Pramoj is one of the most widely read authors in Thailand.

At least three ethnologist-historians arrive at the conclusion that the Tai were the former inhabitants of the fertile lowlands of south-eastern China. Von Eickstedt (1944, pp. 155-130 quoted in Wiens, 1954, p. 30 and in Terwiel, 1979, p. 6) claims that southern China was actually the land of the Tai. Eberhard (1950, pp. 19, 21) traces the Tai (together with the Yao and the Tunguses) culture to the Lung-Shan culture and considers the Tai to be the eastern neighbors of the Shang dynasty (1600 B.C. - 1028 B.C.). During the time of the unrest narrated in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (220-265 A.D.), continued Eberhard, the Tai people resided in the state of Wu (near the present Nanking). He claims, “It’s country (the state of Wu) consisted of marshy, water-logged plains, or mountains with narrow valleys. Here Tai people had long cultivated their rice, while in the mountains Yaotribes lived by hunting and by simple agriculture” (Eberhard, 1968, p. 111). In this book of history, Eberhard is not explicit as to why he considers all lowland rice-growers of southern Chinaas belonging to a Tai-type culture. Nevertheless his reasons must stem from his research into the comparative cultures of the various people of south and east China. Eberhard (1968) describes various cultural complexes or motifs which he calls “cultural chains.” The “cultural chains” detail the characteristics of Thai culture, such as farming of rice in river-valleys and the chewing of betel nuts.He explains that these are also characteristics of the people of the south of China.

The southern part of China (as suggested by Von Eickstedt) and the southeastern part of China (as suggested by Eberhard) are vast areas, making it necessary to narrow down the area as to the possible homeland of the Tai people. Mote (1964) observes that there is good evidence for a limited movement of the Tais some 150 or 200 miles up the Mekhong River into Central Yunnan, and perhaps for short distances northward into other places in south China. Mote also suggests that the Tai people may have originated in the region between Kwangtung and northern Vietnam.

Motes’ suggestions agree exactly with what A.G. Haudricourt suggested a decade earlierin 1953: The Tai languages situated west of the Red River such as Siamese, Shan, Lao, White Tai,Black Tai are very similar to one another; on the contrary on the eastern side of that river we find the languages which are more or less aberrant:8 Dioi, Caolan, Mak, Sui, or languages which are distant cousins such as Kelao, Tulao, Lati, Laqua. It seems that the Tai languages may have originated in the south of China and may not have spread across the Red River9 before the 10th century A.D.10 (Haudricourt, 1953, p. 123) Later linguists such as Chamberlain also put the headwaters of the Tai people in the Red river delta, “…the Tai began migrating westward and southwestward from the ancient capital of Ba Thuc in the 8th century, and that during the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries they found their way approximately to their present homes in Southeast Asia.” (Chamberlain, 1975, p. 58). In another work based on evidence from regional taxonomy referring to animals found only along the coast as opposed to further inland, Chamberlain feels more and more convinced that the ancestor of Proto-Tai must have inhabited the valley of the lower Yangtze (Chamberlain, 1979, pp. 1-2). Benedict’s (1942) famous study that put into the limelight four distant cousins of the Tai language: Laqua, Lati, Kelao and Li also serve to draw our attention to the China-North
Vietnam border region. Laqua and Lati are languages of the China-Tonkin border region; Kelao is the language of southcentral China; and Li is the language of the island of Hainan. Benedict invokes these four languages as evidence of an archaic Thai-Indonesian linguistic complex. In Benedict’s view, these four languages, which he grouped under the term Kadai Languages, form a bridge linking the Tai linguistic stock and the Indonesian linguistic stock. Whether we subscribe to Benedict’s Theory or not, it is undeniable that the southern China-Tonkin border is the area in which the highest number of Tai dialects is found, including some dialects (such as the said Kadai) very aberrant from mainstream Tai. This fits well into the linguistic explanation that such an area might be the original place in which the Tai language developed. In a later study Benedict took up the questionagain, The Austro-Thai language family, as recently set up by the writer (1966), includes Indonesian and the Austronesian languages in general, together with Thai, Kadai, and certain “para-Thai” languages (Kam-Sui, Ong-Be).  

The data presented in this study

point to an origin on the Asiatic mainland, roughly in the South China region.

(Benedict, 1975, p. 35) (my emphasis)

Thus Benedict’s view as to the relationship of the Tai language family may be different from others in that he sees a linkage with Indonesian, but his view on the homeland of the Tai goes along with other linguists and ethnologists who place it in the South China region. This is also the view of the present writer. Apart from the usual linguistic argument that the Red River delta counts the highest number of Tai dialects, this area presents several cultural traits that belong to the proto-Tai, prior to the Indian (and Buddhist) influence. This area was also originally a federation of twelve Tai states called Sip Song Chau Thai, which means the twelve Tai chiefs, or twelve Tai states. This division into several citystates reflects the earlier political grouping of the Tai before their consolidation into a kingdom. The name of the chief town in this area is also significant. Dien-Bien-Phu was built on the earlier site of a Tai town named Muöng Theng (pronounced Thεεng) which means ‘city of god(s)’. Theng, theeŋ or theeng is a Proto-Tai Word for ‘god(s)’, occurring in many Tai dialects from Assam (India) to the south of China. The Tai of earlier times, as well as of today, have had the tendency to call their city ‘the city of god(s)’, but nowadays we all it Krung-thep. Thep is from the Pali-Sanskrit deva meaning ‘god(s)’. The name Muong Theng is testimony of the same Tai mentality but using the proper Tai word instead of the Pali-Sanskrit loan. Also significant is the fact that the Black River and the Red River arise in upper Tonkin and that the Dien-Bien-Phu area is the area inhabited by the Black Tai. Studies11of the culture of the Black Tai, practices such as the veneration of and sacrifice to Phi Muöng (spirit guarding the town), the land use system; as well as their folklore and legends, often suggest that these are things that should have existed prior to the time of Buddhist influence from India on the Tai. Some archaeological researches also point in the same direction. Bayard (1975, quoted in Terwiel, 1979, p. 7) places Thai-Kadai-speakers of the fourth and third millennium B.C. in the coastal regions of what is now northern Vietnam and south China. As to the latter’s view, the present writer feels more confident about the where than the when. The fourth and third millennim B.C. is too far in the past to permit any verification with linguistic tools.Archaeologists might have a better say at this point. The age of Proto-Tai, the common stock from whence all Tai languages developed, has been estimated by Gedney to be not more than two thousand years ago (Gedney, 1988, p. 69).12 This more recent time frame is based on the similarity among Tai dialects of today (if Tai dialects are that similar, they might not have been separated for a long time from each other). Given a strong form of government such as that developed among the Black Tai with its intricate closely knitted system of marriage among the chiefs’ families, might a more remote time frame be hypothesized for Proto-Tai? Similarity can be due to early standardizing factors such as good communication, intermarriage and last but not least, literacy (at least among the ruling class). The last point is worth pondering if we notice that the Tai dialects that are the most aberrant from the others are dialects which have not had an alphabet until the coming of western missionaries in the 17th and 18th centuries.

4. The Indonesian Homeland

There are also proponents of a theory that Tai peoples had their homeland in the South, along the Indonesian archipelago and particularly on the Javanese island. Fewer numbers of scholars adhere to this theory than to the third theory. Among the very first explicit rejections of the theory of placing the Thai into a Sino-Thai group linguistically or ethnologically speaking, the name of the Danish autodidact ethnologist, Eric Seidenfaden, can be cited (Seidenfaden, 1958, published in 1967, p. 1). Seidenfaden also referred to earlier scholars (Dr. Mademoiselle Colani, Louis Finot, Olov Janse, Goloubew) who had studied the inhabitants of Northern Vietnam(Vietnamese, Muongs, Tai tho, Tai Nung and The Yao) and arrived at the opinion that these peoples come nearer to the Indonesian element than to the Mongolian. Seidenfaden also cited the German anthropologist von Eickstedt(1976, p. 6) as having noticed that the Thais are so strikingly like the Philippinos. However, all these scholars, though they believe in the Thai-Indonesian affiliation, never talked about the Tai migration from the South. Their position on the subject was like that of Paul K. Benedict (viz supra). To the contrary, Dr. Somsak Phansomboon, a medical doctor, based his study upon his own research into the blood group distributions of 421 blood samples collected from patients in Siriraj Hospital and found that “The Thai race has very high B frequency, which is characteristic of southeastern and central Asians. The Thai people also possess a rather high M. frequency, which agrees well with that of the population of the Malay Archipelago” (Phansomboon, 1957, p. 58), and “It will be seen that the gene frequency percentages of these blood factors of the Thai closely resemble those of the Indonesians, and particularly those of the Javanese” (Phansomboon, 1957, p. 62), and finally “My investigation of the ABO, MNS, RL, Lewis, Kell and Duffy blood groups in the Thai people have led me to conclude that they migrated from the south, rather than from the north, to their present home.” (Phansomboon, 1957, p. 63).Unfortunately, Dr. Phansomboon did not receive the necessary support to do further study of the blood groups of the Thai in order to formulate a more complete hypothesis on the migrations of the Thai race to its present home and he did not continue his research. Most of the general public is not aware of this finding based on the blood groups of the Thai and no one cares to argue as to the sufficiency of considering the sole testimony of the blood groups. When laymen look for the proponent of this theory, they often wrongly quote Paul K. Benedict as the source. Contrary to popular understanding, Benedict, though the number-one advocate of the theory of the affiliation between the Thai language and the Indonesian language, never once talked about the Thai migration from the South. The homeland of the Thai and the Indonesians in Benedict’s view lies in the south of  China at the place where we found the remnants of the Kadai languages. Thus we read in Benedict’s famous article of 1942 (reissued as Appendix I of his 1975 treatise on the subject of Austro-Thai), The true Indonesian substratum on the Asiatic mainland is represented by four scattered languages in southern China, northern Tonkin, and Hainan, all of which constitute a single linguistic stock (Kadai)…and…It is generally agreed that the Indonesian migrations have proceeded from the Asiatic mainland,… (Benedict, 1975, p. 438) Dr. Phansomboon’s idea that two or three thousand years ago, the stocks of people who were the ancestors of the present-day Thai left Indonesia, or more specifically Java, and migrated northward needs to be verified archaeologically. Historically this theory has no evidence for it; historical records as well as legends are mute concerning such ancestors. Up till now no archaeological report has come to light that lends support to such a theory. As has been said above, Bayard’s archaeological findings are more congruent with placing speaker of the Tai languages in the coastal regions of south China and North Vietnam (Bayard, 1975, p. 75 cited in Terwiel, 1979, p. 7). In regard to linguistic findings, this theory also finds no support. No trace of a Tai language has been found in Indonesia.

The Tai language spoken in Malaysiais confined only to the four northern-most states adjacent to Thailand. This is a testimony to the recent migration from Thailand being that there is almost no variatiọn among the Tai languages in those four states; all of them resemble the language that is spoken in Takbai, Thailand.

 5. The Present-place Homeland

This is the theory that proposes that the Tai peoples have always lived in present-day
Thailand. In fact, this theory is attractive to Thai patriots who prefer to think that the Thai have never suffered aggression from any other people and have always held their own on their present territory. But this view is incongruent with the historical and archaeological findings that propose an earlier settlement of the Mon people in the central part of Thailand (the Dvaravati Kingdom) and the Khmer influence in Lopburi and the eastern part of Thailand. Consequently, though this view is attractive to most Thai, no scholar has ventured it into writing until Dr. Sood Sangvichien wrote of it in Journal of the Siam Society in 1966.13 Dr. Sangvichien, a medical doctor and anatomist, based his report on 37 prehistoric skeletons that he helped the Thai-Danish prehistoric expedition excavate from the Ban-Kao site in Kanchanaburi Province during 1960-62. Dr. Sood compared those 37 neolithic skeletons with skeletons of present-day Thai people on several aspects, particularly on the artificial deformities of the teeth and on the alveolar prognatism and concluded in a guarded statement that we need to do more research in order to arrive at the conclusion that the present territory of Thailand has been home to ancient peoples who were not much different from the presentday Thai. Outside scholarly circles, this theory has been gaining momentum at present. There are suggestions, for example, that the Dvaravati Kingdom had been a Thai kingdom all along; that a mysterious kingdom had existed on the site of Phimai, Nakorn Ratchaseema and that the inhabitants of this kingdom were ancestors of the presentday Thai; that the skeletons from Ban Chieng, Udorn Thani resemble the skeletons of presentday Thai people. It remains to be seen whether these suggestions will be supported by archaeological findings. Linguistically speaking, these suggestions are quite farfetched. Early steles excavated in the central part of Thailandhave been found to be engraved upon in the ancient Mon language, or in Pali and Sanskrit or in the ancient Khmer language. Moreover, the Thai language spoken in the central part of Thailandis in conformity with the presentday standard Thai language and does not present a picture of competing varieties of dialects which would be the case if it were the original place where the common Tai language had sprouted. So far, apart from Dr. Sood Sangvichien’s writing, the proponents of the present-place homeland theory have been writing in a guarded way, using a pseudonym or phrasing their suggestion in the form of interrogatives or exclamatives. Only time will tell whether this theory should be put in the same waste-paper basket as other suggestion that the ancient ancestors of the Thai were the inhabitants of the Mohenjodaro culture in the Indus valley of India. This last suggestion, written under a pseudonym of course, does not have any follower so the present writer does not see fit to call it the 6th theory and thus waste more space.

Notes

* This article is excerpted from the chapter entitled Tai people and their languages: A preliminary observation published in the book called Development, modernization, and tradition in Southeast Asia: Lessons from Thailand, 1990.

1 Ban Chieng in Udorn Thani Province in the northeast of Thailandis one of the best known archaeological site of the country. Reports on it abound in scholastic journals over the last 20 years. Newcomers to Southeast Asian scenes could begin with Pisit Charoenwongsa Ban Chieng, Bangkok, 1973. The Journal 1 (January 2005): 3-15 13

2 Gerini wrote the article in 1898 calling the Gulf of Thailand by its old name: the Gulf of
Siam. 3 Notably the scholars who refuted the theory that the Tai’s homeland was in Nan Chao
are, to list them chronologically: 1) Henry Rudolph Davies. (1909). Yunnan: The link between India and the Yangtze; 2) Wilhelm Credner. (1935). Cultural and geographical observations in the Tali (Yunnan) region with special reference to the Nan-chao problem and 3) Frederick W. Mote. (1964). “Problems of Thai prehistory”. And of course the authors who proposed the other homeland for the Tai people can be taken by implication as not pro-Nan Chao.

4 Hkun, Kun, and Koun all are pronounced /khǔn/ with the rising tone in Thai.The different way of writing is due to different authors who worked separately before the advent of the International Phonetic Alphabet. /khǔn/ means ‘king or chief’ so it is a title preceding the kings’ own given names which follow /khǔn/.

5 Limited of space, the present writer cannot claim a complete list of every argument said on the subject. For details please consult works with direct bearing on the subject such as B.J. Terwiel’s The Origin of the T’ai Peoples Reconsidered (1978) and The Tai of Assam
and their life-cycle ceremonies (Part I) (1979).

6 Prince Damrong Rajanubhab wrote in Thai. (The exact transliteration of the names of the four Chinese provinces that he mentioned are [Hun-Nǎm], [Kui-Cǐw], [Kwang-Tûng] and [Kwang-Sǎi].) These is no doubt after the pronunciation of the Tae-Tsiw Chinese in
Bangkok. The present researcher took the liberty of writing the names of the four provinces in the forms that are more familiar in English history books such as appears in Herold J. Wiens’ China’s March Toward the Tropics (1954).

7 Sand Kuo is an epic which describes the epoch of unrest and division in Chinaduring 220-580 A.D. Most western readers are familiar with this book through the English translation by C.H. Brewitt-Taylor (1925) under the name Romance of the Three Kingdoms. But San Kuo has been popular in Bangkok since the time of King Rama I who ordered the translation of it from Chinese around 1802 A.D. The translated manuscript was published in Bangkok in 1865 A.D.

8 Linguists have contended (since Sapir 1921, p. 151) that the original country of a language is where we find a large number of dialects (such as on the British Isles where we find different dialects of English), and we find conformity or a relatively less number of dialects in the place where that language has just spread (such as in the USA where there are a lesser number of the English dialects though the North American continent is very much larger than the British Isles).

9 The ethnologist, K.G. Izikowitz, arrives also at the same conclusion and specifically mentions the Red River delta as the place where the Tai must have been prior to the coming of the Vietnamese (Quoted in Terwiel, 1979, p 7). In the time-frame in which we are interested there has not yet been Vietnam. The Vietnamese are still referred to as the Yueh tribes, autochonous of the area of the present Hangchow.

10 This is my rough translation of Haudricourt “Les langues thai situées à l’ouest du Fleuve Touge: siamois, shan, laotien, tai blanc, tai noir sont extrèmement proches les unes des autres, au contraire à l’est de ce fleuve on rencontre des langues plus ou moins aberrantes: dioi, caolan, mak, sui ou lointainement apparentées: kelao, tulao, lati, laqua. Il semble donc que les langues thai soient originaires du sud de la Chine et n’aient franchi le Fleuve Rouge que vers le xe siecle.” Haudricourt does not use the term “Tai”. He calls both Tai (the Tai people outside Thailand) and the inhabitants of Thailandby the same term “Thai”. My translation makes use of the term “Tai” to be in conformity with the restof the article.

11 Older ones such as H. Maspero (1916), Rispaud (1937) as well as more modern ones such as Fippinger (1972), Izikowitz (1951), Lafont (1955, 1959), and Hartmann (1981).

12 This view of Gedney, in an unpublished paper, was first circulated among his students at Michigan University and was quoted by Chamberlain in 1975.

13 H.G. Quaritch Wales, the English art historian, took back the view he first expressed in 1937 in his later article of 1964.

References

Benedict, Paul K. (1942). Thai, Kadai, and Indonesian: A new alignment in Southeastern
Asia. American Anthropologist, 44, 576-601. Benedict, Paul K. (1975). Austro-Thai: Language and culture with a glossary of roots.
New Haven: Human Relations Area Files Press. Blackmore, Michael. (1967). The ethnological problems connected with Nanchao. In F.S. Drake (Ed.), Proceedings of the symposium on historical archeological and linguistic studies on Southern China, South-east Asia and the Hong Kong Region (pp. 59-69).

Carthew, M. (1952). The history of the Thai in Yunnan 2205 B.C.-1253 A.D. Journal of the Siam Society, 40, 1-38. Chamberlain, James R. (1975). A new look at the history and classification of the Thai languages. In Jimmy G. Harris & James R. Chamberlain (Eds.), Studies in Thai linguistics in honor of William J. Gedney (pp.49-66). Bangkok: Central Institute of English Language, Office of State Universities.Coedes, Georges. (1924). Receuil des Inscription du Siam, premiere partie: Inscriptions de Sukhodaya. Bangkok: 168. Credner, Wilhelm. (1935). Cultural and geographical observations in the Tali (Yunnan) region with special reference to the Nan-Chao problem. Bangkok: the Siam Society. Davies, Henry Rudolph. (1909). Yunnan: The link between India and the Yangtze. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. de Lacouperie, Terrien. (1885). The cradle of the Shan race (written as an Introduction to A.R. Colquhoun’s Amongst the Shans and reprinted by Paragon Book Reprint Corp., New York, 1970). Eberhard, Wolfram. (1968). A history of China. California: University of California Press. Fippinger, Jay. (1972). Black Tai government. Souteast Asia: An International Quarterly, II, 71-76. Gedney, William J. (1988). Future directions in comparative Thai linguistics. In Gedney, Bickner, Hartmann, Hudak, & Peyasantiwong (Eds), Selected papers on comparative Tai studies (pp. 7-116). Gerini, G.E. (1898). Shan and Siam. Asiatic Quarterly Review 3rd serie, 7, 145-163. Gogoi. (1976). Tai Ahom religion and customs. Hartmann, John F. (1981). Computations on a Tai Dam origin myth. Anthropological Linguistics, 23, 183-202. Haudricourt. Andre-George. (1953). La place du vietnamien dans les langues Austroasiatiques. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, 49, 122-132. Izikowitz, Karl Gustav. (1951). Lamet: Hill peasants in French Indochina. Ethnologiska Studier No. 17, Goteborg, Ethnografiska Museet. Lafont, Pierre-Bernard. (1955). Notes sur les familles patronymiques Thai Noirs du So’n- La et de Nghia-lo. Anthropos, 50, 797-808. Lafont, Pierre-Bernard. (1959). Pratiques medicales des Thai noirs du Laos de l’Ouest.

Anthropos, 54, 819-840. Lefevre-Pontalis. (1909) L’invasion thaie en Indo-Chine. Toung Pao serie II, 9. Lo Ch’ang-P’ei. (1945). The genealogical patronymic linkage system of the Tibeto- Burman speaking tribes. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 8, 349-363. Maspero, H. (1916). De quelques interdits en relation avec les noms de famille chez les Tai-Noirs. Bulletin de l’Ecole Française d’Extreme-Orient, 16, 19-34. Mote. F.W. (1964). Problems of Thai prehistory. Social Science Review, 2, 100-109. Quaritch Wales, H.G. (1937). Some ancient human skeletons excavated in Siam. Man, 90. Quaritch Wales, H.G. (1964). Some ancient human skeletons excavated in Siam: A correction. Man, 121. Rispaud, Jean. (1937). Les noms a elements numeraux des principautes Tai. Journal of theSiam Society,29, 77-122. Sapir, Edward. (1921). Language: An introduction to the study of speech. Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. Seidenfaden, Erik. (1958). The Thai peoples (Book I). Bangkok: The Siam Society. Somsak Phansomboon. (1957). A bioserological consideration of the migration of the Thai race-A preliminary report of a new concept. Journal of the Siam Society, 45, 55-63. Sood Sangvichien. (1966). A preliminary report on the non metrical characteristics of neolithic skeletons found at Ban Kao Kanchanaburi. Journal of the SiamSociety, 54. Suriya Ratanakul. (1990). Tai Tai people and their languages: A preliminary observation. In Pinit Ratanakul & U. Kyaw Than (Eds.), Development, modernization, and tradition in Southeast Asia: Lessons from Thailand (pp. 49-111). Bangkok: Rumthai Press. Swadesh, Morris. (1971). The origin and diversification of language. Chicago/New York. Terwiel, B.J. (1979). The origins of the Tai peoples reconsidered. Oriens Extremus, 25, 239-257. Wien, Herold J. (1954). China’s march toward the tropics. Hamden: The Shoe String Press.

1 Ban Chieng in Udorn Thani Province in the northeast of Thailandis one of the best known archaeological site of the country. Reports on it abound in scholastic journals over the last 20 years. Newcomers to Southeast Asian scenes could begin with Pisit Charoenwongsa Ban Chieng, Bangkok, 1973.

2 Gerini wrote the article in 1898 calling the Gulf of Thailand by its old name: the Gulf of Siam.

3 Notably the scholars who refuted the theory that the Tai’s homeland was in Nan Chao are, to list them chronologically: 1) Henry Rudolph Davies. (1909). Yunnan: The link between India and the Yangtze; 2) Wilhelm Credner. (1935). Cultural and geographical observations in the Tali (Yunnan) region with special reference to the Nan-chao problem and 3) Frederick W. Mote. (1964). “Problems of Thai prehistory”. And of course the authors who proposed the other homeland for the Tai people can be taken by implication as not pro-Nan Chao.

4 Hkun, Kun, and Koun all are pronounced /khǔn/ with the rising tone in Thai.The different way of writing is due to different authors who worked separately before the advent of the International Phonetic Alphabet. /khǔn/ means ‘king or chief’ so it is a title preceding the kings’ own given names which follow /khǔn/.

5 Limited of space, the present writer cannot claim a complete list of every argument said on the subject. For details please consult works with direct bearing on the subject such as B.J. Terwiel’s
The Origin of the T’ai Peoples Reconsidered (1978) and The Tai of Assam and their life-cycle

ceremonies (Part I) (1979). The Journal 1 (January 2005): 3-15 19

6 Prince Damrong Rajanubhab wrote in Thai. (The exact transliteration of the names of the four Chinese provinces that he mentioned are [Hun-Nǎm], [Kui-Cǐw], [Kwang-Tûng] and [Kwang- Sǎi].) These is no doubt after the pronunciation of the Tae-Tsiw Chinese in Bangkok. The present researcher took the liberty of writing the names of the four provinces in the forms that are more familiar in English history books such as appears in Herold J. Wiens’ China’s March Toward the Tropics (1954).

7 Sand Kuo is an epic which describes the epoch of unrest and division in Chinaduring 220-580 A.D. Most western readers are familiar with this book through the English translation by C.H. Brewitt-Taylor (1925) under the name Romance of the Three Kingdoms. But San Kuo has been popular in Bangkoksince the time of King Rama I who ordered the translation of it from Chinese around 1802 A.D. The translated manuscript was published in Bangkok in 1865 A.D.

8 Linguists have contended (since Sapir 1921, p. 151) that the original country of a language is where we find a large number of dialects (such as on the British Isles where we find different dialects of English), and we find conformity or a relatively less number of dialects in the place where that language has just spread (such as in the USA where there are a lesser number of the English dialects though the North American continent is very much larger than the British Isles).

9 The ethnologist, K.G. Izikowitz, arrives also at the same conclusion and specifically mentions the
Red River delta as the place where the Tai must have been prior to the coming of the Vietnamese (Quoted in Terwiel, 1979, p 7). In the time-frame in which we are interested there has not yet been Vietnam. The Vietnamese are still referred to as the Yueh tribes, autochonous of the area ofthe present Hangchow.

10 This is my rough translation of Haudricourt “Les langues thai situées à l’ouest du Fleuve Touge: siamois, shan, laotien, tai blanc, tai noir sont extrèmement proches les unes des autres, au contraire à l’est de ce fleuve on rencontre des langues plus ou moins aberrantes: dioi, caolan, mak, sui ou lointainement apparentées: kelao, tulao, lati, laqua. Il semble donc que les langues thai soient originaires du sud de la Chine et n’aient franchi le Fleuve Rouge que vers le xe siecle.” 

Haudricourt does not use the term “Tai”. He calls both Tai (the Tai people outside Thailand) and the inhabitants of Thailandby the same term “Thai”. My translation makes use of the term “Tai” to be in conformity with the rest of the article.

11 Older ones such as H. Maspero (1916), Rispaud (1937) as well as more modern ones such as Fippinger (1972), Izikowitz (1951), Lafont (1955, 1959), and Hartmann (1981).

12 This view of Gedney, in an unpublished paper, was first circulated among his students at
Michigan University and was quoted by Chamberlain in 1975.

13 H.G. Quaritch Wales, the English art historian, took back the view he first expressed in 1937 in his later article of 1964.

Reference: Suriya Ratanakul

Faculty of Arts, Mahidol University