They
Have A Special Hieroglyphic Scrip, A Specimen Of Which Has Been Given By
Deveria.
(Frontiere, p. 166.) A manuscript was secured by Captain Gill,
on the frontier east of Li-t'ang, and presented by him to the British
Museum (Add SS.
Or. 2162); T. de Lacouperie gave a facsimile of it.
(Plates I., II. of Beginnings of Writing.) Prince Henri d'Orleans and M.
Bonin both brought home a Moso manuscript with a Chinese explanation.
Dr. Anderson (Exped. to Yunnan, Calcutta, p. 136) says the Li-sus, or
Lissaus are "a small hill-people, with fair, round, flat faces, high
cheek bones, and some little obliquity of the eye." These Li-su or Li-sie,
are scattered throughout the Yunnanese prefectures of Yao-ngan, Li-kiang,
Ta-li and Yung-ch'ang; they were already in Yun-Nan in the 4th century
when the Chinese general Ch'u Chouang-kiao entered the country. (Deveria,
Front., p. 164.)
The Pa-y or P'o-y formed under the Han Dynasty the principality of
P'o-tsiu and under the T'ang Dynasty the tribes of Pu-hiung and of Si-ngo,
which were among the thirty-seven tribes dependent on the ancient state of
Nan-Chao and occupied the territory of the sub-prefectures of Kiang-Chuen
(Ch'eng-kiang fu) and of Si-ngo (Lin-ngan fu). They submitted to China at
the beginning of the Yuen Dynasty; their country bordered upon Burma
(Mien-tien) and Ch'e-li or Kiang-Hung (Xieng-Hung), in Yun-Nan, on the
right bank of the Mekong River. According to Chinese tradition, the Pa-y
descended from Muong Tsiu-ch'u, ninth son of Ti Muong-tsiu, son of
Piao-tsiu-ti (Asoka). Deveria gives (p. 105) a specimen of the Pa-y writing
(16th century). (Deveria, Front., 99, 117; Bourne, Report, p. 88.)
Chapter iv. of the Chinese work, Sze-i-kwan-k'ao, is devoted to the
Pa-y, including the sub-divisions of Muong-Yang, Muong-Ting, Nan-tien,
Tsien-ngai, Lung-chuen, Wei-yuan, Wan-tien, Chen-k'ang, Ta-how, Mang-shi,
Kin-tung, Ho-tsin, Cho-lo tien. (Deveria, Mel. de Harlez, p. 97.) I give
a specimen of Pa-yi writing from a Chinese work purchased by Father Amiot
at Peking, now in the Paris National Library (Fonds chinois, No. 986). (See
on this scrip, F.W.K. Mueller, T'oung-Pao, III. p. 1, and V. p. 329;
E.H. Parker, The Muong Language, China Review, I. 1891, p. 267; P.
Lefevre-Pontalis, Etudes sur quelques alphabets et vocab. Thais, T'oung
Pao, III. pp. 39-64.) - H.C.
[Illustration: Pa-y script.]
These ethnological matters have to be handled cautiously, for there is
great ambiguity in the nomenclature. Thus Man-tzu is often used
generically for aborigines, and the Lolos of Richthofen are called
Man-tzu by Garnier and Blakiston; whilst Lolo again has in Yun-nan
apparently a very comprehensive generic meaning, and is so used by Garnier.
(Richt. Letter VII. 67-68 and MS.
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