History
The Nakhi are believed to be the descendants of the nomadic Qiang, an ethnic group inhabiting the Tibetan plateau since ancient times. During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the Nakhi were known as the Mosha-yi, or the Moxie-yi.
Frequently harassed by neighbouring tribes, the proto-Nakhi then moved southward to the banks of the Nujiang River and the Jinsha River and then to the Along River in the present-day province of Sichuan in western China. After being pushed south by other conquering tribes, the Nakhi settled in the very fertile Baisha and Lijiang areas by the year 3 CE.
Nakhi histories describe a split into three groups while their ancestors were still in Baisha. The ones who remained are known as the Nakhi, those in Dali are known as Bai, and those living around the Lugu Lake are called the Mosuo. Today, this description of the origins of the Bai and Mosuo are strenuously contested.
Historians have decided that between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, agricultural production in Lijiang agriculture replaced livestock breeding as the main occupation of the people. The production of agricultural, handicraft, mineral, and livestock products led to considerable prosperity, and during this period a number of slave-owning groups in Ninglang, Lijiang, and Weixi counties developed into a feudal caste of lords. Tibetan Buddhism took hold in the Lijiang region following visits from the Karmapas from the fourteenth century onwards.
In 1278, the Yuan Dynasty established the Lijiang Prefecture, which represented the imperial court in Yunnan. A chieftain, Mude, was made the hereditary chieftain of Lijiang Prefecture, exercising control over the Nakhi people and other ethnic groups (particularly the Eastern Tibetans inhabiting the region of Kham) during the Ming Dynasty. The hereditary chieftains from the Mu family collected taxes and tribute, which then went to the Ming court in the form of silver and grains. The Ming relied on the Mu family as the mainstay for the control of the people of various ethnic groups in northwestern Yunnan Province.
In 1723, during the Qing Dynasty, hereditary local chieftains in the Lijiang area were replaced by court officials, and the Mu chieftains were included in this group retaining position as local administrators.
The ancient Nakhi town of Lijiang is now a major tourist destination. In the old town, the Nakhi rent buildings to Han merchants who run shops catering to tourists.
Read more about this topic: Nakhi People
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!
There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)