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mountainous regions of south China but also across the southern borders in Burma, Laos and Vietnam.
The Yao, like the Miao, also are mountain-loving people, but appear to have originated as ethnic groups in the hill country of east-central China, in such regions as the present provinces of Anhwei, Chekiang and Kiangsu. They were here as early as Chinese records mention them, but they appear to have gradually abandoned these areas, as Han-Chinese settlement increased in density, and friction over land and other matters led the Yao to seek more isolated mountains. Since they were like the Miao in their type of fire-field or forest-burning, shifting cultivation, they inevitably came into close contact with the Miao and have many cultural features in common with the Miao. Elements of the language also appear similar. Some Chinese ethnographers have considered the Wu-ch'i Man a Yao rather than a Miao group, and others believe them to have common origins. This confusion is probably due to strong Mon Khmer influences originating from India and Southeast Asia in the earliest times.
4
One of the supporting arguments for the common origin of Yao and Miao is the common cult attached to the dog and the tiger. The Yao trace their ancestry mythically to the union of a princess with a supernatural dog-hero called P'an-hu. Yao myths trace their movement southward from both the central Yangtze valley regions and from the Chekiang-Fukien mountains. Folk songs of the Yao indicate further that they crossed over the Nan-ling mountains in great numbers during the period of Huang-ch'ao's rebellion in the reign of the T'ang Emperor Hsi-Tsung (A.D. 874-889),4
When the Miao moved into the Kweichow region in the earliest times, they probably found the Yi or Wu-man peoples already in occupation of western Kweichow. The Yi certainly preceded the Han in this part of China, and the Han Chinese have known of the Yi in their present habitats in southwest China for over 2,500 years. The peculiar manner in which the
* Chiang Ying-liang, Hsi-nan pien-chiang min-tsu lun-ts'ung (A discussion of the peoples of the southwest borderlands), Canton, 1948, 74-79; see also Ling Shun-sheng and Jui Yi-fu, Hsiang-hsi Miao-tsu t'iao-cha pao-kao (Report of research on the Miao of west Hunan), Academia Sinica, Shanghai, 1947.
4 Hsu Sung-shih, Yueh-chiang liu-yü jen-min (The peoples of the Yueh river drainage), Shanghai, 1939, 130-135.