Information on Ethnic Groups of Yunnan from Qing “Albums with Dian Barbarians” and Other Sources from Tang to Qing Periods

Initial point of this research are two Qing period hand-written albums on Yunnan province (No. Xyl. F-25, Xyl. F-26) from the holdings of the Academic Library of Saint-Petersburg State University. The latter album contains a preface dated by 1839, illustrations and images of 44 ethnic groups of Yunnan, the former album contains a map of Yunnan and 75 maps of its administrative units as well as their descriptions. Texts of descriptions mention over forty various ethnic groups and provide some details on their customs and mores. Even though the descriptions in the album Xyl. F-25 are tentatively dated by 1660–1666, information on ethnic groups from the album cannot be considered overall and novel even for that period. This paper attempts to systematize the terms used for various ethnic groups in the album and provides a review of other seminal Chinese textual and pictorial sources on Yunnan’s aboriginal peoples starting from Tang until the 19th century. One of the goals of the paper is to brush up historical terms used to indicate present day Yizu and Baizu ethnic groups and trace historical context of the numerous terms found in the album. This study draws a conclusion about difficulty of extracting straight and clear system underlying multiple ethnic terms mentioned in the albums, which nevertheless may be supplanted from other written sources on Yunnan indigenes.