Who are the Daile?

In China he has heard nobody speaking about the Daile, but the whole world knows them.

This is not a words game, but the observation once again of the need to check the classification of the minorities. So although he has heard nobody speaking about the Daile, one of the branches, or about the called branches, into which there splits the national minority called Dai, the whole world meets them.

The whole world meets them because the Daile perhaps should be the people of the family Dai considered to be more representative. The whole world has seen in China the scenes of the women Dai with his multicolored blouses and his tight skirts, being employed at the field, enjoying a holiday, or walking along the villages. In the common image of most of the Chinese viewers there are also these monks dressed in orange, some in his first adolescence, assembled concerning temples who remember us more to the Asian Southeast than to the proper China. All these are the images of the Daile, but as we say that nobody knows it. They all think that there are the images of the Dai.

We would have then that to return to the rectification of the names that Confucio was supporting already does more than 2500 years. We should present the family of peoples Dongtai or Kam-Tadai, his historical relation and the cultural characteristics that support still together many of them. We should present then the linguistic families in the one that splits, or the sub - families. To finish with detailing exactly the different peoples or ethnic groups of the above mentioned families that live in China. If we were doing thus, in a few years all the Chinese would be who the Daile are.

But the Daile do not take root only in China, there also communities Daile that live in Thailand, in Laos and in Burma. In fact, along the history, the communities Daile of these four countries have supported a narrow political, commercial, religious and cultural relation.

In China, the Daile are located in the southern Xishuangbanna prefecture. Especially in south half of this prefecture. Xishuangbanna is one of few regions of China with a clearly tropical climate, it is for it that until a few years ago, the fear of the illnesses, especially to the malaria, kept her free of the Chinese emigration. Here they were living fundamentally through the Daile and a good number of peoples in the mountains, submitted politics and socially to them. The Daile had established a system centralized with base in his current capital. In every district or Meng there were also the respective gentlemen. These two classes were supported in balance with the people.

One of the principal characteristics of of the life and culture of the Daile, precisely one of those that it separates from other branches Dai, is the importance that has the Buddhism in different aspects of his life. They believe in the Buddhism, in the school of the south or Theravada, and as in the near Thailand, the males must spend a period for the temple, turning the majority to his life of secular, and remaining a few like monks. This stay of the young people Daile in the temple is considered of essential importance to preserve his traditional culture. But the Buddhism of the Daile is not an exclusive religion of any form. Along with him numerous traces of his primitive religions coexist, and in the villages there are still places where cult yields to the local gods. In the closeness of the same villages also there are the sacred forests, of big religious importance, as well as for the maintenance of the ecological balance in the area.

At present the Daile are approximately approximately 300.000 persons. They constitute therefore 25 % of the considered population dai.

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