Di (Five Barbarians)

Not to be confused with mythical Di people (Shan Hai Jing) [zh] or the Northern Di (狄) people.

The Di (Chinese: 氐; pinyin: Dī; Wade–Giles: Ti1;[1] < Eastern Han Chinese *tei[2] < Old Chinese (B-S): *tˤij) were an ancient ethnic group that lived in western China, and are best known as one of the non-Han Chinese peoples known as the Five Barbarians that seized power in northern China during the Sixteen Kingdoms period. This ethnic group should not be confused with the earlier Dí (狄), which refers to unrelated nomadic peoples in northern China during the earlier Zhou dynasty. The Di are thought to have been of proto-Tibetan origin,[3][4][5] though there is a widespread belief among Chinese scholars that the Di spoke a Turkic language.[6] The Ba-Di (巴氐) were a branch of the Di that intermixed with another ethnic group known as the Cong people (賨).

Only a few special Di names and place names have been preserved in old Chinese books.[7][8][9]

  1. ^ "汉典".
  2. ^ Schuessler, Axel. 2007. An Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese. University of Hawaii Press. p. 209
  3. ^ Dorothy C. Wong: Chinese Steles: Pre-Buddhist and Buddhist Use of a Symbolic Form. University of Hawaii Press, 2004, page 44.
  4. ^ Henry Luce Foundation Professor of East Asian Studies Nicola Di Cosmo, Nicola Di Cosmo, Don J Wyatt. Political Frontiers, Ethnic Boundaries and Human Geographies in Chinese History. Routledge, 2005, page 87.
  5. ^ John A.G. Roberts: A History of China Archived 2016-04-29 at the Wayback Machine. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. page 43.
  6. ^ Guo Ji Zhongguo Yu Yan Xue Ping Lun, Volume 1, Issue 1, J. Benjamins 1996. page 7.
  7. ^ "用麗江白族語試讀趙整歌謠"阿得脂"". Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  8. ^ "古羌族派分之民族　五　川西北地区的氐类". Archived from the original on 2013-08-25. Retrieved 2013-08-25.
  9. ^ The Baima Tibetans and the Di people of Chinese historical records