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A Comparative Study of Buddhism and Islam in Yunnan Province
Author(s) -
Berlie J. A.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
the muslim world
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.106
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1478-1913
pISSN - 0027-4909
DOI - 10.1111/j.1478-1913.2010.01316.x
Subject(s) - buddhism , islam , citation , religious studies , history , sociology , library science , theology , philosophy , computer science
This article describes the Dai people, and the Paxidai, . They live in Southwest China, Yunnan. China, Yunnan. Among the nationality-minorities (minzu), the Muslim Paxidai are classified as Hui but they speak Dai as well as Putonghua. This article discusses also Sinicization and the prospect of religious harmony based on extensive fieldwork in the region. For the founder of the department of anthropology of Xiamen University, Chen Guoqiang, cultural anthropology is integrated, comprehensive and theoretical. But for Lin Huixiang, in the same department, anthropology focuses on primitive conditions of human society; sociology discuses contemporary society. The current study is socio-anthropological. It starts at the village, in line with the slogan of Fei Xiatong, the leading Chinese anthropologist of the 20 century: “We are first rural” (women nongcun zhong). Works about Yunnan ethnology and minority nationalities in Chinese or English are for example Yunnan Shaoshu Minzu (The Minorities of Yunnan) (1980) and the Tai studies of Raendchen and Zheng. The discourse of race is situated at the periphery of the Chinese symbolic universe and does not concern the two groups of Dai (pron. Tai) studied in this article who are of the same anthropic origin, speak the same mother tongue (Dai Lue), but follow two different religions. This article defines the Buddhist Dai and Muslim Paxidai, and seeks to show the importance of harmony and trade in a case study about the Menghai area of Yunnan. It A Comparative Study of Buddhism and Islam in Yunnan Province