ᡩᠠᡤᡠᠷ | |
|---|---|
 Daur woman inInner Mongolia, China | |
| Total population | |
| 132,299 (2020 census) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| People's Republic of China, inInner Mongolia,Heilongjiang andXinjiang | |
| China | 132,299[3][4] |
| Mongolia | 3,000[5] |
| Languages | |
| Daur,Chinese,Mongol | |
| Religion | |
| Mongolian shamanism andTibetan Buddhism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Buryats,Mongols andKhitan | |
TheDaurs,Dagur,Daghur, orDahur (Dagur:ᡩᠠᡤᡠᠷDaure;Khalkha Mongolian:Дагуур,Daguur;simplified Chinese:达斡尔族;traditional Chinese:達斡爾族;pinyin:Dáwò'ěr zú;Russian: Дауры, Daury) are aMongolic people originally native toDauriya and now predominantly located inNortheast China (andSiberia,Russia, in the past). The Daur form one of the 56ethnic groups officially recognized in thePeople's Republic of China. They numbered 132,299 according to the latest census (2020) and most of them live inMorin Dawa Daur Autonomous Banner inHulun Buir, northeasternInner Mongolia andMeilisi Daur District inQiqihar,Heilongjiang, Northeast China. Some Daur people also live nearTacheng inXinjiang.[6]
TheDagur language is aMongolic language. There is a Latin-based orthography which has been devised by a native Daur scholar. The Dagur language retains someKhitansubstratal features, including a number of lexemes not found in other Mongolic languages. It is made up of three dialects: Batgan, Hailar, Qiqihar.
During Qing rule, some Daur spoke and wroteManchu as a second language.[7]
Genetically, the Daurs are descendants of theKhitan.[8] In theQianlong Emperor's "钦定《辽金元三史语解》" (Imperially commissioned Translations of theHistory of Liao,History of Jin andHistory of Yuan) he retranslates "大贺", a Khitan clan described in the History of Liao, as "达呼尔". That is the earliest theory that claims Daurs are descendants of Khitans.
In the 17th century, some or all of the Daurs lived along theShilka, upperAmur, on theZeya andBureya River. They thus gave their name to the region ofDauria.
By the mid-17th century, the Amur Daurs fell under the influence of the Manchus of theQing dynasty which crushed the resistance ofBombogor, leader of theEvenk-Daur Federation in 1640. When theRussian explorers and raiders arrived to the region in the early 1650 (notably, duringYerofei Khabarov's 1651 raid), they would often see the Daur farmers burn their smaller villages and taking refuge in larger towns. When told by the Russians to submit to the rule of theTsar and to payyasak (tribute), the Daurs would often refuse, saying that they already paid tribute to theShunzhi Emperor (whose name the Russians recorded from the Daurs asShamshakan).[9] TheCossacks would then attack, usually being able to take Daur towns with only small losses. For example, Khabarov reported that in 1651 he had only 4 of his Cossacks killed while storming the town of the Daur prince Guigudar (Гуйгударов городок) (another 45 Cossacks were wounded, but all were able to recover). Meanwhile, the Cossacks reported killing 661 "Daurs big and small" at that town (of which, 427 during the storm itself), and taking 243 women and 118 children prisoners, as well as capturing 237 horse and 113 cattle.[9] The captured Daur town of Yaxa became the Russian townAlbazin, which was not recaptured by the Qing until the 1680s.
Cattle and horses in the hundreds were looted and 243 ethnic Daur girls and women wereraped by Russian Cossacks underYerofey Khabarov when he invaded the Amur river basin in the 1650s.[10]
Facing the Russian expansion in the Amur region, between 1654 and 1656, during the reign ofShunzhi Emperor, the Daurs were forced to move southward and settle on the banks of theNen River, from where they were constantly conscripted to serve in thebanner system of theQing emperors.
Russian Cossack soldiers slaughtered 1,266 households, 900 Daurs during theBlagoveshchensk massacre and Sixty-Four Villages East of the River massacre.[11]
When the Japanese invaded the area of present-day Morin Dawa inInner Mongolia in 1931, the Daurs carried out an intense resistance against them.[12]
Konan Naito pointed out thatTakri Kingdom where KingDongmyeong, a founder ofBuyeo was born, as a country of Daur people who lived bySonghua River.[13]
There is a very noticeable hierarchic structure. People sharing the same surname are in groups calledhala, they live together with the same group, formed by two or three towns. Eachhala is divided in diverse clans (mokon) that live in the same town. If a marriage between different clans is made, the husband continues to live with the clan of his wife without holding property rights.
During the winter, the Daur women wear long dresses, generally blue in color and boots of skin which they change for long trousers in summer. The men dress in orejeros caps in fox or red deer skin made for winter. In the summer, they cover the animal's head with white colored fabrics or straw hats.
A customary sport of the Daur isBeikou, a game similar tofield hockey orstreet hockey, which has been played by the Daur for about 1,000 years.[14]
Many Daurs practiceshamanism. Each clan has its own shaman in charge of all the important ceremonies in the lives of the Daur.[15] However, there are a significant number of Daurs who have taken upTibetan Buddhism.
A cult of the sky "tenger" occupies an important place in Daurian shamanism. Ancient people worshiped the image of "tenger" as the sun and the moon. The sun also appeared as mother in mythical representation. Ancient people considered the sun and the moon as a man and a woman respectively. These celestial bodies represent father and mother in the mythology of the Daurs.[16]
During the Qing, the Daur knew a version of theTale of the Nisan Shaman, in which the female shaman Ny Dan competed against her rivals at the Qing court, the Tibetanmonks who managed to convince the Qing emperor to execute her. The Qing emperor is shown as a fool who is tricked by thelamas.[17]
| Sino-Tibetan |
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| Austroasiatic | |||||||||||
| Austronesian | |||||||||||
| Hmong-Mien | |||||||||||
| Mongolic | |||||||||||
| Kra–Dai | |||||||||||
| Tungusic | |||||||||||
| Turkic | |||||||||||
| Indo-European | |||||||||||
| Others | |||||||||||
| Related | |||||||||||
Underlined: the 56 officially recognised ethnic groups ranked by population in their language families according to2020 census | |||||||||||
