To this day, there is still a myth among the Dai people

Regarding the origin of the Dai people, there are two main views and many theories.

Migration said. One of the most influential theories is the "southward theory", which believes that the Dai people originated from northern Sichuan, southern Shaanxi, Altai Mountains and other northern China or farther places, and continued to move south under the expulsion of other ethnic groups, in the process of migration, the Dai people once stayed in Yunnan, and established the Nanzhao Kingdom, after Kublai Khan leveled Dali, the Dai people were forced to continue to move south to southern Yunnan and Southeast Asia, the view has been abandoned by more and more scholars due to the depth of research. There are other theories that originated in the Indonesian archipelago and the Liangguang Yunnan-Guizhou region.

With the deepening of the study of Dai ethnic literature, the migration theory has been supported by more and more evidence, such as "Benmeng Dai Xi Shuangbang", "Xihe Menglong", "Bashatan", etc., these documents show that the indigenous people in the Dai nationality settlement area are mainly Rawa people, Kemu people, Meng people, Confucian people, etc., and the Dai people migrated later. From the perspective of linguistics, some scholars have put forward the view that the Dai ancestors lived in the same area as the Zhuang ancestors, and that the Dai people migrated from Guangxi, but Zheng Xiaoyun believes that there are many reasons why ethnic groups of different origins use the same language, and this research method cannot explain the origin of the Dai people [2-5] 6].

Indigenous said. According to this view, the Dai people have lived in the arc from the west of the Red River to the upper reaches of the Irrawaddy River and along the Manipo in India since ancient times, and their formation is the natural result of economic and cultural development, not the result of migration. However, there are different theories about what kind of indigenous people evolved from the Dai people, such as Huang Huikun believes that the ancestors of the Dai people are ancient Yue people, and Chen Lufan believes that the Dai people evolved from the Shan people.

Among them, the ancient Yue people have the greatest influence, which believes that the "Yunnan Yue", "Shan State", "Yue Shang" and "Peng State" in the Chinese historical books are the countries established by the Dai ancestors, but some scholars have questioned this view, such as: He Ping believes that "Yunnan Yue", "Shan State", "Yue Shang", "Peng State" and so on have nothing to do with the Dai ancestors; Zheng Xiaoyun believes that Baiyue is not a nation, and naturally there is no national heritage.

The Dai people originated from the Ailao people in the middle and upper reaches of the Nu River and the Lancang River. The Ailao people are one of the ancient humans of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. Around the fifth century B.C., the Ailao people founded Daguang and other tribal alliance states in the middle and upper reaches of the Lancang River and Nu River.

At the end of the second century B.C., the Daguang Kingdom began to contact with the Han Dynasty, because the Daguang King at that time was called "Ailao", and the Han Dynasty began to call the Daguang Kingdom "Ailao Country".

Prior to this, because the Ailao people were good at riding elephants, and the living environment was similar to that of the Yue people in the south of the Han Dynasty, they were mistaken for a branch of the Yue people by the Han Dynasty, and called the Daguang Kingdom "Yunnan Yue Elephant Country".

Beginning in the first century AD, the Dian Kingdom located in the east of the Daguang Kingdom and its suzerainty (Han Dynasty) were in constant conflict, and a large number of Dian people (also known as "Dian Yue people" because of their absorption of Yue culture) poured into the territory of Ailao, and after the Ailao people absorbed and integrated the Dian people, the prototype of the modern Dai people was initially formed.

According to the Neolithic cultural accumulation excavated by archaeologists in Dianchi, Jinghong, Mengla, Menglian and other places in Yunnan Province and other provinces and regions, as well as a large number of stone tools, bronzes and other historical relics unearthed in Banqing, Kanchanaburi, Loei and other places in Thailand in recent years, the ancestors of the ancient Dai language of various ethnic groups lived in southern Sichuan, southwest Guizhou, Guangxi, west of eastern Yunnan to the upper reaches of the Irrawaddy River, along the vast arc of Manipo in India, that is, most of Yunnan and Guangxi in China, Sichuan, Guizhou and Laos, northern Thailand, Myanmar, A vast area of Assam, India, gradually migrated to the southwest. They were the first people to cultivate rice and use ploughs.

There are historical records of the Dai people in the historical books "Historical Records · The Biography of Dawan Lie" and "The Biography of Zhang Qian in the Book of Han", all of which call the Dai people "Dian Yue", and the "Book of the Later Han Dynasty and the Emperor Benji" and other numbers call the ancestors of the Dai people "Shan" or "good". During the Wei and Jin dynasties, the Dai people were called "wing", "dove bureaucrats", "Yue", and "Pu"; In the Tang and Song dynasties, the Dai people were called "golden teeth", "black teeth", "knee teeth", "embroidered faces", "embroidered feet", "white clothes" and so on; During the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, the Dai people were called "Baiyi", "Baiyi", "Boyi", "Pengyi" and so on. The above names are all his names, and the Dai people call themselves "Dai", and there are differences in the self-claims of the Dai people in various places.

Xishuangbanna in Yunnan Province has a reputation as the "Land of Elephants". There, the Dai people have always regarded the elephant as a symbol of good luck and strength. For thousands of years, people have formed an indissoluble bond with elephants, and people love and worship elephants.

There are many myths of elephants in the Dai people, and the creation myth says that the gods and elephants used their noses to resist the sky and the earth with their four feet, so the heavens and the earth were fixed.