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Muang Phuan
Meuang Phuan ( Lao: ເມືອງພວນ; Country of Phuan) or Xieng Khouang (Lao: ຊຽງຂວາງ), also known historically to the Vietnamese as Trấn Ninh ( Hán Việt: 鎮寧; lit. "securement of peace"), was a historical principality on the Xiang Khouang Plateau, which constitutes the modern territory of Xiangkhouang Province, Laos. Among the Lao, Phuan, and Thai '' meuang'' has a dual meaning: 'city' or more broadly 'country of'. ''Xieng'' means 'walled'. The two terms were often used together for major city states under the Southeast Asian mandala model, thus ''Meuang Xieng Khouang'' would be transcribed as the 'Walled city/country of the Phuan' (''Khouang'' is a French corruption of Phuan). Background The Xiang Khouang Plateau is semi-arid but has important iron ore resources and has been inhabited since the Bronze Age (the Plain of Jars is an important UNESCO archeological site). The region is an important area for trade as it occupies the major passes a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kingdom Of Vientiane
Kingdom of Vientiane was formed in 1707 as a result of the split of the Kingdom of Lan Xang. The kingdom was a Burmese vassal from 1765 to 1824. It then became a Siamese vassal until 1828 when it was annexed by Siam. History In 1779, under the reign of King Setthathirath II of Lan Xang, Kitsarat, an heir of Sourigna Vongsa, declared separation of Luang Prabang. He marched on Vientiane to attack Setthathirath. King Setthathirath II turned to Ayutthaya for help. The Siamese army helped defend Vientiane but cannot stop Kitsarat to form his own kingdom. Kitsarat crowned the king in 1707, creating the Kingdom of Luang Phrabang,converting Lan Xang into the Kingdom of Vientiane. The kingdoms of Champasak and Muang Phuan also seceded during the following years. In 1773, Vientiane was attacked by Luang Prabang forces. King Ong Bun contacted the Konbaung dynasty for help, turning Vientiane into a Burmese vassal. This angered the Thonburi court. After the Burmese-Siamese War of 1775 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xiangkhouang Province
Xiangkhouang ( Lao: ຊຽງຂວາງ, meaning 'Horizontal City') is a province of Laos on the Xiangkhoang Plateau, in the nation's northeast. The province has the distinction of being the most heavily bombed place on Earth. The province was originally known as the Principality of ''Muang Phuan'' (Muang Phouan / Xieng Khouang). Its present capital is Phonsavan. The population of the province as of the 2015 census was 244,684. Xiangkhouang province covers an area of and is mountainous. Apart from floodplains, the largest area of level land in the country is on the province's Xiangkhoang Plateau. The plateau is characterized by rolling hills and grassland whose elevation averages . The country's highest peak, Phou Bia (), rises at the south side of the plateau. Nam Et-Phou Louey is a National Biodiversity Conservation Area (NBCA) in the province, covering an area of 5,959 km2, and overlaps into Houaphanh and Luang Prabang provinces. The province's Plain of Jars was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theravada
''Theravāda'' () ( si, ථේරවාදය, my, ထေရဝါဒ, th, เถรวาท, km, ថេរវាទ, lo, ເຖຣະວາດ, pi, , ) is the most commonly accepted name of Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school's adherents, termed Theravādins, have preserved their version of Gautama Buddha's teaching or ''Dharma (Buddhism), Buddha Dhamma'' in the Pāli Canon for over two millennia. The Pāli Canon is the most complete Buddhist canon surviving in a Indo-Aryan languages, classical Indian language, Pali, Pāli, which serves as the school's sacred language and ''lingua franca''.Crosby, Kate (2013), ''Theravada Buddhism: Continuity, Diversity, and Identity'', p. 2. In contrast to ''Mahāyāna'' and ''Vajrayāna'', Theravāda tends to be conservative in matters of doctrine (''pariyatti'') and monastic discipline (''vinaya''). One element of this conservatism is the fact that Theravāda rejects the authenticity of the Mahayana sutras (which appeared c. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tai Peoples
Tai peoples are the populations who speak (or formerly spoke) the Tai languages. There are a total of about 93 million people of Tai ancestry worldwide, with the largest ethnic groups being Dai, Thais, Isan, Tai Yai (Shan), Lao, Tai Ahom, and Northern Thai peoples. The Tai are scattered through much of South China and Mainland Southeast Asia, with some (''e.g.'' Tai Ahom, Tai Khamti, Tai Phake, Tai Aiton) inhabiting parts of Northeast India. Tai peoples are both culturally and genetically very similar and therefore primarily identified through their language. Names Speakers of the many languages in the Tai branch of the Tai–Kadai language family are spread over many countries in Southern China, Indochina and Northeast India. Unsurprisingly, there are many terms used to describe the distinct Tai peoples of these regions. According to Michel Ferlus, the ethnonyms Tai/Thai (or Tay/Thay) would have evolved from the etymon *k(ə)ri: 'human being' through the following cha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Annamite Cordillera
The Annamite Range or the Annamese Mountains (french: Chaîne annamitique; lo, ພູ ຫລວງ ''Phou Luang''; vi, Dãy (núi) Trường Sơn) is a major mountain range of eastern Indochina, extending approximately through Laos, Vietnam, and a small area in northeast Cambodia. The mountain range is also referred to variously as Annamese Range, Annamese Mountains, Annamese Cordillera, Annamite Mountains and Annamite Cordillera. The name "Annam" is the Vietnamese pronunciation and terminology of zh, c=安南 (Pinyin: ''Ān Nán''), meaning "to pacify the south" referring to Vietnam. The French adopted the word and used "Annamese" or "Annamite" to refer to the Vietnamese. The highest points of the range are the -high Phou Bia, the -high Phu Xai Lai Leng and the -high Ngọc Linh (Ngoc Pan). The latter is located at the northwestern edge of the Triassic Kontum Massif in central Vietnam. Important mountain passes are the Nape Pass and the Mụ Giạ Pass. The Annamite R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It has 193 member states and 12 associate members, as well as partners in the non-governmental, intergovernmental and private sector. Headquartered at the World Heritage Centre in Paris, France, UNESCO has 53 regional field offices and 199 national commissions that facilitate its global mandate. UNESCO was founded in 1945 as the successor to the League of Nations's International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.English summary). Its constitution establishes the agency's goals, governing structure, and operating framework. UNESCO's founding mission, which was shaped by the Second World War, is to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights by facilitating collaboration and dialogue among nations. It pursues this objective t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plain Of Jars
The Plain of Jars ( Lao: ທົ່ງໄຫຫິນ ''Thong Hai Hin'', ) is a megalithic archaeological landscape in Laos. It consists of thousands of stone jars scattered around the upland valleys and the lower foothills of the central plain of the Xiangkhoang Plateau. The jars are arranged in clusters ranging in number from one to several hundred. The Xiangkhoang Plateau is at the northern end of the Annamese Cordillera, the principal mountain range of Indochina. French researcher Madeleine Colani concluded in 1930 that the jars were associated with burial practices. Excavation by Lao and Japanese archaeologists in the intervening years has supported this interpretation with the discovery of human remains, burial goods and ceramics around the jars. Researchers (using optically stimulated luminescence) determined that the jars were put in place as early as 1240 to 660 BC. The jars at Site 1 (using detrital zircon geochronology) were determined to have been transported to their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age system proposed in 1836 by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen for classifying and studying ancient societies and history. An ancient civilization is deemed to be part of the Bronze Age because it either produced bronze by smelting its own copper and alloying it with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or traded other items for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Bronze is harder and more durable than the other metals available at the time, allowing Bronze Age civilizations to gain a technological advantage. While terrestrial iron is naturally abundant, the higher temperature required for smelting, , in addition to the greater difficulty of working with the metal, placed it out of reach of common use until the end o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xiangkhouang Plateau
The Xiang Khouang Plateau or Xiang Khwang Plateau, also known in French as Plateau dTran-Ninh'' is a plateau in the north of Laos. The landscape is characterized by green mountains, rugged karst formations and verdant valleys with plenty of rivers, caves and waterfalls. Geography The Luang Prabang Range, and the Annamite Range separate the plateau from Thailand and Vietnam respectively. The ranges of the plateau are sandstone and limestone mountains between 2000 and 2800 meters high (about 6561 and 9842 feet high). These have been heavily deforested. The highest mountain of Laos, Phou Bia, is located to the south of the Xiangkhoang. Altitudes within the plateau area may reach 1000 m. Several tributaries of the Mekong drain in the plateau, such as the Nam Ngum, Ngiap and the Khan River. The major town in the area is the capital of Phonsavan. The plateau gives its name to present-day Xiangkhouang Province in which Phonsavan is located. History The plateau is the location of the Pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mandala (Southeast Asian Political Model)
''Maṇḍala'' is a Sanskrit word meaning 'circle'. The mandala is a model for describing the patterns of diffuse political power distributed among Mueang or Kedatuan (principalities) in medieval Southeast Asian history, when local power was more important than the central leadership. The concept of the mandala balances modern tendencies to look for unified political power, eg. the power of large kingdoms and nation states of later history – an inadvertent byproduct of 15th century advances in map-making technologies. In the words of O. W. Wolters who further explored the idea in 1982: The map of earlier Southeast Asia which evolved from the prehistoric networks of small settlements and reveals itself in historical records was a patchwork of often overlapping mandalas. It is employed to denote traditional Southeast Asian political formations, such as federation of kingdoms or vassalized polity under a center of domination. It was adopted by 20th century European histori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
City States
A city-state is an independent sovereign city which serves as the center of political, economic, and cultural life over its contiguous territory. They have existed in many parts of the world since the dawn of history, including cities such as Rome, Athens, Sparta, Carthage, and the Italian city-states during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, such as Florence, Venice, Genoa and Milan. With the rise of nation states worldwide, only a few modern sovereign city-states exist, with some disagreement as to which qualify; Monaco, Singapore and Vatican City are most commonly accepted as such. Singapore is the clearest example, with full self-governance, its own currency, a robust military and a population of 5.5 million. Several non-sovereign cities enjoy a high degree of autonomy and are sometimes considered city-states. Hong Kong, Macau, and members of the United Arab Emirates—most notably Dubai and Abu Dhabi—are often cited as such. Historical background Ancient and medieva ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muang
Mueang ( th, เมือง ''mɯ̄ang'', ), Muang ( lo, ເມືອງ ''mɯ́ang'', ; Tai Nuea: ᥛᥫᥒᥰ ''muang''), Mong ( shn, ''mə́ŋ'', ), Meng () or Mường (Vietnamese), were pre-modern semi-independent city-states or principalities in mainland Southeast Asia, adjacent regions of Northeast India and Southern China, including what is now Thailand, Laos, Burma, Cambodia, parts of northern Vietnam, southern Yunnan, western Guangxi and Assam. Mueang was originally a term in the Tai languages for a town having a defensive wall and a ruler with at least the Thai noble rank of ''khun'' (), together with its dependent villages. The mandala model of political organisation organised states in collective hierarchy such that smaller mueang were subordinate to more powerful neighboring ones, which in turn were subordinate to a central king or other leader. The more powerful mueang (generally designated as ''chiang'', '' wiang'', '' nakhon'' or '' krung'' – with Bangkok a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
