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Alak People
The Alak or Hrlak are an Austroasiatic ethnic group of southern Laos, living mainly in Salavan Province. They speak the Alak language. Little is known of their history, though as an Austroasiatic-speaking group, their origin is presumably in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Culture Nowadays, most Alak live in scattered villages of between ten and sixty houses, traditionally built in a circular pattern around a communal house. Houses are normally built on stilts about a metre high. The main diet and trading staple is rice, farmed with the slash-and-burn method, although small game, fish, and various plants and mushrooms provide additional food. Religious beliefs involve a range of supernatural beings, including spirits of mountains, forests and other natural features. Most villages have a shaman who helps cure the sick and predict the future for the village. The dead are typically buried in graveyards in the forest. Notable members * Ong Keo * Ong Kommandam See also * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laos
Laos (, ''Lāo'' )), officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic ( Lao: ສາທາລະນະລັດ ປະຊາທິປະໄຕ ປະຊາຊົນລາວ, French: République démocratique populaire lao), is a socialist state and the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia. At the heart of the Indochinese Peninsula, Laos is bordered by Myanmar and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the southeast, and Thailand to the west and southwest. Its capital and largest city is Vientiane. Present-day Laos traces its historic and cultural identity to Lan Xang, which existed from the 14th century to the 18th century as one of the largest kingdoms in Southeast Asia. Because of its central geographical location in Southeast Asia, the kingdom became a hub for overland trade and became wealthy economically and culturally. After a period of internal conflict, Lan Xang broke into three separate kingdoms: Luang Phrabang, Vientiane and Champasak. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Animism
Animism (from Latin: ' meaning 'breath, Soul, spirit, life') is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct Spirituality, spiritual essence. Potentially, animism perceives all things—Animal, animals, Plant, plants, Rock (geology), rocks, River, rivers, Weather, weather systems, human handiwork, and perhaps even Word, words—as animated and alive. Animism is used in the anthropology of religion, as a term for the Belief, belief system of many Indigenous peoples, especially in contrast to the relatively more recent development of organized religions. Animism focuses on the Metaphysics, metaphysical universe, with a specific focus on the concept of the immaterial soul. Although each culture has its own mythologies and rituals, animism is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of indigenous peoples' "spiritual" or "supernatural" perspectives. The animistic perspective is so widely held and inherent to most indigenous peoples, that they ofte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alak Language
Alak is a language spoken by some 4,000 people in southern Laos, especially in the Provinces of Salavan and Sekong (where the Alak people The Alak or Hrlak are an Austroasiatic ethnic group of southern Laos, living mainly in Salavan Province. They speak the Alak language. Little is known of their history, though as an Austroasiatic-speaking group, their origin is presumably in t ... make up over a fifth of the population). It is closely related to the language spoken by the Bahnars of Vietnam. It includes two dialects, Alak proper and Harak.Theraphan L. Thongkum, The place of Lawi, Harak and Tariang within Bahnaric' (1997), in ''The Mon-Khmer Studies Journal'', volume 27 References External links * https://projekt.ht.lu.se/rwaai RWAAI (Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage) * http://hdl.handle.net/10050/00-0000-0000-0003-903B-B@view Alak in RWAAI Digital Archive Bahnaric languages Languages of Laos {{AustroAsiatic-lang-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Austroasiatic Languages
The Austroasiatic languages , , are a large language family in Mainland Southeast Asia and South Asia. These languages are scattered throughout parts of Thailand, Laos, India, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal, and southern China and are the majority languages of Vietnam and Cambodia. There are around 117 million speakers of Austroasiatic languages. Of these languages, only Vietnamese, Khmer, and Mon have a long-established recorded history. Only two have official status as modern national languages: Vietnamese in Vietnam and Khmer in Cambodia. The Mon language is a recognized indigenous language in Myanmar and Thailand. In Myanmar, the Wa language is the de facto official language of Wa State. Santali is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. The rest of the languages are spoken by minority groups and have no official status. '' Ethnologue'' identifies 168 Austroasiatic languages. These form thirteen established families (plus perhaps Shompen, which is poorly atte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making it the world's sixteenth-most populous country. Vietnam borders China to the north, and Laos and Cambodia to the west. It shares maritime borders with Thailand through the Gulf of Thailand, and the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia through the South China Sea. Its capital is Hanoi and its largest city is Ho Chi Minh City (commonly known as Saigon). Vietnam was inhabited by the Paleolithic age, with states established in the first millennium BC on the Red River Delta in modern-day northern Vietnam. The Han dynasty annexed Northern and Central Vietnam under Chinese rule from 111 BC, until the first dynasty emerged in 939. Successive monarchical dynasties absorbed Chinese influences through Confucianism and Buddhism, and expanded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rice
Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima ''Oryza glaberrima'', commonly known as African rice, is one of the two domesticated rice species. It was first domesticated and grown in West Africa around 3,000 years ago. In agriculture, it has largely been replaced by higher-yielding Asian r ...'' (African rice). The name wild rice is usually used for species of the genera ''Zizania (genus), Zizania'' and ''Porteresia'', both wild and domesticated, although the term may also be used for primitive or uncultivated varieties of ''Oryza''. As a cereal, cereal grain, domesticated rice is the most widely consumed staple food for over half of the world's World population, human population,Abstract, "Rice feeds more than half the world's population." especially in Asia and Africa. It is the agricultural commodity with the third-highest worldwide production, after sugarcane and maize. Since sizable portions of sugarcane and ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slash-and-burn
Slash-and-burn agriculture is a farming method that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. The downed vegetation, or "slash", is then left to dry, usually right before the rainiest part of the year. Then, the biomass is burned, resulting in a nutrient-rich layer of ash which makes the soil fertile, as well as temporarily eliminating weed and pest species. After about three to five years, the plot's productivity decreases due to depletion of nutrients along with weed and pest invasion, causing the farmers to abandon the field and move to a new area. The time it takes for a swidden to recover depends on the location and can be as little as five years to more than twenty years, after which the plot can be slashed and burned again, repeating the cycle. In Bangladesh and India, the practice is known as jhum or jhoom. Slash-and-burn is a type of shif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shaman
Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritual energies into the physical world for the purpose of healing, divination, or to aid human beings in some other way. Beliefs and practices categorized as "shamanic" have attracted the interest of scholars from a variety of disciplines, including anthropologists, archeologists, historians, religious studies scholars, philosophers and psychologists. Hundreds of books and academic papers on the subject have been produced, with a peer-reviewed academic journal being devoted to the study of shamanism. In the 20th century, non-Indigenous Westerners involved in countercultural movements, such as hippies and the New Age created modern magicoreligious practices influenced by their ideas of various Indigenous religions, creating what has been ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graveyard
A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a burial ground and originally applied to the Roman catacombs. The term ''graveyard'' is often used interchangeably with cemetery, but a graveyard primarily refers to a burial ground within a churchyard. The intact or cremated remains of people may be interred in a grave, commonly referred to as burial, or in a tomb, an "above-ground grave" (resembling a sarcophagus), a mausoleum, columbarium, niche, or other edifice. In Western cultures, funeral ceremonies are often observed in cemeteries. These ceremonies or rites of passage differ according to cultural practices and religious beliefs. Modern cemeteries often include crematoria, and some grounds previously used for both, continue as crematoria as a principal use long after the interment areas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ong Keo
Ong Keo () led Austroasiatic-speaking minorities (formerly called Mon-Khmer) in what in Thailand was called the Holy Man's Rebellion, where it was a widespread but short-lived cause. Against French and Lao forces, however, Ong Keo continued the struggle until his murder in 1910. After his death, fighting still continued under his successor Ong Kommandam until at least 1937. Local legend holds that Ong Keo survived the murder attempt and lived until the early 1970s. Early life Ong Keo was an Alak, born in Ban Paktai, Muang Thateng, in what then was part of the kingdom of Champasak, but now is in Xekong or Sekong Province.Polsena, Vatthana; 2006; Post-war Laos: The Politics of Culture, History, And Identity; Cornell University Press; ; pp 121-138 His father was a village chief. Ong Keo moved rapidly up the leadership ladder because of his charisma and intelligence, and his fluency in Lao and Pali. He performed religious ceremonies on Mount Tayun, which was close to his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ong Kommandam
Ong Kommandam (also Ong Kommadam) was the confidant and successor of Ong Keo as the leader of the Mon-Khmer tribes of southern Laos in their struggle for independence from French and Lao rule. Ong Keo was assassinated in 1910 by the Commissioner of Salavan, Jacques Dauplay. Kommandam survived the attack, which added to his status, and he united the highland minorities of Southern Laos. An ethnic Alak, he claimed that the "Khom" (a general term for the Mon-Khmer hill tribes) were indigenous to the area and previously held much more prestige and glory, first when the Khmer Empire ruled them, and later when they were a part of the Kingdom of Lan Xang. As part of his resistance activities, he invented a secret script to convey messages, the Khom script.Sidwell, Paul. 2008. The Khom script of the Kommodam Rebellion. ''International Journal of the Sociology of Language The ''International Journal of the Sociology of Language'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering the field of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
