Nyah Kur people

The Mon have been held to be among the earliest peoples of continental Southeast Asia. The civilizations attributed to them include Dvaravati in central Thailand, Sri Gotapura in central Laos, Hariphunchai in northern Thailand and the Thaton Kingdom. Dvaravati was among the first to receive Theravada missionaries from Sri Lanka in contrast to Hindu contemporaries, the Khmers and Chams. The Mon adapted the Pallava script to their language and the oldest Mon script was found in a cave in modern Saraburi dating around 550 AD. At the turn of the first millennium, the Mon came under constant pressure due to the Tai migrations from the north and Khmer invasions from the east.^{[citation needed]} Nai Pan Hla takes Suryavarman I for the Khmer heir to the throne of the Lavo Kingdom, who then became ruler of the Khmer Empire as well. On his account the great majority of the Mon of Dvaravati fled west to other Mon lands, were taken as slaves, or assimilated to the new culture.^[3]

However a small remnant remained in the remote jungles of the Khorat Plateau.^{[citation needed]} Little is known of their history. When they were discovered by western scholars in the early 20th century, it was variously assumed that they were part of the Lawa or Kuy ethnic groups. It was not until 1970 that their language was determined to be directly descended from Old Mon, and in fact, more similar to Old Mon than the modern Mon of their brethren in present-day Burma and Western Thailand.^[3] Gérard Diffloth set out the descent from the Old Mon of the Dvaravati period in 1984, and Emmanuel Guillon challenged that reading in 2009.^[4]: 374 The wider question of who spoke what in Dvaravati is unsettled. The surviving inscriptions show only that Mon was used for religious purposes in central and northeast Thailand, and whether it was also the dominant spoken language is open.^[4]: 374

Nyah Kur and modern Mon are not mutually intelligible, and the endonym Mon is unknown to the Nyah Kur. Isolation in the mountains between central and northeastern Thailand allowed them to keep an identity of their own, which developed apart from the Mon over the last thousand years while still resembling modern Mon culture in some respects.^[3]

Today, the Nyah Kur live in small villages distributed in a north-south strip that crosses Phetchabun, Nakhon Ratchasima and Chaiyaphum provinces, the majority living in Chaiyaphum. The Thai refer to them as ชาวบน meaning "upper people" or "sky people". Their self-designation is Nyah Kur, which in the Nyah Kur language means "mountain folk" and in modern Mon translates to "hill plantation people".^[3]

Nyah Kur and the Mon language of Burma are the only two languages of the Monic branch of the Austroasiatic language family.^[5] Nyah Kur is generally taken to descend directly from Old Mon, a reading set out by Diffloth in 1984 and challenged by Guillon in 2009.^[4]: 374 In more than one respect it is more conservative than modern Mon. It keeps final -l, which Mon had lost by the Middle Mon period, as in Old Mon kyāl 'wind', Nyah Kur khəyaal.^[6]: 9 Mathias Jenny uses that retention in both directions. It leaves open that Mon varieties spoken in Thailand kept the sound longer than those of Myanmar, which would allow a later date for Mon loans into Thai. It also marks Nyah Kur kwien 'cart', which has no final -l, as a recent borrowing from Thai rather than an inherited word.^[6]: 9 Christian Bauer places the loss of final -l before the Early Middle Mon period, which he puts in the late 15th century.^[7]: 255 He uses a second retention in the same way. Nyah Kur keeps /a/ where Old Mon wrote the inherent vowel a. That is one of three grounds on which Bauer reconstructs a proto-Mon form */khal/ against Shorto's Old Mon /khɔl/, the others being Indo-Aryan loans in Old Mon and early Khmer–Mon contact words.^[7]: 255 When the vowel shifted to /ɔ/ cannot be fixed, but Bauer holds that on the Nyah Kur evidence the older value must have survived in some varieties of early Old Mon.^[7]: 255 A 2006 estimate places the number of speakers at approximately 1500 people with no monolinguals.^[8] The dialects spoken in Phetchabun and Nakhon Ratchasima have limited intelligibility with that of Chaiyaphum and are nearly extinct. Even in Chaiyaphum the language is spoken mostly among older Nyah Kur, while others prefer to identify as Thai and speak either the local Isan language or the national Thai standard.^[8] Nyah Kur no longer has its own script and when written, the Thai alphabet is used. In 1984, a Nyah Kur-Thai-English dictionary was published.

The Nyah Kur have a body of traditional knowledge of forests, wildlife, native plants and herbal medicine. Their way of life has been closely tied to the natural environment, and that knowledge has been important both to subsistence and to cultural practice.^[9]

A distinctive element of Nyah Kur culture is their traditional vocal performance known as "Pah Re Re," a form of sung poetry characterized by melodic ornamentation.^[3][9] The songs, performed in the Nyah Kur language, typically describe the beauty of nature, courtship between men and women, separation, and nostalgia for the past. This tradition is now critically endangered, with fewer than five individuals reportedly still able to perform it.^[9]

In recent decades, the Nyah Kur have faced increasing cultural and linguistic decline due to external influences and community dispersal. However, since 2005, there have been efforts to revitalize their cultural heritage, including the development of a writing system, the production of local literature, and the introduction of Nyah Kur language teaching in schools.^[9]

Genetic studies indicate that the Nyah Kur and modern Mon populations exhibit distinct maternal genetic structures, reflecting different population histories.^[10] Evidence suggests that present-day Mon groups in Thailand are genetically related to Mon populations in Myanmar, consistent with historical migrations during the early modern period.^[10]

Additional genetic evidence places the Nyah Kur within Austroasiatic populations and distinguishes them from neighboring Tai–Kadai-speaking groups, supporting their long-term presence in mainland Southeast Asia.^[11]