The Muong are among the ethnic minority groups that have big populations in Vietnam
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Mường
Show Muong Settlement with traditional houses near Hòa Bình (2007)
A musical instrument from the Muong people  Muong playing the gongs (cồng chiêng). The Mường (Vietnamese: Người Mường) are an ethnic group native to northern Vietnam. The Muong is the country's third largest of 53 minority groups, with an estimated population of 1.45 million (according to the 2019 census). The Muong people inhabit the mountainous region of northern Vietnam, concentrated in Hòa Bình Province and the mountainous districts of Thanh Hóa Province. They are most closely related to the ethnic Vietnamese (Kinh). Economic Features[edit]The Muong residents primarily grow wet rice and some of them also grow corn, cassava. Breeding is attached special importance to development. The main livestock is cattle and poultries. The significant economic resources of the Muong family are exploiting products of forest including mushrooms, jew’s ear, cardamom, lac, cinnamon, honey, wood, bamboo, rattan … The typical crafts of the Muong are weaving, knitting, reeling. History[edit]The Mường epic Đẻ đất đẻ nước (Te tấc te đác) traces their mythological ancestry to a legendary bird couple called Chim Ây (male bird) and Cái Ứa (female bird).[2] In the Muong epic cycle the origins of all natural phenomena, the first people and then their cultural practices such as the acquisition of fire, building houses, producing silk, casting bronze drums, and weaving and embroidering, are related to the uplands. The first Muong people were living in a cave on the mountain Hao from where their descendants resettled in all the other big and small villages (mường). Only one son of the first Muong parents, Dịt Dàng, or the king Việt, went down to lowlands to live and to build a capital city there with a palace and big market. This place in the plains is named in the epic tales as Kinh Kỳ Kẻ Chợ, i.e. the area of the capitalcity and market-place. In the Muong epic tales uplanders and lowlanders intensively interact with each other. For instance, they jointly cut down the huge tree of Chu ‘with its copper trunk and iron branches’ and together move it out of the mountains down to the plains. In contrast to this, in the Vietnamese story of descent the capital city is located in an upland area, in Phong Châu. Here the eldest of the fifty sons who stayed in the mountains with their mother founded the capital of the first Vietnamese kingdom Văn Lang. Many depicted details of ancient life of the Vietnamese are also related to mountains: they use burnt ginger roots instead of salt that could be produced only by the sea; men cut their hair short to make it easier when moving in the forests; their lands are reserved mainly for cultivating glutinous rice which requires less water to grow than wet rice and could be easily cultivated on the hillsides; for some ritual purposes they prepare special dishes from this sort of rice such as rice cooked in bamboo tubes or stuffed steamed cakes (bánh chưng, bánh dầy). Forests in Vietnamese tradition are always associated with mountain areas as plains are reserved for paddy fields. Cutting hair was a custom specific for Viet (Yue) men in contrast to Han Chinese who had been keeping their hair long. Interestingly enough, completely the same stuffed steamed cakes as Vietnamese bánh chưng and bánh dầy are typical for ‘Buluotuo Culture’ of Zhuang people in Guangxi province in China, that again provokes associations between Tai and Viet-Muong cultural traditions[3] From anthropologist viewpoint, both the Muong and the Vietnamese Kinh are descended from common origins-the ancient Viet-Muong speakers-the northern subbranch of the Vietic ethnolinguistic group of the Austroasiatic family that had heavily contact with Tai-speaking people and other Northern Austroasiatic speakers during the first millennia.[4] The Muong are often perceived as an intact culture, compared to sinicized and predominantly Buddhists Vietnamese in the lowland, and they also tend to adopt and exchange many customs of the neighboring Black Tai.[5] Like other highland (Zomia areas ~ >300 meters) groups, for most of history, the Muong were neither under any regional pre-modern states' influence, both politically and culturally. Professor James C. Scott in his 2009 book The Art of Not Being Governed also included the abstract outlined by Keith Taylor and Patricia Pelley that "the Muong are popularly regarded as the pre-Sinitic version of the Viet."[6] Although it has been little studied, scholarships believe that due to many plausible reasons, the ethnically and linguistically schism between Vietnamese and Muong speakers occurred during the seventh to ninth centuries AD, roughly during the period of Chinese Tang Empire's domination over Northern Vietnam.[7][8] The Muong refer themselves by their variations of endonym Mol/Monl/Moan (people)[9] and mwal tlong (inner people),[10] while the term Mường is a mere xenonym used by the Vietnamese and then French administration implied that xenonym Mường to various Muong-speaking tribes into one single Mường ethnicity during the 1920s.[9] Historical records said there were Muong rebellions in 1029, 1300, 1351, 1430s, 1822, 1833, 1880s.[11] In 1931, Muong population was 180,000,[10] and it grew to 415,000 by 1960.[12] The Mường are one of the 4 main groups of Vietic speakers in Vietnam, the others being the Việt, Thổ and Chứt. Many Mường have over time intermixed with the Thổ and Chứt. The Nguồn, who are classified as Việt, are sometimes believed to be the southernmost group of the Mường, who intermixed with Chứt people. Language[edit]The Muong speak the Muong language, a close relative of Vietnamese. Writing based on the Vietnamese alphabet appeared in the 20th century, introduced by Western scholars. The Muong aristocracy were already familiar with Chinese writing through their study of the Confucian canon. The Muong language is mainly used in the domestic sphere of communication. Most native speakers also speak Vietnamese. Geographic distribution[edit]The population of Mường in Vietnam was 1,452,095 according to the 2019 census, 1.51% of Vietnam's population.[1] They mostly live in the north of Vietnam, mainly in the mountainous provinces of Hòa Bình (549,026 people, comprising 64.28% of the province's population), Thanh Hóa (376,340 people, comprising 10.34% of the province's population), Phú Thọ (218,404 people, comprising 14.92% of the province's population), and Sơn La (84,676 people, comprising 6.78% of the province's population).[1] Around the city of Hoa Binh there are four large Muong population centers: Muonguang, Muongbi, Muongthang and Muongdong. Literature[edit]The Muong have many valuable epics (Muong language: mo), such as Te tấc te đác (meaning: Giving birth to the Earth and the Water). Holidays[edit]The main holidays of the Muong are New Year and agrarian holidays. During the celebration of the New Year Muong people pray to the ancestors. Such prayers are also arranged on the revolutionary holidays after which the whole village treats themselves to pre-cooked dishes. Clothing[edit]Trang phục dân tộc Mường (ảnh chụp tại Bảo tàng Dân tộc học Việt Nam) Traditional dress of the Muong people (photo from the Vietnamese Museum of Ethnic Studies) Different Muong groups will wear different clothing styles. Some wear clothing borrowed from the Thái, while others wear clothing similar to the Vietnamese. In general, clothing for women consists of some type of tunic or robe, headscarf, and skirt. Some women in the past wore neck rings like other minorities in Northern Vietnam. Men generally wear simple tunics and pants. Religion[edit]Mainly, the Mường follow Buddhism and Christianity (Catholics), often with local animistic influences. They believe in the existence of harmful spirits (ma tai, ma em, and others). The Muong practice their traditional ethnic religion, worshiping ancestral spirits and other supernatural deities. They are primarily animists, which means that they believe that non-living objects have spirits. They also deify local heroes who have died. However, with the introduction of modern medicine, adherence to many folk beliefs has declined. The New Life[edit]After the August Revolution the way of life of Muong people has changed. Large families have given way to small ones. Married brothers no longer live with their parents, but in separate families. The peasants received community allotments of 1 to 3 Mau per family and industry began to develop. Most villages have primary schools. See also[edit]
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