Each Bai village of the Erhai has a benzhu, a protector spirit with a temple, a festival and a day of offering, and some of the cults are to Nanzhao kings and heroes, to deified local officials and to figures such as the goddess Baijie (Bryson, Goddess on the Frontier, recalled, NOT re-read).
The system is documented from the Ming and the Qing and in the Nanzhao and Dali painting and carving only in outline; we cannot date the cults of any one village to 1200. The point is placed at Xizhou as a marker of the Bai villages and is not a shrine.
Who holds it
- Title
- The village headmen and the temple keepers of each village
- Since
- not pinned
- Born
- not known
- Confidence
- low
A pattern of later ethnography, not a Dali-period source.
What it holds
- Village temples and festivals; no estates shown
How things stand that morning
Not described.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: One recalled monograph and later ethnography.
On the map: A marker; the cults are in every village.
Primary sources for Dali
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- The Complete Annals of Dai Viet, Ngo Si Lien, drawing on Le Van Huu's Dai Viet su ky (1272) and Phan Phu Tien; continued by Pham Cong Tru and Le Hi (1479; printed 1697 in the standard Chinh Hoa edition). The main narrative source for Dai Viet in 1200, compiled in 1479 from Le Van Huu's lost history of 1272. Read online
- History of Song, chapters 488 and 489: Jiaozhi, Dali, Champa, Zhenla, Pagan, Srivijaya, Java, Brunei, Chola and Tambralinga, Toqto'a (Tuotuo) and the Yuan history office, from the Song court records (1343 to 1345, from Song veritable records and court diaries). The Chinese court's record of its southern neighbours, compiled from Song archives. Read online
- The Unofficial History of Nanzhao, Yang Shen; revised by Hu Wei (16th century, revised 1775, from Dali and Yunnan traditions and lost local histories). The kingdom of Dali has no surviving text of 1200: its own records were destroyed in the Mongol conquest and after, and the Song shi's Dali entry ends in 1175. Read online
- History of the Song, the chapters on Xia and on foreign states, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office (1343 to 1345). The Song court's accounts of its neighbours, each arranged as an annal of embassies and wars. Read online
- Draft Compilation of the Collected Statutes of the Song, Various; the Song huiyao were compiled by the Song state, the surviving draft reassembled by Xu Song from the Yongle dadian in the nineteenth century (the original Song compilations date from the eleventh to the thirteenth century; the surviving extracts were recovered in 1809 to 1820 and printed in 1936). Dated extracts from the Song government's own statute collections, arranged by office. Read online
- Notes in Answer to Questions about the Lands beyond the Passes, Zhou Qufei (周去非) (1178, after service in Guangxi). A Guangxi official's notes, written twenty years before 1200, on the south-western frontier of the Song and the countries beyond. Read online
Sources and studies
- Megan Bryson, Goddess on the Frontier (Stanford UP, 2016) and her articles on Baijie, the Bai and the Dali kingdom (2013, 2019): recalled, NOT re-read
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.