The Pu (Puman in the Tang texts) are the Mon-Khmer-speaking hill peoples west of the Lancang, taken by scholars as the ancestors of the Blang, De'ang and Wa (recalled, not read).
They live in villages under headmen, farm swidden fields and grow tea. The name Lahu on the county belongs to a people who move into these hills much later and is not for 1200. Tai valley chiefs hold the basins at Menglian, Gengma and Zhenkang; the Pu hills lie above them. The ethnic names are modern groupings; the Tang Manshu and the Yuan texts use other names (Wuman, Baiman, Pu, Wang, Moxie, Mang) and the match is the scholars', not proved for 1200.
The sources for these hills are Tang and Yuan notices, Chinese Wikipedia pages on the counties and ethnography of much later centuries; none is dated to 1199 or 1200.
Who holds it
- Title
- Village headmen
- Since
- not pinned
- Born
- not known
- Family
- village headmen and ritual specialists
- Confidence
- low
No source we read describes them for 1200.
Overlord
No overlord is shown; the Tai basin chiefs and Dali by title.
How things stand that morning
Self-governing villages; no event dated.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: General statements and the geography only.
On the map: Drawn from the modern counties where these peoples live; the real range of 1200 had no line and is not known.
Sources and studies
- Wikipedia, Hani people (read this session; no medieval content)
- Chinese Wikipedia, 大理国 (read this session: the eight fu, four jun, four zhen and thirty-seven bu; it cites Yang Shen's Dian zai ji, Wang Song's Yunnan beizhengzhi, Ni Lu's Nanzhao yeshi, the Baigu tongji qianshu)
- OMNIA board, notes_msy.txt and places_msy.tsv (a lead, not a source)
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.