The Wa live in the rugged hills west of the Lancang between the Mekong and the Salween; very little is known of their early history (English Wikipedia).
They are village communities under headmen and village priests, with no lord over them, and the Tai valley chiefs of Menglian and Gengma are their neighbours on the plains. Across the Salween lies the Burma map's Wa country, and nothing in the sources we read puts a Dali, Mong Mao or Pagan officer in these hills in 1200. 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 and village priests
- 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; Dali, Mong Mao and the Tai chiefs of the basins each claim what they can reach.
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, Wa 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.