A History of Daoism and the Yao People of South China By Eli Alb ...

that I believe can for the most part be overcome—is the variety, and, in earlier texts, inconsistency, of graphs used to represent Yao people. Although the phonetic element has not changed since at least the early Song dynasty, the choice of radicals has, as have the different modifying words that are affixed to it, and to which it is affixed. Since Song times, the graph used to represent Yao people was written either with a dog radical (), a human radical (), or the double human radical ().⁶² Digging further back into the pre-Song official discourse, the picture becomes even hazier. Although scattered Tang Dynasty sources employ the binome Moyao , medieval authors were much more likely to speak of the Southern Man when they referred to non-Chinese peoples⁶³ living in South China, particularly in the region known today as Hunan; these are facts which call into question the relatedness of these apparently different labels to a single, historical ethnic identity. Questions pertaining to the choice of graphs have significance beyond mere philological analysis; they are the choices made by officials, some who were military commanders responsible for pacifying border regions; others (often the same people) were bureaucrats in charge of administrative districts in those regions.⁶⁴ These choices thus reflect sociopolitical concerns.

The Jade Radical and Allusions to Immortal Realms

In 1949, Chinese scholars began to replace all previous iconic designations of the people known as Yao with , written with a jade radical, and in so doing, imposed a graph with its own, complex historical matrix of metaphors and meanings. According to Mathews, (jade) means: “A precious jade; also defined as a precious kind of jade, inferior to jade. Clear and pure. Precious.”⁶⁵ The Han dynasty lexicological work, Shuowen Jiezi defines it as “jade of [particular] beauty” (yu zhi mei zhe ).⁶⁶ The Hanyu Da Cidian and the Zhongwen Da Cidian, both dictionaries of classical Chinese usage, list several compounds with yao , in the majority of which it is a descriptive modifier, pertaining to the beauty or brilliance of jade, or things and places which radiate a jade-like, or even auspicious