A Comparative Study of the Yu Mongolians and Other Mongolians in Tibetan Areas

Nearly a thousand people of Mongolian nationality with their surname Yu now live in Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province.This Mongolian nationality keeps records of its historical origins and has a genealogy entitled “The Yu Clan Genealogy”。According to this genealogy,the Yu Mongolian nationality,descended from one of the clansmen of a Yuan Dynasty emperor,who entered the Kangba Tibetan area in the beginning of the Ming dynasty,was imperially ordered as the Tusi of Shen Bian and whose descendants ruled the present areas of Shen village during the Ming and Qing dynasties.The Yu Mongolian nationality is rather special in the Tibetan areas,and historically,its ethnic affiliation has remained blurred.In official historiography,there are no records; in local gazetteers,they are listed as being of Han nationality,and it was not till 1981 that they were officially recognized as being of the Mongolian national minority.Though the Yu Mongolian nationality descends from a branch of the Yuan dynasty imperial clansmen that entered the Tibetan area,it has been neither recorded in the history of the interchanges between the Mongolian and Tibetan nationalities,nor given any attention in the research on the Mongolian nationality in the Tibetan areas.This article places the Yu Mongolians in the context of the Mongolian nationality in the Tibetan areas,and argues that a comparison between the Yu Mongolian nationality and the Mongolian nationality in the Tibetan areas is necessary to a comprehensive exploration of ethnic relations between Mongolia and Tibet.