Community Organization Forms of Mon-Khmer Linguistic-ethnic Groups: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Abstract

Applying the interdisciplinary approach and the retrospective methods of archeology, ethnography, history, ethnolinguistics, the paper tries to clear the process and status of the Mon-Khmer linguistic-ethnic groups’ community organizations that much changed in the history. Starting from the primitive defense form of hamlets, most of the linguistic-ethnic groups used the adjectives meaning “round” to organize the nouns indicating the forms of hamlet – their fundamental community organization. Particularly, the North Bahnaric sub-branch borrowed the nouns of plây, plâi from Austronesian languages to indicate their hamlets. The larger than the hamlets is forms of village, leaving traces in the nouns of plang of Bahnar, kruang of Bru, làng of Viet and làng of Muong. From forms of the community organization of hamlet and village, Viet-Muong people advanced towards establishing nước “nation” as a supreme administrative-political institution. The parallel structure of làng-nước “village-nation” has been maintained until the end of the nineteenth century.