ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some examples of extant political genealogies created by people as diverse as Yao, Vietnamese and Tai Dam, or Black Tai. Political genealogies were texts that members of the ruling elite in these polities created and which connected their rule through an imagined genealogy to an imperial, or in some cases a religious, centre. Like the Vietnamese, the Yao recorded genealogical information about themselves based on material that had been recorded earlier by Chinese writers. They recorded this information in texts that were alternately known as the "Charter of Emperor Ping" or the "Passport for Crossing the Mountains" and which are collectively referred to by scholars as the "Yao charters". The Tale of the Honog Bang Clan traces a line of descent from the mythical Chinese emperor Shennong to the founder of a kingdom in the Red River Delta that was ruled over by a series of kings called Hung.
