LAOS, liPeez. or LAOTIANS. One of the chief groups of the Thal stock, which the Shams, Thos-Nnong, Siamese, Burmese, etc. They inhabit the northeni parts of Farther India. from Tongking to Assam, hut the Laos country belongs chiefly to Siam and French ludo China, only a few tribes still preserving their independence. The physical characters of the Laotians are Medium (sometimes quite low) stature, except in the most favorable dis tricts; somewhat brachyeephalie head-form; hair black, stiff, and rarely curly, beard scanty; skin among, the general population tawny, but among the higher classes lighter and ()flea'. The upland Laotians are fairer skinned than the people of the lowlands. Certain customs and practices. such as the North Laotian tattooing with needles, bodily or namentation, etc.• have been regarded as in dicative of Malayan affinities. The character of the primitive Laotians is generally considered as of a higher order than that of many of their more civilized neighbors. They are, at their best, of a pleasanter disposition, franker. and more accessible than many of the other peoples of Farther India, and combine the qualities of good subjects with a neve•-extinct longing for inde pendence. In occupation the Laotians are agri culturists. cultivating rice and the mulberry-tree, and raising silkworms; in part shepherds and hunters. Some of the settled and more civilized Laotians make the wilder tribes of their environ ment grow rice and other foods for them. Others are expert cutters of teak and other timber. Be ing on the route of travel between China and Farther India of the south, they have had some thing to do with the development of trade and commerce in that region, although they are not credited with any keen commercial sense. Some
of the Laotians are celebrated for their metal work. Excepting music, the fine arts seem not to be largely cultivated, but there is among them a considerable indigenous as well as borrowed folk-lite•ature.
l'olvganiy is rare with the masses of the people, and the position of woman is not at all low with some of the tribes; for, if she does work hard, she is the head of the household. Those who are not still 'heathen' have accepted Buddhism in some form or other, but among the lower and ignorant classes ancesto•-wo•ship. fetishism, etc.• survive. From their neighbors, the Khmers, they have borrowed some superstitious beliefs, as the were-wolf and the like. Some of the Lao tians have a special form of writing, probably of Indian origin. With the Khans the Laotians shared in the earlier Thai civilizations of this part of Farther India, sonic of which were in their prime in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fif teenth centuries. A few of the Laos 'States' still exist in a semi-independent condition. Consult: Bock, Temples and Elephants (London, 1SS4) ; Colquhoun, Among the Shuns (London. ISS5) ; Taupin. "Voyage d'exploration et all Laos," in the Bulletin (le in Sorieti^ Yormande de (Wographie for 1890; Aymonier, Voyage dans le Laos (Paris, 1897) ; Lefevre, Un voyage an Laos (Paris, 1898).