| Group: | Rhade Degar |
| Pop: | 398,671 (2019)[1] |
| Popplace: | Vietnam, Cambodia |
| Langs: | Rade • Vietnamese |
| Rels: | Traditional religion • Animism • ChristianityBuddhism minority |
| Related: | Chams, Utsuls, Jarai, Bahnar |
The Rhade or Êđê (Rade language: Anak Degar / Degar people) are an indigenous Austronesian ethnic group of southern Vietnam (population 398,671 in 2019).
The term Rhade is an old French inscription of Dagar in the Rade language. The Rhade are also referred to as Anak Degar (Degar people). Anak Degar comes from the term Anak Kudāyā-Nāgār, meaning "Kudayanagar ethnic groups" or "the descendants of bok Kauṇḍinya and bia Nagar". The name "Kauṇḍinya" was derived from the name of Kampuchea, and "Nagar" refers to the primary goddess of the Cham people. As an ethnic group of the Vietnamese Central Highlands, the Rhade people's culture was influenced by both Champa and Cambodia. Because of their status occupying the border region between these two influences, the term Degar is also sometimes used to refer to the peoples of the Vietnamese Central Highlands as a collective group.
According to French scholars of Southeast Asian studies, the character of Monk Kauṇḍinya symbolized the Indian cultural sphere which influenced classical Southeast Asia through Po Nagar (Champa), Neang Neak (Kampuchea), Nang Khosop (Laos), and Mae Khwan-khao (Thailand). This legend was popular with the ethnic groups of the Vietnamese Central Highlands and other ethnic groups of Southeast Asia within the Indian cultural sphere.
The Rade language is one of the Chamic languages, a subfamily of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family. Other Cham languages are spoken in central Vietnam and in Aceh, Sumatra; The Cham are more distantly related to the Malayic languages of Indonesia, Malaysia and Madagascar, and to the Philippine languages.
The Cham developed a writing system based on Latin script in the 1920s.
Like other Austronesian ethnic groups in the Central Highlands, the Rade have unique prefixes to mark people's names with the gender they were assigned at birth. Feminine names are always marked with the prefix H'.[2] For example, the beauty pageant winner H'Hen Niê and her mother H'Ngơn Niê both have their names prefixed with H'. Masculine names are prefixed with Y-,[2] such as the late government official Y-Ngông Niê Kdăm. Translators of the Rade evangelical Bible incorporated this cultural practice for most Middle Eastern and European characters (H'Mari "Mary," H'Rut "Ruth," H'Prisil "Priscilla," Y-Yôsep "Joseph," Y-Yakôp "Jacob," Y-Julius, etc.), with a few exceptions such as Yêhôwa ("Jehovah"), Yêsu ("Jesus"), Hêrôt ("Herod"), etc.[3] Rade's more sophisticated phonology allows for more accurate transcriptions of these Hebrew names and consequently, more normalized adoption among Rade evangelical Protestants, as opposed to Vietnamese ones.
Unlike in Vietnamese, given names precede surnames in Rade. The two most common surnames are Niê and Mlô.[2] A girl may be named something like H'Mari Niê, with H' being the feminine prefix, Mari being the true given name, and Niê being the surname. There are also derived compound surnames such as Niê Siêng, Niê Kdăm, Mlô Dun Du, etc. and toponymic surnames like Buôn Yă. Surnames are passed down matrilineally.
The Rade practice matrilineal descent. Descent is traced through the female line, and family property is held and inherited by women. The basic kinship unit is the matrilineage, and these basic kinship units are grouped into higher-level matrilineal sibs (matrisibs). The Rade are further divided into two phratries.[4]
The women of a matrilineage and their spouses and children live together in a longhouse. The lineage holds corporate property such as paddy land, cattle, gongs, and jars; these are held by the senior female of the matrilineage. The lineage also engages in the farming of common lands and maintenance of the longhouse. The head of the longhouse itself is a man, with the position most commonly inherited by the spouse of the daughter or sister-in-law of the previous longhouse head.[5]
Matrilineages and matrisibs are exogamous, with both sexual intercourse and intermarriage prohibited. The phratries also impose some restrictions on marriage. Couples violating these restrictions must sacrifice a buffalo, though violating phratry restrictions is generally not seen as being as serious, and requires only the sacrifice of a pig. Residence is matrilocal.[6]
Rade villages were traditionally autonomous and governed by an oligarchy of leading families. Some villages became locally dominant, but none formed any larger political structures.[7]
Epics (Rade language: klei khan), such as Klei khan Y Dam San, H'Bia Mlin, Dam Kteh Mlan, Mdrong Dam, etc. are told by epic tellers (Rade language: po khan) next to the fire, through the night.
Êdê music is very diverse and playing music is the way that Êdê people communicate to both other people, and according to their beliefs, God (Êdê language: yang).
A typical house of Rade people is the longhouse made of bamboo and wood. The longhouse's length is measured by the number of collar beams (Rade language: de). Once a girl living in the house gets married, the house is lengthened by one compartment, as the matrilocal aspect of Rade marriage means that the husband will live in his wife's house. The orientation of buildings are North-South.
The longhouse's space is divided into two parts: Gah part's area makes up 1/3- 2/3 the total area is considered as the living room and the other part includes bedrooms. There are two doors: the front door is for men, the back door is for women and two stairs: male stair and female stair.
Longhouses can be 100 meters long and house from three to nine families. A traditional description of the size of the longhouse is: "The house is as long as the gong's echo".
During the Vietnam War, the Rhade had many involvements, but their most notable was serving with U.S Special forces. The Rhade would be "recruited" from their villages, and sent to work off with various different units (most of them Green Beret affiliated) such as MIKE forces, or MACV-SOG While in these units, the Rhade provided manpower, but also their wisdom of the local terrain, and skills they had from being oriented with the environment. Like all of the Montagnards serving in the war, translation was an important skill they offered, so they could recruit and gain the trust of more Rhade villages.
According to William Duiker, United States Foreign Officer and East-Asian professor, the training efforts, called "Civilian Irregular Defense Groups" (CIDG), were plagued with problems of arbitrary authority on the part of Vietnamese authorities and officers. During the summer of 1964, "...Vietnamese arrogance led immediately to problems, and in September a serious revolt broke out among the Rhadé [sic] tribesmen in Ban Me Thout[sic]. Only with the aid of U.S. advisers was the crisis defused."[9]
The Rade made up a portion of the United States' Montagnard allies, and after the war some fled to the United States, mainly residing in North Carolina.[10]
L. Sabatier has collected 236 articles. The highest number of articles is of marriage and family matters, followed by property ownership and relationship between the heads of villages and villagers. The main principles are that communal nature and equality are under guarantee. Judges are called khoa phat kdi.