http://www.scribd.com/doc/82822978/The- ... l-Evidence
There is a list of Hokkien words that the authors believe to have been borrowed from an Austroasitc language, a language family that includes Vietnamese and Khmer.
I looked into this question for a long time. Some of the things I found I have written below.
The etymology of kang 江 as an AA word has been refuted by Hongming Zhang in "Chinese Etyma for River" (link to abstract http://cup.cuhk.edu.hk/ojs/index.php/JC ... ticle/1908) and some other claims by Laurent Sagart in:
Laurent Sagart 2008 The Expansion of Setaria Farmers in East Asia – a Linguistic and archaeological model in: Past Human Migrations in East Asia: Matching Archaeology, Linguistics and Genetics
Routledge studies in the early history of Asia Volume 5 Alicia Sanchez-Mazas ed. pp133-81
Some of this may be visible through google book search.
Sagart writes a bit about the 童 tâng meaning "shaman", I remember. I wrote a few notes on it that I may as well post here:
Tang – a word which has the doublet tong (?) similar to other early loans. The resemblance of the word to the Vietnamese is probably co-incidental, or the Vietnamese is a combination of both meanings.
The words for “to know” and “shaman” could have a Chinese etymology, although there is evidence for the latter in Vietnam at least, having an Austroasiatic etymology as it can be connected with words in other Austroasiatic languages. Norman and Mei’s rationale for classifying this word as evidence for an Austroasiatic substratum in Southeastern China is that it is hard to see the relationship between the term tang meaning “shaman, spirit medium or healer” and the Sinitic term for “son” or “lad” “since a shaman is always an adult and never a young boy”. However I believe that there is a connection between the concept of a shaman or spirit medium in northern Chinese culture that goes back at least two thousand years. Wang Ch’ung’s Lun Heng (Han Dynasty) contains the following passage:
“The world considers boys as an embodiment of the yang principle, therefore supernatural words come from [the mouths of] small boys. Boys and shamans contain yang, so when making sacrifices for rain, boys are made to dance and wu are exposed to the sun…. Wu contain the ether of yang and because of this, in areas where there is much and because of this, in areas where there is …
The “supernatural words of small boys” often came through the medium of songs, children’s songs; literally t’ung-yao童謠 or “boys’ songs” were listened to intently in old China, as it was believed that they had some prophetic value.
Aside from the connections of boys with the supernatural the word itself has a much wider meaning in Classical Chinese than in simply “boy”, as it also can mean “slave” or “servant”, and then not only a slave to a human being, but also to a hsien 仙, a Taoist immortal. In Chinese mythology, it is common for an immortal have a hsien-t’ung or “fairy messenger” usually portrayed as a round-faced young boy.
I also found that the Korean word for shaman was mudang 무당, 巫堂 or Tangol 당골 Wikipedia gives 堂but a specialised character dictionary gave a blank for the character. I bet it's Early Middle Chinese 童!
失礼 ·la'！