China The term "Barbarian" in traditional Chinese culture had several aspects. For instance, Chinese has more than one historical "barbarian"
exonym. Several historical
Chinese characters for non-Chinese peoples were
graphic pejoratives. The character for the
Yao people, for instance, was changed from
yao 猺 "jackal" to
yao 瑤 "precious jade" in the modern period. The original
Hua–Yi distinction between Hua ("Chinese") and Yi (commonly translated as "barbarian") was based on culture and power but not on race. Historically, the Chinese used various words for foreign ethnic groups. They include terms like 夷
Yi, which is often translated as "barbarians." Despite this conventional translation, there are also other ways of translating
Yi into English. Some of the examples include "foreigners," "ordinary others," "wild tribes," "uncivilized tribes," and so forth.
History and terminology Chinese historical records mention what may now perhaps be termed "barbarian" peoples for over four millennia, although this considerably predates the
Greek language origin of the term "barbarian", at least as is known from the thirty-four centuries of written records in the Greek language. The sinologist
Herrlee Glessner Creel said, "Throughout Chinese history "the barbarians" have been a constant motif, sometimes minor, sometimes very major indeed. They figure prominently in the Shang oracle inscriptions, and the dynasty that came to an end only in 1912 was, from the Chinese point of view, barbarian."
Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BC)
oracles and
bronze inscriptions first recorded specific Chinese
exonyms for foreigners, often in contexts of warfare or tribute. King
Wu Ding (r. 1250–1192 BC), for instance, fought with the
Guifang 鬼方,
Di 氐, and
Qiang 羌 "barbarians." During the
Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BC), the meanings of four exonyms were expanded. "These included Rong, Yi, Man, and Di—all general designations referring to the barbarian tribes." These
Siyi 四夷 "Four Barbarians", most "probably the names of ethnic groups originally," were the Yi or
Dongyi 東夷 "eastern barbarians," Man or
Nanman 南蠻 "southern barbarians," Rong or
Xirong 西戎 "western barbarians," and Di or
Beidi 北狄 "northern barbarians." The Russian anthropologist
Mikhail Kryukov concluded. Evidently, the barbarian tribes at first had individual names, but during about the middle of the first millennium B.C., they were classified schematically according to the four cardinal points of the compass. This would, in the final analysis, mean that once again territory had become the primary criterion of the we-group, whereas the consciousness of common origin remained secondary. What continued to be important were the factors of language, the acceptance of certain forms of material culture, the adherence to certain rituals, and, above all, the economy and the way of life. Agriculture was the only appropriate way of life for the
Hua-Hsia. in Hunan, 1795 The
Chinese classics use compounds of these four generic names in localized "barbarian tribes" exonyms such as "west and north"
Rongdi, "south and east"
Manyi,
Nanyibeidi "barbarian tribes in the south and the north," and
Manyirongdi "all kinds of barbarians." Creel says the Chinese evidently came to use
Rongdi and
Manyi "as generalized terms denoting 'non-Chinese,' 'foreigners,' 'barbarians'," and a statement such as "the Rong and Di are wolves" (
Zuozhuan, Min 1) is "very much like the assertion that many people in many lands will make today, that 'no foreigner can be trusted'." The Chinese had at least two reasons for vilifying and depreciating the non-Chinese groups. On the one hand, many of them harassed and pillaged the Chinese, which gave them a genuine grievance. On the other, it is quite clear that the Chinese were increasingly encroaching upon the territory of these peoples, getting the better of them by trickery, and putting many of them under subjection. By vilifying them and depicting them as somewhat less than human, the Chinese could justify their conduct and still any qualms of conscience. This word
Yi has both specific references, such as to
Huaiyi 淮夷 peoples in the
Huai River region, and generalized references to "barbarian; foreigner; non-Chinese." ''
Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage translates Yi
as "Anc[ient] barbarian tribe on east border, any border or foreign tribe." The sinologist Edwin G. Pulleyblank says the name Yi'' "furnished the primary Chinese term for 'barbarian'," but "Paradoxically the Yi were considered the most civilized of the non-Chinese peoples.
Idealization Some Chinese classics romanticize or idealize barbarians, comparable to the western
noble savage construct. For instance, the Confucian
Analects records: • The Master said, The [夷狄] barbarians of the East and North have retained their princes. They are not in such a state of decay as we in China. • The Master said, The Way makes no progress. I shall get upon a raft and float out to sea. • The Master wanted to settle among the [九夷] Nine Wild Tribes of the East. Someone said, I am afraid you would find it hard to put up with their lack of refinement. The Master said, Were a true gentleman to settle among them there would soon be no trouble about lack of refinement. The translator
Arthur Waley noted that, "A certain idealization of the 'noble savage' is to be found fairly often in early Chinese literature", citing the
Zuo Zhuan maxim, "When the Emperor no longer functions, learning must be sought among the 'Four Barbarians,' north, west, east, and south." Professor Creel said, From ancient to modern times the Chinese attitude toward people not Chinese in culture—"barbarians"—has commonly been one of contempt, sometimes tinged with fear ... It must be noted that, while the Chinese have disparaged barbarians, they have been singularly hospitable both to individuals and to groups that have adopted Chinese culture. And at times they seem to have had a certain admiration, perhaps unwilling, for the rude force of these peoples or simpler customs. In a somewhat related example,
Mencius believed that Confucian practices were universal and timeless, and thus followed by both Hua and Yi, "
Shun was an Eastern barbarian; he was born in Chu Feng, moved to Fu Hsia, and died in Ming T'iao.
King Wen was a Western barbarian; he was born in Ch'i Chou and died in Pi Ying. Their native places were over a thousand
li apart, and there were a thousand years between them. Yet when they had their way in the Central Kingdoms, their actions matched like the two halves of a tally. The standards of the two sages, one earlier and one later, were identical." The prominent (121 CE)
Shuowen Jiezi character dictionary, defines
yi 夷 as "men of the east" 東方之人也. The dictionary also informs that
Yi is not dissimilar from the
Xia 夏, which means Chinese. Elsewhere in the
Shuowen Jiezi, under the entry of
qiang 羌, the term
yi is associated with benevolence and human longevity.
Yi countries are therefore virtuous places where people live long lives. This is why Confucius wanted to go to
yi countries when the
dao could not be realized in the central states.
Pejorative Chinese characters Some
Chinese characters used to
transcribe non-Chinese peoples were graphically pejorative
ethnic slurs, in which the insult derived not from the Chinese word but from the character used to write it. For instance, the
Written Chinese transcription of
Yao "the
Yao people", who primarily live in the mountains of southwest China and Vietnam. When 11th-century
Song dynasty authors first transcribed the
exonym Yao, they insultingly chose
yao 猺 "jackal" from a lexical selection of over 100 characters pronounced
yao (e.g., 腰 "waist", 遙 "distant", 搖 "shake"). During a series of 20th-century Chinese
language reforms, this graphic pejorative
猺 (written with the 犭"
dog/beast radical") "jackal; the Yao" was replaced twice; first with the invented character
yao 傜 (亻"
human radical") "the Yao", then with
yao 瑤 (玉 "
jade radical") "precious jade; the Yao." Chinese
orthography (symbols used to write a language) can provide unique opportunities to write ethnic insults
logographically that do not exist alphabetically. For the Yao ethnic group, there is a difference between the transcriptions
Yao 猺 "jackal" and
Yao 瑤 "jade" but none between the
romanizations Yao and
Yau.
Cultural and racial barbarianism was to stop the "barbarians" from crossing the northern border of China. According to the archeologist William Meacham, it was only by the time of the late
Shang dynasty that one can speak of "
Chinese," "
Chinese culture," or "Chinese civilization." "There is a sense in which the traditional view of ancient Chinese history is correct (and perhaps it originated ultimately in the first appearance of dynastic civilization): those on the fringes and outside this esoteric event were "barbarians" in that they did not enjoy (or suffer from) the fruit of civilization until they were brought into close contact with it by an imperial expansion of the civilization itself." In a similar vein, Creel explained the significance of Confucian
li "ritual; rites; propriety". The fundamental criterion of "Chinese-ness," anciently and throughout history, has been cultural. The Chinese have had a particular way of life, a particular complex of usages, sometimes characterized as
li. Groups that conformed to this way of life were, generally speaking, considered Chinese. Those that turned away from it were considered to cease to be Chinese. ... It was the process of acculturation, transforming barbarians into Chinese, that created the great bulk of the Chinese people. The barbarians of Western Chou times were, for the most part, future Chinese, or the ancestors of future Chinese. This is a fact of great importance. ... It is significant, however, that we almost never find any references in the early literature to physical differences between Chinese and barbarians. Insofar as we can tell, the distinction was purely cultural. According to the Pakistani academic
M. Shahid Alam, "The centrality of culture, rather than race, in the Chinese world view had an important corollary. Nearly always, this translated into a civilizing mission rooted in the premise that 'the barbarians could be culturally assimilated'"; namely
laihua 來化 "come and be transformed" or
Hanhua 漢化 "become Chinese; be sinicized." Two millennia before the French anthropologist
Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote
The Raw and the Cooked, the Chinese differentiated "raw" and "cooked" categories of barbarian peoples who lived in China. The
shufan 熟番 "cooked [food eating] barbarians" are sometimes interpreted as Sinicized, and the
shengfan 生番 "raw [food eating] barbarians" as not Sinicized. The
Liji gives this description. The people of those five regions – the Middle states, and the [Rong], [Yi] (and other wild tribes around them) – had all their several natures, which they could not be made to alter. The tribes on the east were called [Yi]. They had their hair unbound, and tattooed their bodies. Some of them ate their food without its being cooked with fire. Those on the south were called Man. They tattooed their foreheads, and had their feet turned toward each other. Some of them ate their food without its being cooked with fire. Those on the west were called [Rong]. They had their hair unbound, and wore skins. Some of them did not eat grain-food. Those on the north were called [Di]. They wore skins of animals and birds, and dwelt in caves. Some of them did not eat grain-food. Dikötter explains the close association between
nature and nurture. "The
shengfan, literally 'raw barbarians', were considered savage and resisting. The
shufan, or 'cooked barbarians', were tame and submissive. The consumption of raw food was regarded as an infallible sign of savagery that affected the physiological state of the barbarian." Some
Warring States period texts record a belief that the respective natures of the Chinese and the barbarian were incompatible. Mencius, for instance, once stated: "I have heard of the Chinese converting barbarians to their ways, but not of their being converted to barbarian ways." Dikötter says, "The nature of the Chinese was regarded as impermeable to the evil influences of the barbarian; no retrogression was possible. Only the barbarian might eventually change by adopting Chinese ways." However, different thinkers and texts convey different opinions on this issue. The prominent Tang Confucian Han Yu, for example, wrote in his essay
Yuan Dao the following: "When Confucius wrote the
Chunqiu, he said that if the feudal lords use Yi ritual, then they should be called Yi; If they use Chinese rituals, then they should be called Chinese." Han Yu went on to lament in the same essay that the Chinese of his time might all become Yi because the Tang court wanted to put Yi laws above the teachings of the former kings. Therefore, Han Yu's essay shows the possibility that the Chinese can lose their culture and become the uncivilized outsiders, and that the uncivilized outsiders have the potential to become Chinese. , 13th century AD After the Song dynasty, many of China's rulers in the north were of Inner Asia ethnicities, such as the Khitans, Juchens, and Mongols of the Liao, Jin and Yuan dynasties, the latter ended up ruling over the entire China. Hence, the historian
John King Fairbank wrote, "the influence on China of the great fact of alien conquest under the Liao-Jin-Yuan dynasties is just beginning to be explored." During the Qing dynasty, the rulers of China adopted Confucian philosophy and Han Chinese institutions to show that the Manchu rulers had received the Mandate of Heaven to rule China. At the same time, they also tried to retain their own indigenous culture. Due to the Manchus' adoption of Han Chinese culture, most Han Chinese (though not all) did accept the Manchus as the legitimate rulers of China. Similarly, according to Fudan University historian Yao Dali, even the supposedly "patriotic" hero Wen Tianxiang of the late Song and early Yuan period did not believe the Mongol rule to be illegitimate. In fact, Wen was willing to live under Mongol rule as long as he was not forced to be a Yuan dynasty official, out of his loyalty to the Song dynasty. Yao explains that Wen chose to die in the end because he was forced to become a Yuan official. So, Wen chose death due to his loyalty to his dynasty, not because he viewed the Yuan court as a non-Chinese, illegitimate regime and therefore refused to live under their rule. Yao also says that many Chinese who were living in the Yuan-Ming transition period also shared Wen's beliefs of identifying with and putting loyalty towards one's dynasty above racial/ethnic differences. Many Han Chinese writers did not celebrate the collapse of the Mongols and the return of the Han Chinese rule in the form of the Ming dynasty government at that time. Many Han Chinese actually chose not to serve in the new Ming court at all due to their loyalty to the Yuan. Some Han Chinese also committed suicide on behalf of the Mongols as a proof of their loyalty. The founder of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, also indicated that he was happy to be born in the Yuan period and that the Yuan did legitimately receive the Mandate of Heaven to rule over China. On a side note, one of his key advisors, Liu Ji, generally supported the idea that while the Chinese and the non-Chinese are different, they are actually equal. Liu was therefore arguing against the idea that the Chinese were and are superior to the "Yi." These things show that many times, pre-modern Chinese did view culture (and sometimes politics) rather than race and ethnicity as the dividing line between the Chinese and the non-Chinese. In many cases, the non-Chinese could and did become the Chinese and vice versa, especially when there was a change in culture.
Modern reinterpretations According to historian
Frank Dikötter, "The delusive myth of a Chinese antiquity that abandoned racial standards in favour of a concept of cultural universalism in which all barbarians could ultimately participate has understandably attracted some modern scholars. Living in an unequal and often hostile world, it is tempting to project the utopian image of a racially harmonious world into a distant and obscure past." The politician, historian, and diplomat
K. C. Wu analyzes the origin of the characters for the
Yi,
Man,
Rong,
Di, and
Xia peoples and concludes that the "ancients formed these characters with only one purpose in mind—to describe the different ways of living each of these people pursued." Despite the well-known examples of pejorative exonymic characters (such as the "dog radical" in Di), he claims there is no hidden racial bias in the meanings of the characters used to describe these different peoples, but rather the differences were "in occupation or in custom, not in race or origin." K. C. Wu says the modern character
夷 designating the historical "Yi peoples", composed of the characters for 大 "big (person)" and 弓 "bow", implies a big person carrying a bow, someone to perhaps be feared or respected, but not to be despised. However, differing from K. C. Wu, the scholar Wu Qichang believes that the earliest
oracle bone script for
yi 夷 was
used interchangeably with
shi 尸 "corpse". The historian John Hill explains that
Yi "was used rather loosely for non-Chinese populations of the east. It carried the connotation of people ignorant of Chinese culture and, therefore, 'barbarians'." Christopher I. Beckwith makes the extraordinary claim that the name "barbarian" should only be used for Greek historical contexts, and is inapplicable for all other "peoples to whom it has been applied either historically or in modern times." Beckwith notes that most specialists in East Asian history, including him, have translated Chinese exonyms as English "
barbarian." He believes that after academics read his published explanation of the problems, except for direct quotations of "earlier scholars who use the word, it should no longer be used as a term by any writer." The first problem is that, "it is impossible to translate the word
barbarian into Chinese because the concept does not exist in Chinese," meaning a single "completely generic"
loanword from Greek
barbar-. "Until the Chinese borrow the word
barbarian or one of its relatives, or make up a new word that explicitly includes the same basic ideas, they cannot express the idea of the 'barbarian' in Chinese.". The usual
Standard Chinese translation of English
barbarian is
yemanren (), which Beckwith claims, "actually means 'wild man, savage'. That is very definitely not the same thing as 'barbarian'." Beckwith concedes that the early Chinese "apparently disliked foreigners in general and looked down on them as having an inferior culture," and pejoratively wrote some exonyms. However, he purports, "The fact that the Chinese did not
like foreigner Y and occasionally picked a transcriptional character with negative meaning (in Chinese) to write the sound of his ethnonym, is irrelevant." Beckwith's second problem is with linguists and lexicographers of Chinese. "If one looks up in a Chinese-English dictionary the two dozen or so partly generic words used for various foreign peoples throughout Chinese history, one will find most of them defined in English as, in effect, 'a kind of barbarian'. Even the works of well-known lexicographers such as Karlgren do this." Although Beckwith does not cite any examples, the Swedish sinologist
Bernhard Karlgren edited two dictionaries:
Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese (1923) and
Grammata Serica Recensa (1957). Compare Karlgrlen's translations of the
siyi "four barbarians": •
yi 夷 "barbarian, foreigner; destroy, raze to the ground," "barbarian (esp. tribes to the East of ancient China)" •
man 蛮 "barbarians of the South; barbarian, savage," "Southern barbarian" •
rong 戎 "weapons, armour; war, warrior; N. pr. of western tribes," "weapon; attack; war chariot; loan for tribes of the West" •
di 狄 "Northern Barbarians – "fire-dogs"," "name of a Northern tribe; low servant" The
Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus Project includes Karlgren's
GSR definitions. Searching the STEDT Database finds various "a kind of" definitions for plant and animal names (e.g.,
you 狖 "a kind of monkey," but not one "a kind of barbarian" definition. Besides faulting Chinese for lacking a general "barbarian" term, Beckwith also faults English, which "has no words for the many foreign peoples referred to by one or another Classical Chinese word, such as 胡
hú, 夷
yí, 蠻
mán, and so on." The third problem involves
Tang dynasty usages of
fan "foreigner" and
lu "prisoner", neither of which meant "barbarian." Beckwith says Tang texts used
fan 番 or 蕃 "foreigner" (see
shengfan and
shufan above) as "perhaps the only true generic at any time in Chinese literature, was practically the opposite of the word
barbarian. It meant simply 'foreign, foreigner' without any pejorative meaning." In modern usage,
fan 番 means "foreigner; barbarian; aborigine". The linguist Robert Ramsey illustrates the pejorative connotations of
fan. The word "
Fān" was formerly used by the Chinese almost innocently in the sense of 'aborigines' to refer to ethnic groups in South China, and Mao Zedong himself once used it in 1938 in a speech advocating equal rights for the various minority peoples. But that term has now been so systematically purged from the language that it is not to be found (at least in that meaning) even in large dictionaries, and all references to Mao's 1938 speech have excised the offending word and replaced it with a more elaborate locution, "Yao, Yi, and Yu." Tang dynasty Chinese also had a derogatory term for foreigners,
lu () "prisoner, slave, captive". Beckwith says it means something like "those miscreants who should be locked up," therefore, "The word does not even mean 'foreigner' at all, let alone 'barbarian'." Christopher I. Beckwith's 2009 "The Barbarians" epilogue provides many references, but overlooks H. G. Creel's 1970 "The Barbarians" chapter. Creel descriptively wrote, "Who, in fact, were the barbarians? The Chinese have no single term for them. But they were all the non-Chinese, just as for the Greeks the barbarians were all the non-Greeks." Beckwith prescriptively wrote, "The Chinese, however, have still not yet borrowed Greek
barbar-. There is also no single native Chinese word for 'foreigner', no matter how pejorative," which meets his strict definition of "barbarian.".
Japan When Europeans came to
Japan, they were called , literally
Barbarians from the South, because the
Portuguese ships appeared to sail from the South. The
Dutch, who arrived later, were also called either
nanban or , literally meaning "Red Hair." ==Middle East and North Africa==