野蛮
野蛮（やばん）とは、文明?文化に対立する概念であり、文化の開けていない状態あるいは乱暴で礼節を知らないことを言う。未開や粗野と同義。しばしば自身を「文明」と称する人々によって相手に付けられるレッテルとして用いられる。野蛮だとされる民族は「蛮族」と呼ばれる。ここでは例として欧州人の蛮族観を説明する。
古代古典時代
古代ギリシアでは異国の民をバルバロイ（β?ρβαροι, Barbaroi）と呼んだ。歴史以前では必ずしも軽蔑のニュアンスはなかったようだが、ペルシア戦争で異国の侵入と破壊を経験したあたりから、ペルシアへの敵愾心、非ギリシア人への排外の感情とともに、英語のバーバリアン（Barbarian）という語にこめられるような蔑視のニュアンスを含む用法になったようである。
ギリシア人たちは自由なギリシア人に比べ、絶対的な王による専制下のバルバロイには奴隷の品性しかないと考えた。アリストテレスによれば「ギリシア人は捕らわれても自分自身を奴隷と呼ぶことを好まず、またバルバロイだけをそう呼ぼうとする」。古典古代のギリシア人にとって、自分以外に主人を持つものを奴隷とみなし、家の中での家長＝主人と奴隷の関係を律する論理と、主人＝家長である自由人同士との関係を律する論理は異なるものであった。従って、家の論理を拡張したものとしての王＝家長＝主人につかえるオリエントの臣民たちは奴隷に準じるものとして理解されたのであった。古代ローマ人にとっても、領外のガリア人、ゲルマン民族は蛮族にすぎなかった。ゲルマン民族がローマ領内に移動し、キリスト教による平等主義で教化されたヨーロッパ世界でもこの構図は、形を変えて繰りかえされる。
A barbarian is
a human who
is perceived to be uncivilised or primitive.
The designation is usually applied as generalization based
on a popular stereotype;
barbarians can be any member of a nation judged
by some to be less civilised or orderly (such as
a tribal society),
but may also be part of a certain
"primitive" cultural
group (such as nomads)
or social
class (such as bandits)
both within and outside one's own nation. Alternatively, they may
instead be admired and romanticised as noble savages. In
idiomatic or figurative usage, a "barbarian" may also be an
individual reference to a brutal, cruel, warlike, insensitive
person.[1]
The term originates from the Greek: β?ρβαρο? (barbaros).
In ancient times,
the Greeks used
it mostly for people of different cultures, but there are examples
where one Greek city or state would use the word to attack another.
In the early modern
period and sometimes later, Greeks used it for
the Turks, in a
clearly pejorative way.[2][3] Comparable
notions are found in non-European civilizations,
notably China and Japan. During
the Roman Empire, the
Romans used the word "barbarian" for many people, such as
the Germanics, Celts, Gauls, Iberians, Thracians, Parthians and Sarmatians.
Etymology
The Ancient
Greek word β?ρβαρο? (barbaros),
"barbarian", was an antonym for πολ?τη? (polits),
"citizen" (from π?λι? – polis, "city-state").
The earliest attested form of the word is
the Mycenaean
Greek ???, pa-pa-ro, written
in Linear
B syllabic script.[4][5]
The Greeks used the term barbarian for all
non-Greek-speaking peoples, including
the Egyptians, Persians, Medes and Phoenicians,
emphasisising their otherness. However, in various occasions, the
term was also used by Greeks, especially
the Athenians, to deride
other Greek tribes and states (such as Epirotes, Eleans, Macedonians, Boeotians and Aeolic-speakers)
but also fellow Athenians, in a pejorative and politically
motivated manner.[6][7][8][9] Of
course, the term also carried a cultural dimension to its dual
meaning.[10][11]The
verb βαρβαρ?ζω (barbaríz) in ancient
Greek meant to behave or talk like a
barbarian, or to hold with the barbarians.[12]
Plato (Statesman 262de)
rejected the Greek–barbarian dichotomy as a logical absurdity on
just such grounds: dividing the world into Greeks and non-Greeks
told one nothing about the second group, yet Plato used the term
barbarian frequently in his seventh letter.[13] In Homer's works, the
term appeared only once (Iliad 2.867),
in the form βαρβαρ?φωνο? (barbarophonos) ("of
incomprehensible speech"), used of the Carians fighting
for Troy during
the Trojan War. In
general, the concept of barbaros did not figure
largely in archaic literature before the 5th
century BC.[14] Still
it has been suggested that "barbarophonoi" in
the Iliadsignifies not those who spoke a
non-Greek language but simply those who spoke Greek
badly.[15]
A change occurred in the connotations of the word after the
Greco-Persian Wars in the first half of the 5th century BC. Here a
hasty coalition of Greeks defeated the
vast Persian
Empire. Indeed, in the Greek of this period 'barbarian' is
often used expressly to refer to Persians, who were enemies of the
Greeks in this war.[16]
The Romans used the term barbarus for
uncivilised people, opposite to Greek or Roman, and in fact, it
became a common term to refer to all foreigners among Romans after
Augustus age (as, among the Greeks, after the Persian wars, the
Persians), including the Germanic peoples, Persians, Cauls,
Phoenicians and Carthaginians.[17]
The Greek term barbaros was the
etymological source for many words meaning "barbarian", including
English barbarian, which was first recorded in
16th century Middle
English.
A word barbara- is also found
in the Sanskrit of
ancient India.[18][19][20][21] The
Greek word barbaros is related to
Sanskrit barbaras (stammering).[22]
Semantics
The Oxford
English Dictionary defines five meanings
of the noun barbarian, including an
obsolete Barbaryusage.
- 1. etymologically, A foreigner, one whose
language and customs differ from the speaker's.
- 2. Hist. a. One not a
Greek. b. One living outside
the pale of the Roman empire and its civilization, applied
especially to the northern nations that overthrew
them. c. One outside the pale
of Christian
civilization. d. With the Italians of
the Renascence: One of a nation outside of Italy.
- 3. A rude, wild,
uncivilized person. b. Sometimes
distinguished from savage (perh. with a
glance at 2). c.Applied by the Chinese contemptuously
to foreigners.
- 4. An uncultured
person, or one who has no sympathy with literary culture.
- ?5. A native of Barbary.
[See Barbary
Coast.] Obs. ?b. Barbary
pirates & A
Barbary horse. Obs.[23]
The OED barbarous entry
summarizes the semantic history. "The sense-development in ancient
times was (with the Greeks) 'foreign, non-Hellenic,' later
'outlandish, rude, brutal'; (with the Romans) 'not Latin nor
Greek,' then 'pertaining to those outside the Roman empire'; hence
'uncivilized, uncultured,' and later 'non-Christian,' whence
'Saracen, heathen'; and generally 'savage, rude, savagely cruel,
inhuman.'"
"Barbarian" in Greek
historical contexts
Slavery in Greece
![]( "蛮族 - 何新博客管理员 - 何新网易博客")
Slaves in chains, relief found at Smyrna (present
day
?zmir,
Turkey), 200
AD
A parallel factor was the growth of chattel
slavery especially
in Athens. Although
enslavement of Greeks for non-payment of debt continued
in most Greek states, it was banned in Athens
under Solon in
the early 6th century BC. Under
the Athenian
democracy established ca. 508
BC slavery came
to be used on a scale never before seen among the Greeks. Massive
concentrations of slaves were worked under especially brutal
conditions in the silver mines at Laureion—a major vein
of silver-bearing ore was found there in 483 BC—while the
phenomenon of skilled slave craftsmen producing manufactured goods
in small factories and workshops became increasingly common.
Furthermore, slaves were no longer the preserve of the rich: all
but the poorest of Athenian households came to have slaves to
supplement the work of their free members. Overwhelmingly, the
slaves of Athens were "barbarian" in origin[citation needed],
drawn especially from lands around the Black
Sea such as Thrace and Taurica (Crimea), while
from Asia
Minor came above
all Lydians, Phrygians and Carians. Aristotle (Politics1.2–7;
3.14) even states that barbarians are slaves by nature.
From this period, words like barbarophonos, cited above from Homer,
began to be used not only of the sound of a foreign language but of
foreigners speaking Greek improperly. In Greek, the notions of
language and reason are easily confused in the
word logos,
so speaking poorly was easily conflated with being stupid.
Further changes occurred in the connotations
of barbari/barbaroi in Late
Antiquity,[24] when
bishops and catholikoi were
appointed to sees connected to cities among the
"civilized" gentes
barbaricae such as
in Armenia or Persia, whereas
bishops were appointed to supervise entire peoples among the less
settled.
Eventually the term found a hidden meaning
by Christian Romans through
the folk
etymology of Cassiodorus. He
stated the word barbarian was "made up
of barba (beard)
and rus (flat land); for
barbarians did not live in cities, making their abodes in the
fields like wild animals".[25]
The female given name "Barbara"
originally meant "a barbarian woman", and as such was likely to
have had a pejorative meaning—given that most such women in
Graeco-Roman society were of a low social status (often being
slaves).[citation
needed][dubious – discuss] However, Saint
Barbara is mentioned as being the daughter of
rich and respectable Roman citizens. Evidently, by her time (about
300 CE according
to Christian hagiography, though
some historians put the story much later) the name no longer had
any specific ethnic or pejorative connotations. This conclusion is,
however, questionable, as many authorities think it possible that
her story is fictitious, including the Roman Catholic Church since
1969 (for details of these doubts, see
under Saint
Barbara, Veneration).
Hellenic stereotypes
Out of those sources the Hellenic stereotype was elaborated:
barbarians are like children, unable to speak or reason properly,
cowardly, effeminate, luxurious, cruel, unable to control their
appetites and desires, politically unable to govern themselves.
These stereotypes were voiced with much shrillness by writers
like Isocrates in
the 4th century BCE who
called for a war of conquest against Persia as
a panacea for
Greek problems.
However, the Hellenic stereotype of barbarians was not a universal
feature of Hellenic culture. Xenophon, for
example, wrote the Cyropaedia, a
laudatory fictionalised account of Cyrus the
Great, the founder of the Persian empire, effectively
a utopian text.
In his Anabasis,
Xenophon's accounts of the Persians and other non-Greeks he knew or
encountered hardly seem to be under the sway of these stereotypes
at all.
The renowned orator Demosthenes made
derogatory comments in his speeches, using the word
"barbarian."
Barbarian is
used in its Hellenic sense by St.
Paul in the New
Testament (Romans 1:14)
to describe non-Greeks, and to describe one who merely speaks a
different language (1
Corinthians 14:11).
About a hundred years after Paul's time, Lucian –
a native of Samosata, in the
former kingdom of Commagene, which had
been absorbed by the Roman
Empire and made part of the province
of Syria –
used the term "barbarian" to describe himself. As he was a noted
satirist, this could have been a deprecating self-irony. It might
also have indicated that he was descended from Samosata's original
Semitic population – likely to have been called "barbarians" by
later Hellenistic, Greek-speaking settlers, and who might have
eventually taken up this appellation themselves.[26][27]
The term retained its standard usage in
the Greek
language throughout the Middle Ages, as it was
widely used by the Byzantine
Greeks until the fall of
the Byzantine
Empire in the 15th century.
Cicero described
the mountain area of inner Sardinia as
"a land of barbarians," with these inhabitants also known by the
manifestly pejorative term latrones
mastrucati ("thieves with a rough garment in
wool"). The region is up to the present known as "Barbagia"
(in Sardinian Barbàgia or Barbàza),
which is traceable to this old "barbarian" designation – but no
longer consciously associated with it, and used naturally as the
name of the region by its own inhabitants.
The Dying Galatian
statue
Some insight about the Hellenistic perception of and attitude to
"Barbarians" can be taken from the "Dying Galatian",
a statue commissioned by Attalus
I of Pergamon to
celebrate his victory over the Celtic Galatiansin Anatolia (the
bronze original is lost, but a Roman marble copy
was found in the 17th century).[28] The
statue depicts with remarkable realism a dying Celt warrior with a
typically Celtic hairstyle and moustache. He lies on his fallen
shield while sword and other objects lie beside him. He appears to
be fighting against death, refusing to accept his fate.
The statue serves both as a reminder of the Celts' defeat, thus
demonstrating the might of the people who defeated them, and a
memorial to their bravery as worthy adversaries. The message
conveyed by the sculpture, as H.
W. Janson comments, is that "they knew how to
die, barbarians that they were."[29]
The Greeks admired Scythians and Galatians as
heroic individuals – even in the case of Anacharsis as
philosophers – but considered their culture to be barbaric.
The Romans indiscriminately
regarded the various Germanic
tribes, the settled Gauls, and the
raiding Huns as
barbarians.
The Romans adapted the term to refer to anything non-Roman. The
German cultural historian Silvio Vietta points out that the meaning
of the word "barbarous" has undergone a semantic change in modern
times, after Michel de
Montaigne used it to characterize the
activities in the New World of the Spaniards – supposedly
representatives of the "higher" European culture – as "barbarous,"
in a satirical essay of the year 1580.[30] It
was not the supposedly "uncivilized" Indian tribes who were
"barbarous," but the conquering Spaniards. Montaigne argued that
Europeans noted the barbarism of other cultures but not the crueler
and more brutal actions of their own society, particularly (in his
time) in the so-called religious wars. Montaigne's people – the
Europeans – were the real "barbarians." In this way, the
Eurocentric argument was turned around and applied against the
European invaders. With this shift of meaning a whole literature
arose in Europe that characterized the indigenous Indian peoples as
innocent, and the militarily superior Europeans as "barbarous"
intruders into a paradisiacal world.[31][32]
"Barbarian" in
international historical contexts
Historically, the term barbarian has seen
widespread use, in English. Many peoples have dismissed alien
cultures and even rival civilizations, because they were
unrecognizably strange. For instance, the
nomadic steppe
peoples north of
the Black Sea, including
the Pechenegs and
the Kipchaks, were called
barbarians by Byzantines.[33]
Berber and North African
cultures
![]( "蛮族 - 何新博客管理员 - 何新网易博客")
Ransom of Christian slaves held in Barbary, 17th century
The Berbers of North
Africa were among the many peoples called
"Barbarian" by the Romans; in their case, the name remained in use,
having been adopted by the Arabs (see Berber
etymology) and is still in use as the name for the non-Arabs in
North Africa (though not by themselves). The geographical
term Barbary or Barbary
Coast, and the name of the Barbary
pirates based on that coast (and who were not
necessarily Berbers) were also derived from it.
The term has also been used to refer to people
from Barbary, a region
encompassing most of North Africa. The
name of the region, Barbary, comes from the
Arabic word Barbar, possibly from
the Latin word barbaricum, meaning
"land of the barbarians."
Many languages define the "Other" as those who do not speak one's
language; Greek barbaroi was paralleled
by Arabic ajam "non-Arabic
speakers; non-Arabs; (especially) Persians."[34]
Hindu culture
In the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata,
the Sanskrit word barbara- meant
"stammering, wretch, foreigner, sinful people, low and
barbarous".[35]
Indic peoples anciently referred to foreigners
as Mleccha "dirty
ones; barbarians."[36][37] Indic
peoples of the Vedic
period used mleccha much as the
ancient Greeks used barbaros, "originally to indicate the
uncouth and incomprehensible speech of foreigners and then extended
to their unfamiliar behavior."[38] In
the ancient texts, Mlecchas are people who
are dirty and who have given up the Vedic beliefs.
Today this term implies those with bad hygiene.[39][40] Among
the tribes termed Mleccha were Sakas, Huna
people, Yonas, Kambojas, the Pahlavas,
Kiratas, Khasas, Bahlika
people and Rishikas.[39]
Chinese culture
The term "Barbarian" in traditional Chinese culture had a few
interesting aspects. For one thing, 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.[41] The
original Hua–Yi
distinction between "Chinese" and "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,"[42] "ordinary
others,"[43] "wild
tribes,"[44] "uncivilized
tribes,"[45] 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."[46]
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."[47] These Siyi 四夷
"Four Barbarians", most "probably the names of ethnic groups
originally,"[48]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.[49]
![]( "蛮族 - 何新博客管理员 - 何新网易博客")
A scene of the Chinese campaign against
the
Miao 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.[50]
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."[51] 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.[52]
Idealization
A few contexts in the 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.[53]
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."[54]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.[55]
In a somewhat related example, Mencius believed
that Confucian practices were universal and timeless, and thus
followed by both Hua and Yi, "Shunwas
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."[56]
The prominent Shuowen
Jiezi character dictionary (121 CE), which
defines yi 夷 as 平 "level;
peaceful" or 東方之人 "people of eastern regions," first records that
this Han
Dynasty (206 BCE–220
CE) regular
script 夷 and the Qin
Dynasty (221–207
BCE) seal
script for shi incorporate both
the 大 "big" and 弓 "bow" radicals.
According to the Shuowen, the radical “big” in the
character yi means "person".
Pejorative Chinese
characters
Some Chinese
characters used to transcribe non-Chinese
peoples were graphically pejorative ethnic slurs,
where the insult derived not from the Chinese word but from the
character used to write it. Take 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.[57]
Cultural and racial
barbarianism
![]( "蛮族 - 何新博客管理员 - 何新网易博客")
The purpose of the
Great Wall
of China 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."[58] 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.[48]
Dik?tter says,
Thought in ancient China was oriented towards the world,
or tianxia, "all under
heaven." The world was perceived as one homogenous unity named
"great community" (datong) The
Middle Kingdom [China], dominated by the assumption of its cultural
superiority, measured outgroups according to a yardstick by which
those who did not follow the "Chinese ways" were considered
"barbarians." A Theory of "using the Chinese ways to transform the
barbarian" as strongly advocated. It was believed that the
barbarian could be culturally assimilated. In the Age of Great
Peace, the barbarians would flow in and be transformed: the world
would be one.[59]
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."[60]
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.[61] 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.[62]
Dik?tter 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."[63]
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."[64]Dik?tter
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."[65]
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.[66] 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.
Interestingly, after the Song Dynasty, many of China's rulers in
the north were of Inner Asia ethnicities, such as Qidan, Ruzhen,
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."[67] 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.[68] 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.[69] We
should note that 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."[70]
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 the historian Frank
Dik?tter, "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."[71]
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."[72]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."[73] 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.[74] 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".[75] 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'."[76]
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."[77] 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."[78]
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-.[79] "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.".[80] The
usual Standard
Chinesetranslation of English barbarian is yemanren (traditional
Chinese: 野蠻人; simplified
Chinese: 野蛮人; pinyin: ymánrén),
which Beckwith claims, "actually means 'wild man, savage'. That is
very definitely not the same thing as 'barbarian'."[80] Despite
this semantic hypothesis, Chinese-English dictionaries regularly
translate yemanren as "barbarian"
or "barbarians."[81] 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."[82]
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."[83] 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)"[84]
- man 蛮 "barbarians of
the South; barbarian, savage," "Southern barbarian"[85]
- rong 戎 "weapons,
armour; war, warrior; N. pr. of western tribes," "weapon; attack;
war chariot; loan for tribes of the West"[86]
- di 狄 "Northern
Barbarians – "fire-dogs"," "name of a Northern tribe; low
servant"[87]
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,"[88] 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."[89]
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."[90] In
modern usage, fan 番 means "foreigner;
barbarian; aborigine". The linguist Robert Ramsey illustrates the
pejorative connotations of fan.
The word "Fn" 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."[91]
The Tang Dynasty Chinese also had a derogatory term for
foreigners, lu (traditional
Chinese: 虜; simplified
Chinese: 虏; pinyin: l)
"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'."[92]
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."[93] 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.".[80]
Allusions in poetry
Conventionally Chinese poets did not directly criticize the ruling
emperor or even the current dynasty: such poetic practice was both
an aesthetic principle as well as a practical method of prudently
avoiding punishment for treason, or lèse-majesté.[94] Although
socio-political criticism was an important aspect of Chinese
poetry, generally if it involved the reigning monarch and the
current dynasty it was done indirectly and with subtle
circumspection: it was "a custom almost universally followed by
Chinese poets to refer to their own dynasty and to the reigns of
emperors contemporary with them by indirect means and in
complimentary terms."[95] Lack
of success in war was potentially a capital offense for a general,
and considered unmentionable in direct regard to the emperor. Thus
poetic references or allusions to a current armed conflict between
the Chinese empire and an external nation would be done through the
substitution in time to a former dynasty; for example, reference to
the Han dynasty and its leaders by Tang poets; and the real ethnic
identity of the opposing force masked by substitution; for example,
the Tang dynasty poems about battling
the Xiongnu, although
clearly anachronistic several centuries, by then. Thus, although
the poets' comments about the nature of the situation might be
accurate enough, the actual identity of the ethnically-named
opponents can generally be relied upon to be different than that
named. In English translation, further confusion regarding specific
historic identity of people or events referred or alluded to
results from the translation process; for example, in the case
of Chen Tao's
28-character verse entitled "隴西行",
one of the Three
Hundred Tang Poems which has often been
translated into English.
Barbarian puppet drinking
game
In the Tang
Dynasty houses of pleasure, where drinking
games were common, small puppets in the aspect of Westerners, in a
ridiculous state of drunkenness, were used in one popular
permutation of the drinking game; so, in the form of blue-eyed,
pointy nosed, and peak-capped barbarians, these puppets were
manipulated in such a way as to occasionally fall down: then,
whichever guest to whom the puppet pointed after falling was then
obliged by honor to empty his cup of Chinese
wine.[96]
Japanese culture
When Europeans came to Japan, they were
called nanban (南蛮?),
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 km (紅毛?),
literally meaning "Red Hair."
American cultures
In Mesoamerica the Aztec civilization
used the word "Chichimeca" to
denominate a group of nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes that lived on
the outskirts of the Triple
Alliance's Empire, in the north of Modern Mexico, and whom the
Aztec people saw as primitive and uncivilized. One of the meanings
attributed to the word "Chichimeca" is "dog people".
The Incas of
South America used the term "puruma auca" for all peoples living
outside the rule of their empire (see Promaucaes).
The British and later, the white settlers of
the United
States referred to Native Americans as
"savages."
Barbarian
mercenaries
The entry of "barbarians" into mercenary service
in a metropole repeatedly occurs in history as a standard way in
which peripheral peoples from and beyond frontier regions
relate to "civilised" imperial powers as part of a (semi-)foreign
militarised proletariat.[97] Examples
include:
Early Modern
period
Italians in the Renaissance often
called anyone who lived outside of their country a
barbarian[citation
needed].
Spanish sea captain Francisco de
Cuellar who sailed with
the Spanish
Armada in 1588 used the term 'savage'
('salvaje') to describe the Irish
people.[106]
Marxist use of
"Barbarism"
In her "Junius Pamphlet" of
1916, strongly denouncing the then
raging First World
War, Rosa
Luxemburgwrote: Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads,
either transition to Socialism or regression into
Barbarism.[107]
Luxemburg attributed it to Friedrich
Engels, though – as shown by Michael
L?wy – Engels had not used the term
"Barbarism" but a less resounding
formulation: If
the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the
mode of production and distribution must take
place [108]
Luxemburg went on to explain what she meant by "Regression into
Barbarism": "A look around us at this moment [i.e., 1916 Europe]
shows what the regression of bourgeois society into Barbarism
means. This World War is a regression into Barbarism. The triumph
of Imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first,
this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but
then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward
its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as
Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of
Imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient
Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery. Or
the victory of Socialism, that means the conscious active struggle
of the International Proletariat against Imperialism and its method
of war."
"Socialism or Barbarism" became, and remains, an often quoted and
influential concept in Marxist literature.
"Barbarism" is variously interpreted as meaning either a
technologically advanced but extremely exploitative and oppressive
society (e.g. a victory and world domination
by Nazi
Germany and its Fascist allies); a collapse of
technological civilization due to Capitalism causing
a Nuclear
War or ecological
disaster; or the one form of barbarism bringing on the
other.
The Internationalist
Communist Tendency considers "Socialism or
Barbarism" to be a variant of the earlier "Liberty
or Death", used by revolutionaries of different stripes since
the late 18th century [109]
Modern popular
culture
Modern popular culture contains such fantasy barbarians
as Conan the
Barbarian.[110] In
such fantasy, the negative connotations traditionally associated
with "Barbarian" are often inverted. For example, "The
Phoenix on the Sword" (1932), the first
of Robert E.
Howard's "Conan" series, is set soon after the "Barbarian"
protagonist had forcibly seized the turbulent kingdom
of Aquilonia from
King Numedides, whom he strangled upon his throne. The story is
clearly slanted to imply that the kingdom greatly benefited by
power passing from a decadent and tyrannical hereditary monarch to
a strong and vigorous Barbarian usurper.
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