Dongyi (traditional Chinese: 東夷; simplified Chinese: 东夷; pinyin: Dōngyí; Wade-Giles: 'Tung-yi'; literally: "Eastern Foreigners" or "Eastern 'Barbarians'") was a collective term for people in eastern China and in lands located to the east of ancient China. People referred to as Dongyi vary across the ages. The early Dongyi culture was one of earliest neolithic cultures in China.
According to the earliest Chinese record, Zuo Zhuan, the Shang Dynasty was attacked by King Wu of Zhou, while attacking Dongyi, and collapsed afterwards.[1]
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Dongyi culture was one of the oldest neolithic cultures in China. Some Chinese scholars extend the historical use of Dongyi to prehistoric times, according to this belief, the neolithic culture correlates to Houli culture, Beixin culture, Dawenkou culture, Longshan culture and Yueshi culture, five evolutionary phases. Deliang He, thinks that Dongyi culture used to be one of the leading cultures in neolithic China.[2]
The writing system of Dongyi was one of the oldest writing systems in neolithic China. There are opinions that the 20 pictogram characters discovered in a Dongyi tomb (山东莒县大汶口墓葬) in Shandong indictates some of the characters found, like “旦、鉞(钺)、斤、皇、封、酒、拍、昃”, are still used in Chinese characters.
There are also opinions that Dongyi people were the inventor of arrows. Some classic Chinese history records like Zuo Zhuan, Shuowen Jiezi, Classic of Rites, all have some similar records about this.[3][4] The legendary god of archery in Chinese mythology, Houyi, could also be a Dongyi leader.
Based on archeology findings, Dongyi people's ancestral worship totem is bird-shaped.[5]
The Chinese word yi in Dongyi has a long history and complex semantics.
Chinese dictionaries reveal the semantic complexities of yi (夷). The Far East Chinese-English Dictionary defines eleven meanings:
These first two senses of yi reflect the linguistic Sinocentrism of Chinese words that can mean both condescending "barbarian" and semantically neutral "foreigner; outsider". For instance, hu 胡 "barbarian; foreign; non-Han" (e.g., erhu) originally meant hu 鬍 "beard; whiskers", and was chosen to name the Hu 胡 or Donghu 東胡 "eastern barbarians: an ancient Tungusic people northeast of China".
The Oxford English Dictionary mentions this derogatory denotation of Yi. The barbarian definition "3.c Applied by the Chinese contemptuously to foreigners" cites the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin as the earliest recorded usage.[7] "It is agreed, that henceforward the character "I" 夷 ('barbarian') shall not be applied to the Government or subjects of Her Britannic Majesty, in any Chinese official document."[8]
The modern Chinese character 夷 for yi combines da 大 "big" and gong 弓 "bow". However, it graphically descends from an ancient pictograph showing a person with a bent back and legs.
The (121 CE) Shuowen Jiezi character dictionary, 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 the 大 "big" and 弓 "bow" radicals (recurring character elements). The Dongyi are associated with archery, and legends say their leader Houyi 后羿 invented the bow.[9][10]
Bernhard Karlgren says that in the earlier bronze script for yi inscribed on Zhou Dynasty (ca. 1045 BCE-ca. 256 BCE) Chinese bronze inscriptions, "The graph has 'man' and 'arrow', or 'arrow' with something wound around the shaft."[11]
The earliest records of yi were inscribed on oracle bones dating from the late Shang Dynasty (ca. 1600–ca. 1046 BCE). This oracle bone script was used interchangeably for yi 夷, for ren 人 "human", and for shi 尸 "corpse; personator of the dead; inactive; lay out". The historical linguist Xu Zhongshu explains this oracle character depicts either a "corpse"' with two bent legs or a "barbarian" custom of sitting with one's legs stretched out instead of the Chinese norm of squatting on one's heels.[12]
Historical linguists have tentatively reconstructed yi 夷's ancient pronunciations and etymology. The Modern Standard Chinese pronunciation yi descends from (ca. 6th-9th centuries CE) Middle Chinese and (ca. 6th-3rd centuries BCE) Old Chinese. Middle and Old Chinese reconstructions of yi 夷 "barbarian; spread out" include i < *djər,[13] yij < *ljɨj,[14] and ji < *ləi.[15]
Axel Schuessler hypothesizes an Old Chinese etymological development from *li 夷 "extend; expose; display; set out; spread out" to *lhi 尸 "to spread out; lie down flat (in order to sleep); motionless; to set forth (sacrificial dishes)", to "personator of a dead ancestor", and to "corpse".[16]
It is not easy to determine the times of people that a Classical Chinese document reflects.
Literature describing a pre-Xia Dynasty period does not use the character yi. As for the Xia Dynasty, some groups of people are referred to as the Yi. For example, "Yu Gong" (禹貢) of the Classic of History calls people in Qingzhou and Xuzhou as Laiyi (萊夷), Yuyi (嵎夷) and Huaiyi (淮夷). Another yi-related term is Jiu-yi (九夷), literally Nine Yi, which could have also had the connotation The Numerous Yi or The Many Different Kinds of Yi, and which appears in a passage in The Analects that reads, "The Master (i.e., Confucius) desired to live among the Nine Yi." The term "Dongyi" is not used for this period.
Shang Dynasty oracle shell and bone writings record yi but not Dongyi. Shima Kunio's concordance of oracle inscriptions lists twenty occurrences of the script for 夷 or 尸, most frequently (6 times) in the compound zhishi 祉尸 "bless the personator; blessed personator".[17] Michael Carr notes some contexts are ambiguous, but suggests, "Three compounds refer to 'barbarians' (in modern characters, fayi 伐夷 'attack barbarians,' zhengyi 征夷 'punish barbarians,' and yifang 夷方 'barbarian regions')."[18] Oracle inscriptions record that Shang King Wu Ding (r. ca. 1250-1192 BCE) made military expeditions on the Yi, and King Di Xin (r. ca. 1075-1046 BCE) waged a massive campaign against the Yifang 夷方 "barbarian regions".
It appears that the Yifang were the same people as Huaiyi (Huai River Yi), Nanhuaiyi (Southern Huai Yi), Nanyi (Southern Yi) and Dongyi in bronzeware inscriptions of the Western Zhou Dynasty. The Zhou Dynasty attempted to keep the Yi under its control. The most notable is the successful campaign against the Huaiyi and the Dongyi by the Duke of Zhou.
During the Spring and Autumn Period, Jin, Zheng, Qi and Song tried to seize control of the Huai River basin, which was occupied by the Huaiyi. But the region finally fell under the influence of Chu in the south. At the same time, people in the east and south ceased to be called Dongyi as they founded their own states. These Yifang states include the states of Xu, Zhongli, Ju and Jiang. The state Xu occupied large areas of Jiangxi, Jiangsu and Anhui between the Huai and Yangzi Rivers. Eventually, after warring with Chu and Wu, it was conquered by the State of Wu in 512 BC. Chu annexed the State of Jiang, destroyed the State of Ju whose territory was annexed by the State of Qi. Recent archaeological excavations reveal that the State of Xu's presence extended to western Jiangxi in modern Jing'an County. This includes bronzeware inscriptions about the State of Xu and also a tomb with many nanmu coffins containing sacrificial female victims. Dongyi customs include burials with many sacrificial victims and veneration of the sun.
References to Dongyi became ideological during the Warring States period probably because selves and others had subtle cultural differences among Chinese. The Classic of Rites (early 4th BC) made the first reference to the combination of "Dongyi" (east), "Xirong" (west), "Nanman" (south) and "Beidi" (north) in fixed four directions. At the same time "Dongyi" acquired a clearly pejorative nuance.
The more "China" expanded, the further east the term "Dongyi" was applied to. The Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian uses the term "Manyi" (蠻夷), but not "Dongyi". It puts the section of "Xinanyi (southwestern Yi) liezhuan (biographies)", but not "Dongyi liezhuan". The Book of Han does not put this section either but calls a Dongye (濊) chief in the Korean Peninsula as Dongyi. The Book of Later Han puts the section of "Dongyi liezhuan (東夷列傳)" and covers Buyeo, Yilou, Goguryeo, Eastern Okjeo, Hui, Samhan and Wa, in other words, eastern Manchuria, Korea, Japan and some other islands. The Book of Jin positioned Dongyi inside the section of "Siyi" (barbarians in four directions) along with "Xirong", "Nanman" and "Beidi". The Book of Sui, the Book of Tang and the New Book of Tang adopt the section of "Dongyi" and covers eastern Manchuria, Korea, Japan and optionally Sakhalin and Taiwan. During the Song Dynasty, the official history books replaced Dongyi with Waiguo (外國) and Waiyi (外夷).
Some Chinese scholars extend the historical use of Dongyi to prehistoric times. They consider Dongyi as one of the origins of Chinese people, based on the hypothesis of the pluralistic origins of Chinese culture that became popular in 1980s.
People called Dongyi in this sense lived in Haidai (海岱) region, the lower reaches of the Yellow and Huai Rivers, from the Neolithic period.
The cultural evolution in the Haidai region is considered as follows (the dates differ among scholars):
The Shandong Longshan culture was characterized by large-scale hierarchical groups of walled settlements. The Yueshi culture which replaced the Longshan culture around 2000 B.C. saw a decline of civilization. Groups of settlements were dissolved and the highly-developed pottery technology of the Shandong Longshan culture was lost.
It should be noted that the Longshan Culture was not just Dongyi and did not just exist in Shandong and other eastern coastal areas of China. Areas further west, including much of the middle and lower Yellow River Valley region, was also a part of the Longshan Culture area. Historians such as Jacques Gernet believe that the Longshan Culture was also culturally ancestral to the Erlitou Culture and the later Shang dynasty in the middle Yellow River Valley region. There are some good evidence for this claim, for both the Longshan and Shang cultures shared the following basic elements:
The Shang Dynasty technology of bronze metallurgy seems to be the descendant of high temperature ceramic-making techniques used by the late Neolithic Longshan Culture.
The Longshan Culture might have been replaced by the Yueshi Culture in Shandong but further to the west it continued and developed into the Erlitou Culture around 1900 - 1800 BC).
During the Yueshi culture in Shandong, the Erlitou culture and the subsequent Erligang culture gradually stretched from the Yellow River valley in the west. Since sites of the Yueshi culture are coterminous with those of the Erligang culture, the traditional theory that the Shang Dynasty originated in the east was shattered. Shang civilization extended to central Shandong at the end of the Shang Dynasty and it was during the middle Western Zhou Dynasty that the central civilization covered the entire Haidai region.
It is notable that Longshan people seemingly had their own writing system. A pottery inscription of the Longshan culture discovered in Dinggong Village, Zouping County, Shandong Province contains eleven characters and they do not look like the direct ancestor of Chinese characters. Chinese scholar Feng Shi (馮時) argued in 1994 that this inscription can be interpreted as written by the Longshan people.[27] Other scholars, like Ming Ru, are doubtful about attributing a Neolithic date to the inscription. Some other scholars also claim a connection between ancient Dongyi and the modern Yi people in southwestern China.[28]