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Siyi was a derogatory Chinese name for various peoples bordering ancient China, namely, the ''Dongyi'' 東夷 "Eastern Barbarians", ''Nanman'' 南蠻 "Southern Barbarians", ''Xirong'' 西戎 "Western Barbarians", and ''Beidi'' 北狄 "Northern Barbarians". ==Terminology== The Chinese mytho-geography and cosmography of the Zhou Dynasty (c. 1046–256 BCE) was based upon a round heaven and a square earth. ''Tianxia'' 天下 "() under heaven; the world" encompassed Huaxia 華夏 "China" (also known as ''Hua'', ''Xia'', etc.) in the center surrounded by non-Chinese "barbarian" peoples. See the Hua–Yi distinction for details of this literally Sinocentric worldview. The ''Siyi'' construct, or a similar one, was a logical necessity for the ancient ''tianxia'' system. Liu Junping and Huang Deyuan (2006:532) describe the universal monarch with combined political, religious, and cultural authorities: "According to the Chinese in the old times, heaven and earth were matched with ''yin'' and ''yang'', with the heaven (''yang'') superior and the earth (''yin'') inferior; and the Chinese as an entity was matched with the inferior ethnic groups surrounding it in its four directions so that the kings could be valued and the barbarians could be rejected." The authors (2006:535) propose that Chinese ideas about the "nation" and "state" of China evolved from the "casual use of such concepts as "''tianxia''", "''hainei''"( four corners within the sea) and "''siyi''" 四夷 (barbarians in four directions)." Located in the cardinal directions of ''tianxia'' were the ''sifang'' 四方 "Four Directions/Corners", ''situ'' 四土 "Four Lands/Regions", ''sihai'' 四海 "Four Seas", and ''Siyi'' 四夷 "Four Barbarians/Foreigners". The (c. 3rd century BCE) ''Erya'' (9, Wilkinson 2000: 710) defines ''sihai'' as " the place where the barbarians lived, hence by extension, the barbarians": "九夷, 八狄,七戎, 六蠻, 謂之四海" – "the nine Yi, eight Di, seven Rong, and six Man are called the four seas". These ''Siyi'' directionally comprised ''Yi'' 夷 to the east of China, ''Man'' 蠻 in the south, ''Rong'' 戎 in the west, and ''Di'' 狄 in the north. Unlike the English language with one general word ''barbarian'' meaning "uncultured or uncivilized peoples", Chinese had many specific exonyms for foreigners. Scholars such as Herrlee Glessner Creel (1970: 197) agree that ''Yi'', ''Man'', ''Rong'', and ''Di'' were originally the Chinese names of particular ethnic groups or tribes. During the Spring and Autumn Period (771–476 BC), these four exonyms were expanded into (Pu 2005: 45) "general designations referring to the barbarian tribes". 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. (Jettmar 1983: 229) ''Yi'', ''Man'', ''Rong'', and ''Di'' were further generalized into compounds (such as ''Rongdi'', ''Manyi'', and ''Manyirongdi'') denoting "non-Chinese; foreigners; barbarians." The ''Yi'' in ''Siyi'' had both specific denotations (e.g., ''Huaiyi'' 淮夷 "Huai River barbarians" and ''Xiyi'' 西夷 "western barbarians") and generalized references to "barbarian" (e.g., ''Siyi'' "Four Barbarians"). The sinologist Edwin G. Pulleyblank (1983: 440) 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. The Old Chinese pronunciation of Modern Chinese ''yí'' 夷 is reconstructed as *''dyər'' (Bernhard Karlgren), *''ɤier'' (Zhou Fagao), *''ləj'' (William H. Baxter), and *''l(ə)i'' (Axel Schuessler). Schuessler (2007: 563) defines ''Yi'' as "The name of non-Chinese tribes, prob() Austroasiatic, to the east and southeast of the central plain (Shandong, Huái River basin), since the Spring and Autumn period also a general word for 'barbarian'", and proposes a "sea" etymology, "Since the ancient Yuè (=Viet) word for 'sea' is said to have been ''yí'', the people's name might have originated as referring to people living by the sea". The modern character 夷 for ''yi'', like the Qin Dynasty seal script, is composed of 大 "big" and 弓 "bow" – but the earliest Shang Dynasty oracle bone script was used interchangeably for ''yi'' and ''shi'' 尸 "corpse", depicting a person with bent back and dangling legs (''Hanyu Da Zidian'' 1986 1: 527). The archeologist and scholar Guo Moruo believed the oracle graph for ''yi'' denotes "a dead body, i.e., the killed enemy", while the bronze graph denotes "a man bound by a rope, i.e., a prisoner or slave".〔Huang Yang (2013), (Perceptions of the Barbarian in Early Greece and China ), CHS Research Bulletin 2.1, translating Guo Moruo, (1933, 1982), 卜辭通纂, 第五六九片, p. 462.〕 Ignoring this historical paleography, the Chinese historian K. C. Wu (1982: 107-108) claimed that ''Yi'' 夷 should not be translated as "barbarian" because the modern graph implies a big person carrying a bow, someone to perhaps be feared or respected, but not to be despised. The (121 CE) ''Shuowen Jiezi'' character dictionary, defines ''yi'' 夷 as "men of the east” 東方之人也. The scholar Léon Wieger provided multiple definitions to the term ''yi'': “The men 大 armed with bows 弓, the primitive inhabitants, barbarians, borderers of the Eastern Sea, inhabitants of the South-West countries." (1927:156) ''Hanyu Da Cidian'' (1993 3: 577), a major Chinese language dictionary, notes ''Siyi'' as derogatory: "古代華夏族对四方小数民族的統称. 含有轻蔑之意." (with the ancient Chinese people, a name for ethnic minorities in all four directions. Contains a pejorative meaning. ) "Four barbarians" is the common English translation of ''Siyi''. Compare these Chinese-English dictionary equivalents for ''Siyi'': "the four barbarian tribes on the borders of ancient China" (Liang Shih-chiu et al. 1971), "the barbarians on borders of China" (Lin Yutang et al. 1992), and "four barbarian tribes on the borders" (John DeFrancis et al. 2003). Some scholars interpret the ''si'' "four" in ''Siyi'' as ''sifang'' 四方 "four directions". Liu Xiaoyuan (2004: 176, 10-11) says the meaning of ''Siyi'' "is not 'four barbarians' but numerous 'barbarous tribes' in the four directions". However, Liu also states that the term ''yi'' might have been used by the early Chinese to simply mean "ordinary others." Yuri Pines (2005:62) translates ''Siyi'' as "barbarians of the four corners". In Chinese Buddhism, ''siyi'' 四夷 or ''siyijie'' 四夷戒 abbreviates the ''si boluoyi'' 四波羅夷 "Four Parajikas" (grave offenses that entail expulsion of a monk or nun from the sangha). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Siyi (Four Barbarians)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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