Donghu
Encyclopedia
Xiongnu
The Xiongnu were ancient nomadic-based people that formed a state or confederation north of the agriculture-based empire of the Han Dynasty. Most of the information on the Xiongnu comes from Chinese sources...
in 150 BCE. Donghu was later divided into the Wuhuan
Wuhuan
The Wuhuan were a proto-Mongolic nomadic people who inhabited northern China, in what is now the provinces of Hebei, Liaoning, Shanxi, the municipality of Beijing and the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia....
and Xianbei
Xianbei
The Xianbei were a significant Mongolic nomadic people residing in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia and eastern Mongolia. The title “Khan” was first used among the Xianbei.-Origins:...
Confederations, from which the Mongols are derived. Hence, in modern linguistic terminology, they are classified as a proto-Mongolic nomadic ethnic group
Ethnic groups in Chinese history
Ethnic groups in Chinese history refer to various or presumed ethnicities of significance to the history of China, gathered through the study of Classical Chinese literature, Chinese and non-Chinese literary sources and inscriptions, historical linguistics, and archaeological research.Among the...
.
Name
The ChineseChinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
name Donghu compounds
Compound (linguistics)
In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...
dong 東 "east, eastern; owner; host" and hu 胡 "non-Han-Chinese, foreign, 'barbarian'; reckless; dewlap; whiskers (hu 鬍); surname
Hu (surname)
Hu 胡 is a Chinese surname or family name. In 2006, it was the 15th most common surname in China.Some other less-common surnames pronounced Hu include 瓠, 護, 戶, 扈, 虎, 呼, 忽, and 斛.-Words:...
". The "Eastern" Donghu exonym compares with "Western" Xihu 西胡 "non-Chinese peoples in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, Persia, Turkestan
Turkestan
Turkestan, spelled also as Turkistan, literally means "Land of the Turks".The term Turkestan is of Persian origin and has never been in use to denote a single nation. It was first used by Persian geographers to describe the place of Turkish peoples...
, etc." and "Five" Wu Hu
Wu Hu
Wu Hu was a Chinese term for the northern non-Chinese nomadic tribes which caused the Wu Hu uprising, and established the Sixteen Kingdoms from 304 to 439 AD.-Definition:...
五胡 "five northern nomadic tribes involved in the Wu Hu uprising
Wu Hu uprising
Wu Hu forces rose up against the Jin Dynasty of China, who they had formerly served, in 304 CE, and by 316 CE their victory was complete. The Jin Dynasty's control was thus limited to territory south of the Huai River.-Background:...
(304-316 CE)". Hill (2009:59) translates Xihu as "Western Hu" and notes,
The term hu 胡 was used to denote non-Han ChineseHan ChineseHan Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the...
populations. It is, rather unsatisfactorily, commonly translated as 'barbarian'. While sometimes it was used in this general way to describe people of non-Han descent, and carried the same negative overtones of the English term, this was not always the case. Most frequently, it was used to denote people, usually of Caucasoid appearance, living to the north and west of China. (2009:453)
The usual English translation of Donghu is "Eastern Barbarians" (e.g., Watson, di Cosmo, Pulleyblank, and Yu), and the partial translation "Eastern Hu" is occasionally used (Pulleyblank). Note that "Eastern Barbarians" also commonly translates the Chinese exonym Dongyi
Dongyi
Dongyi 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....
東夷 "ancient peoples in eastern China, Korea, Japan, etc.".
The ancient Chinese Sinocentric worldview differentiated central Hua or Huaxia
Huaxia
Huaxia is a name often used to represent China or Chinese civilization.-Etymology:According to the historical record, Zuo Zhuan, the ancient Xia Dynasty of central China was a state that held propriety and justice in high esteem...
"China, Chinese" and peripheral Yi 夷 "barbarian, non-Chinese, foreigner" (see Hua-Yi distinction
Hua-Yi distinction
The distinction between Hua and Yi is an ancient Chinese conception that differentiated a culturally defined "China" from cultural or ethnic outsiders...
). Many names besides Hu originally had pejorative
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
"barbarian" meanings, for instance Nanman
Nanman
Nanman were aboriginal tribes who lived in southwestern China. They may have been related to the Sanmiao, dated to around the 3rd century BC. The Nanman were multiple ethnic groups including the Miao, the Kinh, the Thai, and some Tibeto-Burman groups such as the Bai. There was never a single...
南蠻 ("southern barbarians") and Beidi
Beidi
Beidi or Northern Di were groups of people who lived to the north of what was then China during the Zhou Dynasty. By the end of the dynasty they were mostly conquered or absorbed by the Chinese....
北狄 ("northern barbarians"). The sinologist Edwin G. Pulleyblank
Edwin G. Pulleyblank
Edwin George Pulleyblank FRSC is a sinologist and professor emeritus of the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia...
explains:
At the dawn of history we find the Chinese, self-identified by such terms as Hsia and Hua, surrounded and interspersed by other peoples with whom they were frequently in conflict and whom they typically looked down upon as inferior beings in the same was the Hellenes looked down on the barbaroi and, indeed, as human we-groups have always looked down on their neighbors.
The historian Nicola di Cosmo concludes:
We can thus reasonably say that, by the end of the fourth century B.C., the term "Hu" applied to various ethnic groups (tribes, groups of tribes, and even states) speaking different languages and generally found living scattered across a wide territory. Their fragmentation, however, could be turned, when the need arose, into a superior form of political organization (a "state"). This explains why hu appears often preceded by a qualifier that we may take for a specific ethnic goup, as with the Lin HuLin HuLin Hu, 林虎, was a member of the Old Guangxi Clique and military governor of Guangdong province from May 1924 to July 1925.-Early life and career:...
and the Tung Hu. Whether or not it had originally been an ethnonym, such a designation had been lost by the Warring States period.
In Modern Standard Chinese usage hu has lost this negative connotation and typically means "foreign; imported" in words like erhu
Erhu
The erhu is a two-stringed bowed musical instrument, more specifically a spike fiddle, which may also be called a "southern fiddle", and sometimes known in the Western world as the "Chinese violin" or a "Chinese two-stringed fiddle". It is used as a solo instrument as well as in small ensembles...
二 胡 (lit. "two foreign") "Chinese two-string fiddle", hutiao 胡桃 ("foreign peach") "walnut
Walnut
Juglans is a plant genus of the family Juglandaceae, the seeds of which are known as walnuts. They are deciduous trees, 10–40 meters tall , with pinnate leaves 200–900 millimetres long , with 5–25 leaflets; the shoots have chambered pith, a character shared with the wingnuts , but not the hickories...
", and huluobo 胡萝卜 ("foreign radish") "carrot
Carrot
The carrot is a root vegetable, usually orange in colour, though purple, red, white, and yellow varieties exist. It has a crisp texture when fresh...
".
The modern Chinese Dōnghú 東胡 and Mongolian language
Mongolian language
The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
Tünghu pronunciations historically differ from the Old Chinese
Old Chinese
The earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at a site near modern Anyang identified as Yin, the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1200 BC....
pronunciation, which roughly dates from the Warring States Period (476-221 BCE) when Donghu was first recorded. Old Chinese reconstructions of Dōnghú include *Tûngγâg, *Tungg'o, *Tewnggaγ, *Tongga, and *Tôŋgâ.
The etymology of Donghu is "unknown". The traditional explanation, going back to the 2nd-century Han scholar Cui Hao 崔浩, is that the Donghu were originally located "east of the Xiongnu
Xiongnu
The Xiongnu were ancient nomadic-based people that formed a state or confederation north of the agriculture-based empire of the Han Dynasty. Most of the information on the Xiongnu comes from Chinese sources...
" (who were one of the Wu Hu). A modern politically correct
Politically Correct
Politically Correct may refer to:*Political correctness, language, ideas, policies, or behaviour seeking to minimize offence to groups of people-See also:*Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, book by James Finn Garner, published in 1994...
explanation is that Chinese Donghu or Mongolian Tünghu was an ethnonym
Ethnonym
An ethnonym is the name applied to a given ethnic group. Ethnonyms can be divided into two categories: exonyms and autonyms or endonyms .As an example, the ethnonym for...
transcription and did not literally mean "Eastern Barbarian".
Some dictionaries confuse Donghu 東胡 with Tungus; Tungusic people (Chinese Tonggu 通古). This "chance similarity in modern pronunciation", writes Pulleyblank, "led to the once widely held assumption that the Eastern Hu were Tungusic in language. This is a vulgar error with no real foundation."
History
Among the northern ethnic groups, the Donghu was the earliest to evolve into a state of civilization and first developed bronzeBronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
technology. They spoke proto-Mongolian language
Mongolian language
The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
and their culture was associated with the Upper Xiajiadian culture
Upper Xiajiadian culture
The Upper Xiajiadian culture was a Bronze Age archaeological culture in Northeast China derived from the Eurasian steppe bronze tradition, and roughly contemporaneous to the Western Zhou Dynasty....
, characterized by the practice of agriculture and animal husbandry supplemented by handicrafts and bronze art. Through the use of cavalry and bronze weaponry in warfare, they dominated over the Xiongnu
Xiongnu
The Xiongnu were ancient nomadic-based people that formed a state or confederation north of the agriculture-based empire of the Han Dynasty. Most of the information on the Xiongnu comes from Chinese sources...
on their west.
The (ca. 109-91 BCE) Shiji section on Xiongnu
Xiongnu
The Xiongnu were ancient nomadic-based people that formed a state or confederation north of the agriculture-based empire of the Han Dynasty. Most of the information on the Xiongnu comes from Chinese sources...
history first records the Donghu during the era of Duke Wen of Jin
Duke Wen of Jin
Duke Jin Wen led the state of Jin in the Spring and Autumn Period of Chinese history from 636 BC to 628 BC. His ancestral name is Ji,clan name is Jin Duke Jin Wen (晋文公) (697 BC - 628 BC) led the state of Jin in the Spring and Autumn Period of Chinese history from 636 BC to 628 BC. His ancestral...
(r. 697-628 BCE) and Duke Mu of Qin
Duke Mu of Qin
Duke Mu of Qin , born Ying Renhao , was a ruler of the State of Qin from 659 or 660 to 621 BC in China. One of the Five Hegemons of the Spring and Autumn Period, he greatly expanded the territory of Qin during the reign of King Xiang of Zhou.He acquired many talented advisors, such as Baili Xi,...
(r. ca. 659-621 BCE).
At this time Qin and Jin were the most powerful states in China. Duke Wen of Jin expelled the Di
Di (ethnic group)The Di were an ethnic group in China from the 8th century BCE to approximately the middle of the 6th century CE. Note that the character Di is used to differentiate this group from the Beidi , a generic term for "northern barbarians". They lived in areas of the present-day provinces of Gansu,...
barbarians and drove them into the region west of the Yellow RiverYellow RiverThe Yellow River or Huang He, formerly known as the Hwang Ho, is the second-longest river in China and the sixth-longest in the world at the estimated length of . Originating in the Bayan Har Mountains in Qinghai Province in western China, it flows through nine provinces of China and empties into...
between the Yun and Luo rivers; there they were known as the Red Di and the White Di. Shortly afterwards, Duke Mu of Qin, having obtained the services of You Yu, succeeded in getting the eight barbarian tribes of the west to submit to his authority.
Thus at this time there lived in the region west of LongGansu' is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.It lies between the Tibetan and Huangtu plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, and Shaanxi to the east...
the Mianzhu, the Hunrong, and the Diyuan tribes. North of Mts. Qi and Liang and the Jing and Qi rivers lived the Yiqu, Dali, Wuzhi, and Quyuan tribes. North of Jin were the Forest Barbarians and the Loufan, while north of Yan lived the Eastern Barbarians and Mountain Barbarians, each of them with their own chieftains. From time to time they would have gatherings of a hundred or so men, but no one tribe was capable of unifying the others under a single rule.
In 300 BCE Qin Kai, a general taken hostage from the state of Yan (whose capital "Ji" is now present-day Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
), defeated the Donghu after having gained the esteem of the Donghu and learning their battle tactics. By the time of the rule of the Xiongnu
Xiongnu
The Xiongnu were ancient nomadic-based people that formed a state or confederation north of the agriculture-based empire of the Han Dynasty. Most of the information on the Xiongnu comes from Chinese sources...
Chanyu
Chanyu
Chanyu , was the title used by the nomadic supreme rulers of Middle and Central Asia for 8 centuries, starting...
Touman (c. 220 BCE to 209 BCE), ". . . the Eastern Barbarians were very powerful and the Yuezhi
Yuezhi
The Yuezhi, or Rouzhi , also known as the Da Yuezhi or Da Rouzhi , were an ancient Central Asian people....
were likewise flourishing." When the Xiongnu crown prince Modu Chanyu killed his father, Touman (in 209 BCE) and took the title of Chanyu, the Donghu thought that Modu feared them, and they started to ask for tribute from the Xiongnu, and even a consort of Modu's. Not satisfied with this they asked for some of the Xiongnu territories. This enraged Modu who attacked and soundly defeated them, killing their ruler, taking his subjects prisoner, and seizing their livestock, before turning west to attack and defeat the Yuezhi (c. 177 BCE).
This caused disintegration in the Donghu federation. Thereafter, the Wuhuan
Wuhuan
The Wuhuan were a proto-Mongolic nomadic people who inhabited northern China, in what is now the provinces of Hebei, Liaoning, Shanxi, the municipality of Beijing and the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia....
moved to Mt. Wuhuan and engaged in continuous warfare with the Xiongnu on the west and China on the south. As they came to be worn out from the lengthy battles, the Xianbei
Xianbei
The Xianbei were a significant Mongolic nomadic people residing in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia and eastern Mongolia. The title “Khan” was first used among the Xianbei.-Origins:...
preserved their strengths by moving northward to Mt. Xianbei. In the 1st century, the Xianbei defeated the Wuhuan and northern Xiongnu, and developed into a powerful state under the leadership of their elected Khan
Khan (title)
Khan is an originally Altaic and subsequently Central Asian title for a sovereign or military ruler, widely used by medieval nomadic Turko-Mongol tribes living to the north of China. 'Khan' is also seen as a title in the Xianbei confederation for their chief between 283 and 289...
, Tanshihuai.
Chinese historian Yu Ying-shih
Yu Ying-shih
Yu Ying-shih is a Chinese American historian known for his mastery of sources for Chinese history and philosophy, his ability to synthesize them on a wide range of topics, and for his advocacy for a new Confucianism...
describes the Donghu.
The Tung-hu peoples were probably a tribal federation founded by a number of nomadic peoples, including the Wu-huan and Hsien-pi. After its conquest of the Hsiung-nu, the federation apparently ceased to exist. Throughout the Han period, no trace can be found of activities of the Tung-hu as a political entity.
Di Cosmo says the Chinese considered the Hu 胡 as "a new type of foreigner", and believes, "This term, whatever its origin, soon came to indicate an 'anthropological type' rather than a specific group or tribe, which the records allow us to identify as early steppe nomads. The Hu were the source of the introduction of cavalry in China."
Pulleyblank cites Paul Pelliot
Paul Pelliot
Paul Pelliot was a French sinologist and explorer of Central Asia. Initially intending to enter the foreign service, Pelliot took up the study of Chinese and became a pupil of Sylvain Lévi and Édouard Chavannes....
that the Donghu, Xianbei, and Wuhuan were "proto-Mongols".
The Eastern Hu, mentioned in the Shih-chi along with the Woods Hu and the Lou-fan as barbarians to the north of Chao in the fourth century B.C., appear again as one of the first peoples whom the Hsiung-nu conquered in establishing their empire. Toward the end of the Former Han, as the Hsiung-nu empire was weakening through internal dissension, the Eastern Hu became rebellious. From then on they played an increasingly prominent role in Chinese frontier strategy as a force to play off against the Hsiung-nu. Two major divisions are distinguished, the Hsien-pei to the north and the Wu-huan to the south. By the end of the first century B.C. these more specific names had supplanted the older generic term.
Pulleyblank also writes,
Although there is now archaeological evidence of the spread of pastoral nomadism based on horse riding from Central Asia into Mongolia and farther east in the first half of the first millennium B.C.E., as far as we have evidence it did not impinge on Chinese consciousness until the northward push of the state of Zhao 趙 to the edge of the steppe in present Shanxi province shortly before the end of the fifth century B.C.E. brought them into contact with a new type of horse-riding “barbarian” that they called Hu 胡. … In Han times the term Hu was applied to steppe nomads in general but especially to the Xiongnu who had become the dominant power in the steppe. Earlier it had referred to a specific proto-Mongolian people, now differentiated as the Eastern Hu 東胡, from whom the Xianbei 鮮卑 and the Wuhuan 烏桓 later emerged.
External links
- The Hu Peoples, Silk Road Seattle Virtual Art Exhibit.
- Non-Chinese peoples and neighboring states: Hu 胡, ChinaKnowledge.