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Dongyi
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Dongyi was a collective term for people in Eastern China and in the east of China. People referred to as Dongyi vary across the ages.
The character ?
Chinese dictionaries give various meanings of yi. Besides "Dongyi", it also means "foreign", "flat and safe", "calm (and composed)", "to level", "same kind" (??:??), "kill", "name", "joyful" (?“?” as in ????), "hoe", etc.
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Encyclopedia
Dongyi was a collective term for people in Eastern China and in the east of China. People referred to as Dongyi vary across the ages.
The character ?
Chinese dictionaries give various meanings of yi. Besides "Dongyi", it also means "foreign", "flat and safe", "calm (and composed)", "to level", "same kind" (??:??), "kill", "name", "joyful" (?“?” as in ????), "hoe", etc.
The first Chinese dictionary, Shuowen Jiezi by Xu Shen interpretated "?" as "big bow". The character itself consists of two Chinese characters: "?", meaning "big" and depicting a frontal view of a person with arms outstretched, and "?", meaning "bow". Dongyi people are usually referred to as the eastern bowmen, who also first invented the bow in China. Houyi, one of the legendary leaders of Dongyi, is the Chinese God of Archery.
Historical usages
Pre-Qin usages
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" of the Classic of History calls people in Qingzhou and Xuzhou as Laiyi, Yuyi and Huaiyi. Another yi-related term is Jiu-yi, literally Nine Yi, which could have also had the connotation The Numerous Yi or The Many Different Kinds of Yi, and which appears in the famous 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.
The Shang Dynasty has contemporary sources, in other words, oracle bone inscriptions. These records state that King Wu Ding (reign c. 1250 BC-1192 BC) made military expeditions to the Yi. The enclave of the Yi people is considered to have been located to the southeast of the Shang Dynasty. King Di Xin, the last king, made a massive military campaign against the Yifang. The word "yifang" is often interpreted as "renfang" because the pictures of "?" and "?" (meaning: person, humans) look alike in oracle script. Some history books use "Dongyi" for Shang-related episodes, but judging from oracle bone inscriptions, the Shang people themselves did not use this term.
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.
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.
Post-Qin usages
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