Barbarous Information
Barbarian and Savage are pejorative terms used to refer to a person who is perceived to be uncivilized. The word is often used either in a general reference to a member of a nation or ethnos, typically a tribal society as seen by an urban civilization either viewed as inferior, or admired as a noble savage. In idiomatic or figurative usage, a "barbarian" may also be an individual reference to a brutal, cruel, warlike, insensitive person.[1]
The notion of "barbarians" can be found throughout the world, in Western cultures, East Asian cultures, and the cultures of other civilizations.
Contents |
Western culture
Main article: Barbarians in Western culturesIn the West, "barbarian" comes from the Greek word Barbaroi meaning "anyone who is not Greek", and thus was often used to refer to other civilized people, such as the people of the Persian Empire.
Ancient Greece
The Greeks used the term as they encountered scores of different foreign cultures, including the Egyptians, Persians, Medes, Celts, Germans, Phoenicians, Etruscans and Carthaginians. It, in fact, became a common term to refer to all foreigners. 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 and Aeolic-speakers) in a pejorative and politically motivated manner.[2] Of course, the term also carried a cultural dimension to its dual meaning.[3][4] The verb βαρβαρίζειν (barbarízein) in ancient Greek meant imitating the linguistic sounds non-Greeks made or making grammatical errors in Greek.
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. In Homer's works, the term appeared only once (Iliad 2.867), in the form βάρβαροΦώνος (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.[5] Still it has been suggested that "barbarophonoi" in the Iliad signifies not those who spoke a non-Greek language but simply those who spoke Greek badly.[6]
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 Achaemenid Empire. Indeed in the Greek of this period 'barbarian' is often used expressly to mean Persian.[7]
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 BC who called for a war of conquest against Persia as a panacea for Greek problems. Ironically, many of the former attributes were later ascribed to the Greeks, especially the Seleucid kingdom, by the Romans[citation needed].
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.
Arabic context
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".
Early Modern period
Further information: Viking revival, Noble savage, and PhilistinismItalians in the Renaissance often called anyone who lived outside of their country a barbarian. As far as the nomadic Goths went, they originally worshipped the same pantheon as did the Germanic/Norse barbarians, but because of their wanderings and their propensity for adopting the standards, beliefs, and practices of whatever culture within which they located, were the first barbarians to adopt Christianity as a faith (actually long before the Romans did).
Spanish sea captain Francisco de Cuellar who sailed with the Spanish Armada in 1588 used the term 'savage' to describe the Irish people.[8]
Modern academia
A famous quote from anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss says: "The barbarian is the one who believes in barbary",[9] a meaning like his metaphor in Race et histoire ("Race and history", UNESCO, 1952), that two cultures are like two different trains crossing each other: each one believes it has chosen the good direction. A broader analysis reveals that neither party "chooses" their direction, but that their "brutish" behaviors have formed out of necessity, being entirely dependent on and hooked to their surrounding geography and circumstances of birth.
Although some terms in academia do go out of style, such as "Dark Ages", the term Barbarian is in full common currency among all mainstream medieval scholars and is not out of style or outdated, though a disclaimer is often felt to be needed, as when Ralph W. Mathisen prefaces a discussion of barbarian bishops in Late Antiquity, "It should also be noted that the word "barbarian" will be used here as a convenient, nonpejorative term to refer to all the non-Latin and non-Greek speaking exterae gentes who dwelt around, and even eventually settled within, the Roman Empire during late antiquity".[10]
The significance of barbarus in Late Antiquity has been specifically explored on several occasions.[11]
Examples of this modern usage can also be seen in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, which has an article titled "Barbarians, the Invasions" and uses the term barbarian throughout its 13 volumes. A 2006 book by Yale historian Walter Goffart is called Barbarian Tides and uses barbarian throughout to refer to the larger pantheon of tribes that the Roman Empire encountered. Walter Pohl, a leading pan-European expert on ethnicity and Late Antiquity, published a 1997 book titled Kingdoms of the Empire: The Integration of Barbarians in Late Antiquity. The Encyclopædia Britannica and other general audience encyclopedias use the term barbarian throughout within the context of late antiquity.
Modern popular culture
Modern popular culture contains such fantasy barbarians as Tarzan and Conan the Barbarian.
In fantasy novels and role-playing games, barbarians or berserkers are often represented as lone warriors, very different from the vibrant cultures on which they are based.
East Asian cultures
From the Japanese Tokugawa period, a 1861 image expressing the Joi (攘夷, "Expel the Barbarians") sentiment. Main article: Barbarians in East Asian culturesChina
The Chinese (Han Chinese) of the Chinese Empire sometimes (depends on the dynasty, geographic location, and timeline) initially regarded the Xiongnu, Qiang, Yue, Nanyue, Yuezhi, Tibetans, Tatars, Turks, Mongols, Jurchens, Manchus, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese (and later Europeans) as barbarians. However, as places such as Korean peninsula and Japan became sinicized by adopting Han culture, they were eventually regarded as a part of the 'cultured' Sinosphere. The Chinese used different terms for "barbarians" from different directions of the compass. Those in the east were called Dongyi (東夷), those in the west were called Xirong (西戎), those in the south were called Nanman (南蠻), and those in the north were called Beidi (北狄). However, despite the conventional translation of such terms (especially 夷) as "barbarian", in fact it is possible to translate them simply as 'outsider' or 'stranger', with far less offensive cultural connotations.
Japan
The Japanese adopted the Chinese usage. 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 kōmō (紅毛), literally meaning "Red Hair."
Other civilizations
Historically, the term barbarian has seen widespread use. Many peoples have dismissed alien cultures and even rival civilizations as barbarians because they were recognizably strange. The Greeks admired Scythians and Eastern Gauls 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-Greco-Roman.
The nomadic steppe peoples north of the Black Sea, including the Pechenegs and the Kipchaks, were called barbarians by Byzantines.[12]
The Hindus referred to all alien cultures in ancient times as 'Mlechcha' [13] or Barbarians. In the ancient texts, Mlechchas are people who are barbaric and who have given up the Vedic beliefs.[14][15] Among the tribes termed Mlechcha were Sakas, Hunas, Yavanas, Kambojas, Pahlavas, Bahlikas and Rishikas.[14]
In Mesoamerica the Aztec civilization used the word "Chichimeca" to denominate a group of nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes that lived in the outskirts of the Triple Alliance's Empire, in the North of Modern Mexico, which were seen for the Aztec people as primitive and uncivilized. One of the meanings attributed to the word "Chichimeca" is "dog people".
The Incas used the term "puruma auca" for all peoples living outside the rule of their empire (see Promaucaes).
See also
| Look up barbarian in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
| Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Barbarian. |
- Barbarian invasions
- Barbarism
- Barbarism (linguistics)
- Civilization
- Ethnocentrism
- Skræling
- Stateless societies
- Vandals
Notes
- ^ Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 1972, pg. 149, Simon & Schuster Publishing
- ^ The term barbaros, "A Greek-English Lexicon" (Liddell & Scott), at Perseus
- ^ Foreigners and Barbarians (adapted from Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks), The American Forum for Global Education, 2000.
"The status of being a foreigner, as the Greeks understood the term does not permit any easy definition. Primarily it signified such peoples as the Persians and Egyptians, whose languages were unintelligible to the Greeks, but it could also be used of Greeks who spoke in a different dialect and with a different accent...Prejudice toward Greeks on the part of Greeks was not limited to those who lived on the fringes of the Greek world. The Boeotians, inhabitants of central Greece, whose credentials were impeccable, were routinely mocked for their stupidity and gluttony. Ethnicity is a fluid concept even at the best of times. When it suited their purposes, the Greeks also divided themselves into Ionians and Dorians. The distinction was emphasized at the time of the Peloponnesian War, when the Ionian Athenians fought against the Dorian Spartans. The Spartan general Brasidas even taxed the Athenians with cowardice on account of their Ionian lineage. In other periods of history the Ionian-Dorian divide carried much less weight."
- ^ Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. Athens: Its Rise and Fall. Kessinger Publishing, 2004. ISBN 1-4191-0808-5, pp. 9-10.
"Whether the Pelasgi were anciently a foreign or Grecian tribe, has been a subject of constant and celebrated discussion. Herodotus, speaking of some settlements held to be Pelaigic, and existing in his time, terms their language 'barbarous;' but Mueller, nor with argument insufficient, considers that the expression of the historian would apply only to a peculiar dialect; and the hypothesis is sustained by another passage in Herodotus, in which he applies to certain Ionian dialects the same term as that with which he stigmatizes the language of the Pelasgic settlements. In corroboration of Mueller's opinion, we may also observe, that the 'barbarous-tongued' is an epithet applied by Homer to the Carians, and is rightly construed by the ancient critics as denoting a dialect mingled and unpolished, certainly not foreign. Nor when the Agamemnon of Sophocles upbraids Teucer with 'his barbarous tongue,' would any scholar suppose that Teucer is upbraided with not speaking Greek; he is upbraided with speaking Greek inelegantly and rudely. It is clear that they who continued with the least adulteration a language in its earliest form, would seem to utter a strange and unfamiliar jargon to ears accustomed to its more modern construction."
- ^ Hall, Jonathan. Hellenicity, p. 111, ISBN 0-226-31329-8. "There is at the elite level at least no hint during the archaic period of this sharp dichotomy between Greek and Barbarian or the derogatory and the stereotypical representation of the latter that emerged so clearly from the fifth century."
- ^ Hall, Jonathan. Hellenicity, p. 111, ISBN 0-226-31329-8. "Given the relative familiarity of the Karians to the Greeks, it has been suggested that barbarophonoi in the Iliad signifies not those who spoke a non-Greek language but simply those who spoke Greek badly."
- ^ Tsetskhladze, Gocha R. Ancient Greeks West and East, 1999, p. 60, ISBN 90-04-10230-2. "a barbarian from a distinguished nation which given the political circumstances of the time might well mean a Persian."
- ^ Captain Cuellar's Adventures in Connacht and Ulster
- ^ Le barbare, c'est d'abord celui qui croit à la barbarie.
- ^ Ralph W. Mathisen "Barbarian Bishops and the Churches "in Barbaricis Gentibus" During Late Antiquity" Speculum 72.3 (July 1997), p. 665. Mathisen notes that Eusebius, in his Life of Constantine described the emperor as bishop "of those outside" (exterae gentes).
- ^ For examples, by Ralph W. Mathison, Roman Aristocrats in Barbarian Gaul: Strategies for Survival in an Age of Transition (Austin, Texas) 1993, and Gerhart B. Ladner, "On Roman attitudews towards barbarians in Late Antiquity" Viator 7 (1996:1-25).
- ^ The Pechenegs, Steven Lowe and Dmitriy V. Ryaboy
- ^ Mudrarakshasha by Kashinath Trimbak Telang introduction p12 [1]
- ^ a b National geographer, 1977, p 60, Allahabad Geographical Society - History.
- ^ Manusamriti, X/43-44; A comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages, 1875, p 5,Robert Caldwell; Early Chauhān dynasties:, 1959, p 243, Dasharatha Sharma - History; The Aryans, a Modern Myth, 1993, p 211,Parameśa Caudhurī - History.
Categories: Greek loanwords | Pejorative terms for people | Sociology | Warriors | Warriors of Europe | Onomatopoeias | Cultural concepts
|