| HN Mirror

I had not consulted the original text prior to replying, so I used a collective 蠻夷 as a guess. 蠻 and 夷 both translate as barbarian, an adjective and a noun (so to speak). 夷 is the character used in Archaic (Classical) Chinese that was used to write the letter (Archaic Chinese, which had a very different grammar and vocabulary was used for all written communication in China, Korea, Japan and Viet Nam until the early 20th century) to refer to barbarians whereas 蠻 has been used more recently.

In the text being referenced further down the thread the following words are used:

  眾夷 – crowd(s) of barbarians
  夷人 – barbarian(s), literally «barbarian person(s)»
  夷船 – barbarian ships
  外夷 – foreign barbarians
  夷 – barbarian(s)
  奸夷 – wicked / evil barbarians
  國夷 – barbarian countries/states, literally «country/-ies of barbarians».

蠻 is not found anywhere due to not being used in Classical Chinese.

Curiously, in Viet Nam, being written as 越南, the 越 refers to Baiyue or «one hundred yue (tribes)» (百越 that had formed an ancient Yue Kingdom and were considered barbarians at the time). And therefore 越 has had pretty strong barbaric connotations in the historical context for a long time. The actual name of the Viet Nam is, in fact, Nam Viet 南越, but words had to be swapped around at the behest of the Jiaqing Emperor of Qing to conform with the Classical Chinese grammar.