夏商周时期华夷之辨观念的萌芽与奠基——基于《尚书》的文化中心意识与天下秩序探究

The Emergence and Foundation of the Concept of the Distinction between Hua and Yi during the Xia, Shang, and Zhou Dynasties—An Exploration of Cultural Centralism and the World Order Based on The Book of Documents

摘要: 作为中国传统政治文化的关键概念，“华夷之辨”的源头深植于《尚书》所构建的三代叙事脉络之中。文章以《尚书》为核心史料，结合《史记》相关记载，在辨析文本成书年代的基础上展开剖析。《尧典》《禹贡》等篇虽非夏代同期档案，而是战国儒家追述古史的政治书写，但其所载“协和万邦”的政治理想与“五服”制的空间规划，已折射出周汉时期以华夏文化为中心、以道德礼教为评判尺度的“内诸夏而外夷狄”的叙事倾向。这种回溯性的政治想象，将早期血缘族群的划分逐步转化为基于文化认同的区分标准，搭建起华夏正统与天下秩序的基础叙事框架。这不仅为后世“用夏变夷”提供了历史合法性依据，也为儒家思想中“华夷观”的成熟奠定了坚实的文本基础与理论准备。

Abstract: As a pivotal concept in traditional Chinese political culture, the “distinction between Hua and Yi” is deeply rooted in the Three Dynasties narrative constructed in The Book of Documents. Centering on The Book of Documents and drawing on relevant accounts in the Records of the Grand Historian, this study analyzes the textual formation of these classics before examining their conceptual implications. Although chapters such as the “Canon of Yao” and the “Tribute of Yu” are not contemporaneous archives from the Xia dynasty but rather retrospective political writings by Warring Statesperiod Confucians, they nonetheless articulate a political ideal of “harmonizing the myriad states” and a spatial scheme of the “Five Zones of Tribute”. These formulations already reflect the narrative tendency of the Zhou-Han period to regard Huaxia culture as the center and moral rites and teachings as the criterion of judgment, namely “treating the various Xia as inner and the Yi and Di as outer”. This retrospective political imagination gradually transformed early divisions based on kinship and lineage into distinctions grounded in cultural identity, thereby establishing a foundational narrative framework for Huaxia orthodoxy and the ideal of world order. This imaginative framework not only lent historical legitimacy to the later doctrine of “transforming the Yi through Xia”, but also laid solid textual and theoretical groundwork for the maturation of the Confucian conception of the “Hua-Yi view”.