Orient

Administrative Dioceses of the Roman Empire, c. 300, including the original Diocese of the Orient

The term "Orient" derives from the Latin word oriens meaning "east" (lit. "rising" < orior " rise"). The use of the word for "rising" to refer to the east (where the sun rises) has analogs from many languages: compare the terms "Levant" (< French levant "rising"), "Vostok" Russian: Восток (< Russian voskhod Russian: восход "sunrise"), "Anatolia" (< Greek anatole), "mizrahi" in Hebrew ("zriha" meaning sunrise), "sharq" Arabic: شرق‎ (< Arabic yashriq يشرق "rise", shurūq Arabic: شروق‎ "rising"), "shygys" Kazakh: шығыс (< Kazakh shygu Kazakh: шығу "come out"), Turkish: doğu (< Turkish doğmak to be born; to rise), "xavar" Persian: خاور‎ (meaning east), Chinese: 東 (pinyin: dōng, a pictograph of the sun rising behind a tree[5]) and "The Land of the Rising Sun" to refer to Japan. Also, many ancient temples, including pagan temples and the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, were built with their main entrances facing the East. This tradition was carried on in Christian churches. To situate them in such a manner was to "orient" them in the proper direction. When something was facing the correct direction, it was said to be in the proper orientation.

Another explanation of the term stems from Rome during the Roman Empire, specifically the Eastern Roman Empire, or the "Roman Orient", during the Byzantine Empire. Although the original East-West (or Orient-Occident) line was the Italian Peninsula's East Coast, around 600 AD this would shift to the City of Rome. Any area below the City of Rome was considered the Orient, as well as the ethnicities inhabiting the land, such as Dalmatian Italians, (modern Neapolitans along with Sicilians, Libyans, Moroccans, Greeks, etc.), as well as everything East of Southern Italy, hence the Italian name "Italia nord-orientale" (in English Northeast Italy) for Le Tre Venezie (the 3 Venices) located above the Roman latitude line separating it from modern Abruzzo; the beginning of the Orient in the East, while Lazio is its beginning in the West of the Italian Peninsula.

The opposite term "Occident" derives from the Latin word occidens, meaning west (lit. setting < occido fall/set). This term meant the west (where the sun sets) but has fallen into disuse in English, in favor of "Western world".

Late Roman Diocese of the Orient, c. 400

Territorialization of the Roman term Orient occurred during the reign of emperor Diocletian (284-305), when the Diocese of the Orient (Latin: Dioecesis Orientis) was formed. Later in the 4th century, the Praetorian prefecture of the Orient (Latin: Praefectura Praetorio Orientis) was also formed, including most of the Eastern Roman Empire, from the Thrace eastwards; its easternmost part was the original Diocese of the Orient, corresponding roughly to the region of Syria.

Over time, the common understanding of "the Orient" has continually shifted eastwards, as European people traveled farther into Asia. It finally reached the Pacific Ocean, in what Westerners came to call "the Far East". These shifts in time and identification sometimes confuse the scope (historical and geographic) of Oriental Studies. Yet there remain contexts where "the Orient" and "Oriental" have kept their older meanings (e.g., "Oriental spices" typically are from the regions extending from the Middle East to sub-continental India to Indo-China). Travelers may again take the Orient Express train from Paris to its terminus in the European part of Istanbul, a route established in the early 20th century.

In European historiography, the meaning of "the Orient" changed in scope several times. Originally, the term referred to Egypt, the Levant, and adjoining areas.[6] as far west as Morocco. During the 1800s, India, and to a lesser extent China, began to displace the Levant as the primary subject of Orientalist research, while the term also appears in mid-century works to describe an appearance or perceived similarity to "Oriental" government or culture, such as in Tolstoy's 1869 novel War and Peace, in which Napoleon, upon seeing the "oriental beauty" of Moscow, calls it "That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy Moscow!",[7] while in 1843 the American historian William Prescott uses the phrase "barbaric pomp, truly Oriental" to describe the court life of Aztec nobility in his history of the conquest of Mexico.[8] As late as 1957 Karl Wittfogel included Rome and the Incan Empire in his study of what he called Oriental Despotism, demonstrating the term still carries a meaning in Western thought that transcends geography. By the mid-20th century, Western scholars generally considered "the Orient" as just East Asia, Southeast Asia, and eastern Central Asia.[6] As recently as the early 20th century, the term "Orient" often continued to be used in ways that included North Africa. Today, the term primarily evokes images of China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Mongolia, and peninsular Southeast Asia.[6] "The Orient" being largely a cultural term, large parts of Asia—Siberia most notably—were excluded from the scholarly notion of "the Orient".[6]

The famous English writer Rudyard Kipling, especially popular in Russia for his The Ballad of East and West poem, had been applying the term to the Russian people. In The Man Who Was (1890, never translated to Russian), he wrote: "Let it be clearly understood that the Russian is a delightful person till he tucks in his shirt. As an Oriental he is charming. It is only when he insists upon being treated as the most easterly of western peoples instead of the most westerly of easterns that he becomes a racial anomaly extremely difficult to handle. The host never knows which side of his nature is going to turn up next".[9][10]

Equally valid terms for the Orient still exist in the English language in such collocations as Oriental studies (now Asian Studies in some countries).

The adjectival term Oriental has been used by the West to mean cultures, peoples, countries, Asian rugs, and goods from the Orient. "Oriental" means generally "eastern". It is a traditional designation (especially when capitalized) for anything belonging to the Orient or "East" (for Asia), and especially of its Eastern culture. It indicated the eastern direction in historical astronomy, often abbreviated "Ori".[11] In contemporary American English, Oriental usually refers to things from the parts of East Asia traditionally occupied by East Asians and most Central Asians and Southeast Asians racially categorized as "Mongoloid". This excludes Jews, Indians, Arabs, and most other South or West Asian peoples. Because of historical discrimination against Chinese, Korean and Japanese, in some parts of the United States, some people consider the term derogatory. For example, Washington state prohibits the word "Oriental" in legislation and government documents, preferring the word "Asian" instead.[12]

In more local uses, "oriental" is also used for eastern parts of countries, for example Morocco's Oriental Region. Oriental may also be used as an synonym of "eastern", especially in Romance languages. Examples include the "oriental" and "occidental" provinces of Mindoro and Negros in the Philippines, and the French département of Pyrénées-Orientales.

Since the 19th century, "orientalist" has been the traditional term for a scholar of Oriental studies; however, the use in English of "Orientalism" to describe academic "Oriental studies" is rare: the Oxford English Dictionary cites only one such usage, by Lord Byron in 1812. Orientalism is more widely used to refer to the works of the many 19th-century artists who specialized in "Oriental" subjects, often drawing on their travels to North Africa and Western Asia. Artists as well as scholars were already described as "Orientalists" in the 19th century. In 1978, Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said published his influential and controversial book, Orientalism; he used the term to describe a pervasive Western tradition, both academic and artistic, of prejudiced outsider interpretations of the Arab and Muslim worlds, shaped by the attitudes of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries.[13]

• Levant
• Land of the Morning Calm
• Land of the Rising Sun
• Orient Express
• Orientalism
• Orientalizing Period of Archaic Greek art
• Political correctness
• School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
• Western world (the Occident; the opposite of Orient)
• Asia-Pacific

• [Ankerl, Guy] Coexisting Contemporary Civilizations: Arabo-Muslim, Bharati, Chinese, and Western (INUPRESS), Geneva, 2000. ISBN 2-88155-004-5

Look up Orient, orient, Oriental, or oriental in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• The American Oriental Society
• The Oriental Institute at University of Chicago
• On Asian and Oriental Model Minority posting by Alan Hu.
• The Critic in the Orient by George Hamlin Fitch
• German Orient Gate
• What's the Matter with Saying the Orient? by Christopher Hill for "About Japan: A Teacher's Resource"