Abstract
This paper discusses the influences of the ethnic policy during the Yuan dynasty and the Ming dynasty from the view of the western regions’immigrants, and also discusses the religious policy that might influence Jewish monotheism and development of their community. In the Ho-nan country there were members of Muslims, Christians and Jews at 1605. Since their appearances were sufficiently unlike that of the the Han people, they were called hui-hui. And this paper guesses ethnic four-rank system was derived from Mogonlian Khan court, where there were members of Mongols who had non-written words, hui-hui who wrote in the hui-hui characters, the generalized Hans who used Chinese characters. After unified the southern Song, the Yuan dynasty refered to the Jin dynasty to distinguish those aboriginal Hans into the Hans and the Southerners. Those hui-hui were the people who had the phenotype of the western regions’people. But the phenotype of the Mongols, the Hans and the Southerners belonged to the people who were the Mongolian phenotype. After Lin-an and Fuzhou were conquered in succession at 1278, the word of Semu began to appear in the public documents written in Chinese characters. And so, the concept of the Semu just existed in Chinese. Before this, the western regions’people were called hui-hui, or the clan whom belonged to. Except for the way of cutting throat to slaughter animals, the ethnic policy of the Mongolian regime respected all customs and religions, and trusted the western regions’people. After the dynastic change from Yuan to Ming, Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to assimiliate the domestic minority to the Hans by means of the ethnic policy. The policy was carried out to forbid the dresses, the languages, the name system of the Hu people, and marriage with the same minority. Moreover, the state cult of Confucious, the ancestral cult and Confucianization, which was formulated by Zhu Yuanzhang brought great impact to the western region’s people. This was displayed concretely in the stone inscriptions, the vertical tablets, the horizonal tablets, and the letters of the Jesuits. The term of Ching-Chen might be an Islamized term caused by the policy set up by Zhu Yuanzhang at the beginning of Ming dynasty, which treated Islam with high respect. In addition, Ming dynasty had an attemption to unify the southern part and northern part of Tianshan for more than one century. It resulted in a lot of the western regions’Islamic immigrators. Specially, the marriage custom of Muslims adapted to the ban of the marriage with the same minority very well. These increased the ratio of Muslims in the population of the hui-hui everywhere, and resulted in the hui-hui were almost to be the Muslim, and afterwards these two terms are replaceable today. In conclusion, the reasons for the Chinese Jews to intermarriage, use Han’s surname, partake in the state cult of Confucious, practice the ancestral cult and so on are originated from the ethnic policy and the religious policy of Zhu Yuanzhang after the dynastic change from Yuan to Ming.