Ancient History of Central Asia- Introduction of Ancient Huna Tribe

Ancient History of Central Asia‐ Introduction of Ancient Huna Tribe (Article No 03)

*Not a copyright material, only a study material Compiled By: Adesh Katariya

Ancient History of

Central Asia (Article no 03: Notes on Ancient Huna: Introduction)

Imp.Note: Till now many researches publoished on the history of Great yuezhi tribe but schollers are not in position to clearify all happinings in a series. In this article, we are trying to compile all happinings as per their timings. We also would like to clarify that the material under this article is not a copyright matter and main motive of this article is, to attract good scholers to discuss and research on the great Yuezhi Tribes and its clans. We are proposing current forms of Clans of Gurjars v/s Yuezhi Tribe origin Clans (described on Socond Page).

Compiled By:

Adesh Katariya

(Chemical Technologist and History Researcher)

E‐mail: [email protected], Contact no: +91 9540992618



Proposed descendent Clans (Gotras) /current names of Ancient Clans of

Yuezhi (Gurjars were called Yuezhi in Chineese Literature) Origin:

Clan of Gurjars Names in Ancient Literatures Major Rulling Area

To be defined Next version

Ruling Clan of Great Yuezhi Tarim Basin, China

Kashana/Kusanna Kushana North‐west India, Pakistan

Khatana Kings of Khotan under Kushana Empire

Khotan ,Western China

Bokkan Xiūmì (休密) Walkhan ,Northeast edge of Afghanistan

Nagadi/Naggars Nagar of Kashmir under Kushana empire

Kashmir

Bhatti Bhati of Doab under Kushana Kingdom

Western UP State , India

Kataria/Kadara/Kidaria Kidarite kingdom under kink Kidara

Afganistan

To be defined Next version Shuangmi (雙靡)

Shughnan,Badakhshan Province, Afganistan

To be defined Next version Xidun (肸頓)

Balkh, Northern Afghanistan.

To be defined Next version Dūmì (都密)

Termez,southernmost part of Uzbekistan

Huna White Huna/Hepthelites Central Asia

To be defined Later version Xionites

Afganistan and Pakistan

Karhana/Kara‐Huna

Northern Huna/Ak(Black)‐Khazar

Georgia and West Asia

Panwar /Parmar Gurjar ‐Pratihar Northern and Central India

Chandela/Chandila Chandela Central India

To be defined Next version Chalukya

West and South India

Chawda Chap West and South India

Chechi Chechi Chechenya, North‐West Asia

To be defined Next version Gurja/Gurza

Georgia, Gurjistan

Bad‐Gujar Bad‐Gujar West India

Tanwar/Tomer Tanwar Delhi, india

Mavi Mavai Mavana region, Meerut , India



Introduction of Huna

White Huns, Akhuns, Ephthalites, Hephthalites, Hephtal, Heftal, Haitila, Haital, Aptal, Eptla, Evdal, Abdal, Abdel, Eftal, (Ch.) Hsi-mo-ta-lo, (Ch.) Ye-ta, (Ch.)Ye-da, Tetal, Hion, Hyon, Hiyona, Khyon, Hun, White Hions, Sveta Huna, Red Huns, Hara (Hala) Huna, Kermihions, Karmir Hion, Kirmirxyun, (Ch.) Hua, War, Uar, Varhun, Warhun, Apar, Awar, Avar, Huns-Kidarites, Kidarites, Kidaro, Kidara, Kerder (Kurder), Kerderi, Khoalits, Khoalitoi, Khoali, Khoari, Jabula, Jauvla, Jauwla, Kangar, Kangju, Qangui, Gaoguy-Uigur, Alkhon, and other variations

Subdivisions

Chao-wu, Jamuk, Jauvla, Johal, Jouhal, Joval, Jauvla, Jauhal, Jauhla, Jatt, Jat, Jabuli, Kabuli, Zabul, Zabuli,

Zabulites, => all literaly meaning “falcon” in Turkic/Hunnic, but politically “Kabul”

Chionites, Chions, Hiono,

Abdaly, Hephtal, all other versions

Although the Hephthalites dominated much of Central Asia and Northern India at the height of their power (approximately 460 to 570), little information about their civilization is available to us. Their name derives from the Byzantine "Ephthalites," and they were alternatively known as Ye-Ta to the Wei dynasty and Hunas to the Gupta Empire. They are also referred to as "White Huns" in some histories, a term derived from a quotation from Procopius' History of the Wars, in which he writes, "The Ephthalites are of the stock of the Huns in fact as well as in name; however they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us.... They are the only ones among the Huns who have white bodies and countenances which are not ugly." We do not know what name these people used to refer to themselves.



Historians tend to fall into two camps when discussing Hephthalite origins. One theory is that the Hephthalites were once part of the Juan-juan confederacy of Turkic nomadic peoples; similarities in portraiture found on Hephthalite and Yuezhi coins is sometimes offered as evidence of a common Western China homeland for both these cultures. An alternate explanation put forth by Kazuo Enoki in the 1950s is that the Hephthalites were an Iranian group who settled in the Altai region, from whence they began their military expansion south into the Bactrian region. But whatever their origins might have been, by the year 500 branch empires of the Hephthalites controlled an area stretching south from Transoxiana to the Arabian Sea, and as far west as Khurasan (the eastern-most part of the Sassanian empire), and all of northern India to the east.

The Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata, supposed to have been edited around the 4th or 5th

century, in one of its verses, mentions the Hunas with the Parasikas and

other Mlechha tribes of the northwest including the Yavanas, Chinas, Kambojas, Darunas,

Sukritvahas, Kulatthas etc. According to Dr V. A. Smith, the verse is reminiscent of the

period when the Hunas first came into contact with the Sassanian dynasty of Persia. Brihat

Katha Manjari of Kashmiri Pandit Kshmendra (11th century AD) also claims that king

Vikramaditya had slaughtered theShakas, Barbaras,

Hunas, Kambojas, Yavanas, Parasikas and the Tusharas etc. and hence unburdened the earth

of these sinful Mlechhas. There is still another ancient Brahmanical text Katha-

Saritsagara by Somadeva which also attests that king Vikramaditya had invaded the north-

west tribes including the Kashmiras and had destroyed the Sanghas of the Mlechhas

(reference to Sanghas here obviously alludes to the Sanghas of the Madrakas, Yaudheyas,

Kambojas, Mallas or Malavas, Sibis, Arjunayans, Kulutas and Kunindas etc). Those who

survived accepted his suzerainty and many of them joined his armed forces.There is mention

of Chinese sources identifying them variously with either the Ch'e-shih of Turfan (now in the

Uighur regionof China), K'ang Chu or Kangju from southern Kazakhstan or the widespread

Yueh Zhi tribes from Central China. These Yuehzhi were driven out of the Chinese

territories that they occupied by anotherband of tribes known as the Hsiung Nu. One of these

tribes of the Yueh Zhi was the White Huns or Hepthelites. According to Richard Heli

Chinese chroniclers state that they were known as the Ye-ti-li-do, or Yeda butthey are also

known as the people of Hua by the same chroniclers. From these sources there is

anambiguity that arises which might show that something was lost in translation between the

term Huawhich converted to Hun instead and came to be associated with the Hunnic tribes

.The Japanese researcher Kazuo Enoki disregarded theories based solely on similarity of



names due tothe fact that there is so much linguistic variation that we cannot say for certain

that a particular namehas not lost something in translation. His approach towards

understanding Hephthalite origins is to seewhere they were not in evidence instead of where

they were by which he has stated that their originsmight have been from the Hsi-mo-ta-lo

southwest of Badakshan near the Hindukush, a name whichstands for snowplain or Himtala

in modern times and this might be the Sanskritised form of Hephthal(Heli, 2007)Of note here

is the work of Professor Paul Harrison of Stanford University, who deciphered a copperscroll

form Afghanistan in 2007. The scroll is dated from 492-93 CE and is from the period of the

Hephthalites. It apparently mentions that they were Buddhists and had Iranian names

and includesabout a dozen names including that of their overlord or King. (Heli, 2007)Where

their name is concerned, they have been variously known as Sveta Hunas or Khidaritas

inSanskrit, Ephtalites or Hephthalites in Greek, Haitals in Armenian, Heaitels in Arabic and

Persian, Abdeles by the Byzantine historian Theophylactos Simocattes while the Chinese

name them the Ye-ta-li-to , after their first major ruler Ye-tha or Hephtal .The variety of

names shows that there is ambiguity towards the specific identity of this particular race and

that historically they don’t have a set origin that defines them separately from the various

othertribes that existed within that region at the same time, mostly of Yuezhi origins.

As a matter of fact the abovementioned scholars are right. The main part of the Hepthelite

consisted of the Little Yuezhi separated from the Yuezhi Tribe during Great Migration of

Yuezhi during theirs defat by Xionghnu. But the Chionites and the Kushans of Bactria joined

the newcomers: Main part of Great Yuezhi. They hoped that with the help of the Hephtalites

they could reconquer their East-Iranian and North-North-western Indian territories. The

Khidarites – who also joined the White Huns – belonged to the later Kushans, too. From the

Sassanian rule a Ta Yüeh-chi /Great Yüeh-chi/ prince: Khidara and his tribe became

independent in the beginning of the 4-th century A.D. and occupied the eastern part of

Gandhara. This fact is proved by the Khidarita coins excavated there. But the pillar found in

Allahabad, India proves this, too, as the following text is written on it: „near to the border of

North India lives a prince called Devaputra Sahanushahi /”son of God – the king of the

kings”/.1 As this title always belonged to the Kushan rulers originated from the Great Yüeh-

chis, it means that Khidara was their successor and the Khidarites were his nation. By the



archeologists the pillar was made around 340 A.D., the Hephtalites and their „kindred

tribes”: the Kushans, the Chionites and the Khidarites arrived to the Indian border at that

time.

The Central Asian Huna consisted of four hordes in four cardinal directions. Northern Huna

were the Black Huns, Southern Huna were the Red Huns, Eastern Huna were the Celestial

Huns, and Western Huna were the White Huns or Hephthalites. In next chapters , we will

read about all four stock of Huna and their ruling-elite. All four Huna have been part of the

Hephthalite group, who established themselves in central Asia by the 4th and 5th century.

They sometimes call themselves "Hono" on their coins, but it seems that they are similar to

the Huns who invaded the Western world.

They appeared in Northwestern India and parts of eastern Iran. During their invasion, the

Hunas managed to capture the Sassanian king Peroz I, and exchanged him for a ransom.

They used the coins of the ransom to counter mark and copy them, thereby initiating a

coinage inspired from Sassanian designs.

The famous Chinese Buddhist monks: - one of them: Sung Yun who visited India at the time

of the Hephtalite kingdom – and the other one: Hsuan Tsang who went there a few decades

later, gave details about the White Huns in their accounts. But the Hephtalites had mixed

with other nations before they arrived in India.

The Hephtalites while still living in the Oxus valley in the 4-th century, the Indian Puranas –

written in Sanskrit – first of all the Vishnu Purana and the Aitareya Brahmana refer to them

and call them „Hunas”.2 In the beginning of the 5-th century the famous poet-writer:

Kalidasa writes about them in his Sanskrit epic: the Raghuvamsha /Raghu’s nation/:

„Tatra Hunavarodhanam bhartrishu vyaktavikman

Kapolapataladeshi babhuva Raghuceshtitam” //68//

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Etymology:

Although believed by some to be a derivation from early Turkic davgu, most scholars believe that that the word Yabgu is of Indo-European origin, and was perhaps borrowed by the Türks from the Kushan political tradition, preserved by the Hephtalites.

Friedrich Hirth suggested that the earliest title "Yabgu" was recorded in literary Chinese with regard to Kushan contexts with transliteration Xihou "e-khu (yephou)" (Chinese: 翖侯; literally: "United/Allied/Confederated Prince"). However, the Chinese does not make clear whether the title was the one bestowed on foreign leaders or rather a descriptive title indicating that they were allied, or united.

The Chinese word sihou (<*xiap-g’u) is a title. The second part of this compound, hou (<g’u), meant a title of second hereditary noble of the five upper classes. Sihou (<*xiap-g’u) corresponds to the title yavugo on the Kushan (Ch. Uechji) coins from Kabulistan, and yabgu of the ancient Türkic monuments [Hirth F. "Nachworte zur Inschrift des Tonjukuk" // ATIM, 2. Folge. StPb. 1899, p. 48-50]. This title is first of all a Kushan title, also deemed to be "true Tocharian" title. In the 11 BC the Chinese Han captured a Kushan from the Hunnu state, who was a "chancellor" (Ch. sijan) with the title yabgu (sihou). After 4 years he returned to the Hunnu shanyu, who gave him his former post of a «second [after Shanyu] person in the state", and retained the title yabgu (sihou). The bearer of this high title did not belong to the Hunnu dynastic line, well-known and described in detail in the sources. Probably, he was a member of the numerous Kushan (Uechji) autonomous diasporas in the Hunnu confederation. This history suggests, that in the Usun state Butszü-sihou, who saved the life of a baby Gunmo in the 160es BC, also was an yabgu.

It remains unclear whether the title indicates an alliance with the Chinese or simply with each other. A few scholars, such as Sims-Williams considered the Turkic "Yabgu" to be originally derived from the Chinese "Xihou".Another theory postulalates a Sogdian origin for both titles, "Yabgu" and "Shad". The rulers of some Sogdian principalities are known to have title "Ikhshid".

The Religion:

The early Huns followed a religion akin to Zorastrianism and worshipped fire and Sun. The Hephthalites have been portrayed as virulently anti-Buddhist, a claim based primarily on a description of a Hephthalite ruler of Gandhara recorded by Song Yun and Huisheng: "The nature of the king is violent and cruel, very often conducting massacres. He does not believe



in the Buddhist faith, but well worships [his] own heathen gods. As all the inhabitants in the country are Brahmans who respect Buddhism by reading the sutras, so it is deeply against their wishes that they suddenly have such a king." Yet other evidence depicts a different situation. One of the coins included in this exhibit was found along with thirteen other Hephthalite examples among the relics found in the Tope Kulan stupa. If the Hephthalite rulers were hostile to Buddhism, it seems doubtful that believers would have interred coins bearing portraits of their rulers. It is more probably that, once their power base had been secured, they at least tolerated Buddhist practice within their realm. They may even have offered the religion a degree of royal patronage; one inscription records donations to a Buddhist monastery in the name of the Hephthalite ruler Toramana.

The crown of Hayatelle’s king became decoration of famous fire-temple of Azar Gashnasb in the city of Shiz in Azarbaijan.

Wei-era documentation records that the Hephthalites worshiped Heaven and also fire, also mentioned by Procopius.

"J. Harmatta and BA LiTvinsky present a different view (History of civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. III, p. 371). They argue that the famous Barmakid family were apparently the descants of the Hephthalite pramukhas of the Naubahar at Balkh. According to them the Hepthalite ruler of Balkh bore the Bactrian title sava (King), while the name of his son, Pariowk (in Armenian, clerical error for Parmowk) or Barmuda, Parmuda (in Arabic and Persian, clerical error for Barmuka, Parmuka) goes back to the Buddhist title pramukha. It shows that he was the lord and head of the great Buddhist Centre Naubahar at Balkh. His dignity and power were thus more of an ecclesiastic than of secular nature."

In the middle of the sixth century, a priest of the Hephthalite Huns was consecrated as bishop for his people by the Nestorian Catholicos. (R. Aubrey Vine, The Nestorian Churches: A Concise History of Nestorian Christianity in Asia from the Persian Schism to the Modern Assyrians. London. Independent Press, 1937, p.62.)

Hephthalite capital:

Pendzhikent (= Five Cities) has been partly excavated by the Russian archaeologists. This city was on a bluff overlooking the Zarafshan River, some 65 kilometers southwest of Samarkand, on what had been the Silk Road. It had been founded in the 5th century, was used as the capital of the Hephthalites who conquered Sogdiana in 509, and was a thriving metropolis when it was destroyed by the Arabs in the early 8th century. Remnants lingered on until the 9th, when it was eclipsed by Samarkand and Bukhârâ, and abandoned to the



desert. It was divided into two parts, the shahristan or citadel and the city proper. On the hill, there were the citadel, the palace of the ruler, several temples and the richer houses. The rest of the city contained houses of the landed aristocracy, the merchants and shops. A full third of the houses had superbly executed murals and wood carvings, indicating an extraordinary level of wealth. The houses were 2 to 3 stories and had many rooms, including principal halls, resembling the palace on a smaller scale. The large number of shops and craftmen's workshops along the major streets and in special bazaars were of course of smaller size, and were located in front of the larger houses, but without a doorway connecting the two parts. It would seem the shops were leased to the tradesmen. These tradesmen had smaller houses, still with two stories and several rooms, and perhaps a painting in a niche, to parallel the large murals in the richer homes.

Murals found in the temples and other houses aroused great interest when they were first reported. The murals include religious themes, such as one believed to depict the Sogdian burial rite, illustrating the death of the god Syavush, representing the dying year, and his rebirth in a background scene. Some mourners are shown cutting their faces, a Central Asian practice, also reported among the Turks. The genre scenes are important, illustrating national epics, including that of Sohrab and Rustam, a metaphor for the struggle between the Iranians and the Turkish nomads. One sees battles between knights, hunts on horseback, various holiday entertainments, processions and nobles sitting at banquets, holding their goblets in a delicate manner, a harpist which has been said to be the most beautiful painting in the world, and so forth. These refer to specific episodes or may simply represent the ideal of the good life of the wealthy Sogdian. The clothing is Persian, or Sasanian, but one also may note Indian and Hellenistic traces in the renderings. From these we can gain a glimpse of the elegant, prosperous and vibrant society which had developed here.

An important find was the castle of Mt. Mugh, some 200 kilometers east of modern Samarkand, in the upper Zarafshan valley, in the Mugh foothills. A vast number of documents were found, some on paper, others on wood and leather, which had been in the archives of the ruler of Pendzhikent, dating from 717 to 719. The languages include mostly Sogdian, but also Turkish, Chinese and Arabic, the latter being the correspondence with the Arab governor of the area. The prince lived in a castle which had been built as a fortress with thick outer walls and massive towers, all made of sun-baked mud bricks. The rooms were in the form of barrel-vaulted halls connected with each other by narrow corridors. Included in the finds were all sorts of coins, seals, silver and bronze vessels, fragments of cotton and silk, and a partial panel from a shield showing a warrior of a type that one finds later in Islamic Iran. In 722 the prince rebelled and was captured and killed. The castle was then abandoned, and became filled with sand.



The Customs:

Very little was known about these Hephthalite nomads. Little art has left from them. According to Sung Yun and Hui Sheng who visited their Hephthalite chief at his summer residence in Badakshan and later in Gandhara,

The Hephthalites have no cities, but roam freely and live in tents. They do not live in towns; their seat of government is a moving camp. They move in search of water and pasture, journeying in summer to cool places and in winter to warmer ones....They have no belief in the Buddhist law and they serve a great number of divinities."

Other than the deformation of skulls, the other interesting feature of the Hephthalites is their polyandrous society. The records of brothers marrying to one wife had been reported from Chinese source.

The Red Snake: The Great Wall of Gorgan

IRAS: It is longer than Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall taken together. It is over a thousand years older than the Great Wall of China as we know it today. It is of more solid construction than its ancient Chinese counterparts. It is the greatest monument of its kind between central Europe and China and it may be the longest brick, or stone, wall ever built in the ancient world. This wall is known as ‘The Great Wall of Gorgan’ or ‘the Red Snake’. An international team of archaeologists has been at work on the snakelike monument and here they report on their findings.



According to Current Archaeology, The ‘Red Snake’ in northern Iran, which owes its name to the red color of its bricks, is at least 195km long. A canal, 5m deep or more, conducted water along most of the Wall. Its continuous gradient, designed to ensure regular water flow, bears witness to the skills of the land-surveyors responsible for marking out the Wall's route. Over 30 forts are lined up along this massive structure. It is also known as the Great Wall of Gorgan, the Gorgan Defence Wall, Anushirvân Barrier, Firuz Barrier and Qazal Al'an, and sometimes Sadd-i-Iskandar, (Persian for dam or barrier of Alexander). The wall is second only to the Great Wall of China as the longest defensive wall in existence, but it is perhaps even more solidly built than the early forms of the Great Wall. Larger than Hadrian's Wall and the Antonine Wall taken together, it has been called the greatest monument of its kind between Europe and China. The 'Red Snake' is unmatched in so many respects and an enigma in yet more. Even its length is unclear: its western terminal was flooded by the rising waters of the Caspian Sea, while to the east it runs into the unexplored mountainous landscape of the Elburz Mountains. An Iranian team, under the direction of Jebrael Nokandeh, has been exploring this Great Wall since 1999. In 2005 it became a joint Iranian and British project.



The inhabitants of this region are generally believed to have been the ancient Hyrcanians. Gorgan itself is one of Iran’s most ancient regions and is situated just to the Caspian Sea’s southeast. Gorgan has been a part of the Median, Achaemenid (559-333 BC), Seleucid, Parthian (247 BC-224 AD) and Sassanian empires in the pre-Islamic era. The term Gorgan is derived from Old Iranian VARKANA (lit. the land of wolf). Interesitngly the term Gorgan linguistically corresponds to modern Persian’s “Gorg-an” or “The Wolves”. The capital of ancient Gorgan was known as Zadrakarta, which later became Astarabad. This city can be traced back to at least the Achaemenid era. Another historical city of importance was ancient Jorjan.

Until recently, nobody knew who had built the Wall. Theories ranged from Alexander the Great, in the 4th century BC, to the Persian king Khusrau I in the 6th century AD. Most scholars favoured a 2nd or 1st century BC construction. Scientific dating has now shown that the Wall was built in the 5th, or possibly, 6th century AD, by the Sasanian Persians. This Persian dynasty has created one of the most powerful empires in the ancient world, centred on Iran, and stretching from modern Iraq to southern Russia, Central Asia and Pakistan.



With the benefit of hindsight it is easy to see why the walls would have been constructed at this later date. It was near the northern boundary of one of the most powerful empires in the ancient world, that of the Sasanian Persians. Centred in modern Iran, it also encompassed the territory of modern Iraq, stretched into the Caucasus Mountains in the north-west and into central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent in the east. The Persian kings repeatedly invaded the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire. Yet, they also faced fierce enemies at their northern frontier. Mountain passes in the Caucasus and the coastal route along the Caspian Sea were closed off by walls, probably to prevent the Huns from penetrating south. Ancient writers, notably Procopius, provide graphic descriptions of the wars Persia fought in the 5th and 6th century against its northern opponents. When the Persian king Peroz (AD 459-484) campaigning against the White Huns, spent time repeatedly at ancient Gorgan. Eventually he had to pay with his life for venturing into the lands of the White Huns. It would have made perfect sense for Peroz, or perhaps another Persian king shortly before or after, to protect the fertile and rich Gorgan Plain from this northerly threat through a defensive barrier. Modern survey techniques and satellite images have revealed that the forts were densely occupied with military style barrack blocks. Numerous finds discovered during the latest excavations indicate that the frontier bustled with life. Researchers estimate that some 30,000



soldiers could have been stationed at this Wall alone. It is thought that the 'Red Snake' was a defense system against the White Huns, who lived in Central Asia.

The system of castles was developed by the Sassanians into a system of fluid defense. This meant that the Gorgan Wall was not part of a purely static system of defense. The main emphasis was in a system of fluid defense-attack system. This entailed holding off potential invaders along the line and in the event of a breakthrough, the Sassanian high command would first observe the strength and direction of the invading forces. Then the elite Sassanian cavalry (the Savaran) would be deployed out of the castles closest to the invading force. The invaders would then be trapped behind Iranian lines with the Gorgan Wall to their north and the Savaran attacking at their van and flanks. It was essentially this system of defense that allowed Sassanian Persia to defeat the menacing Hun-Hephthalite invasions of the 6-7th centuries AD. Radiocarbon dates indicate that the fort remained occupied until at least the first half of the 7th century. It is too early to tell whether or not the Wall was abandoned then, perhaps because troops were needed for a major assault against the Byzantine Empire, fighting off the Byzantine counter-offensive or against the Arab invasion from AD 636 onwards. The evidence is mounting, however, that the Wall functioned as a military barrier for at least a century and probably closer to two.



If one assumed that the forts were occupied as densely as those on Hadrian's Wall, then the garrison on the Gorgan Wall would have been in the order of 30,000 men. Models, taking into account the size and room number of the barrack blocks in the Gorgan Wall forts and likely occupation density, produce figures between 15,000 and 36,000 soldiers. The land corridor between the Caucasus Mountains and the west coast of the Caspian Sea is closed off by a series of walls. The most famous is the Wall of Derbent in modern Dagestan (Russia). Then, much closer to the 'Red Snake' is the contemporary Wall of Tammishe, which runs from the south-east corner of the Caspian Sea into the Elburz Mountains. The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland sea and depends on inflowing rivers for its water. Its water level has thus fluctuated much more over the centuries than that of the oceans. This wall starts from the Caspian coast, circles north of Gonbade Kavous, continues towards the northwest, and vanishes behind the Pishkamar Mountains. A logistical archaeological survey was conducted regarding the wall in 1999 due to problems in development projects, especially during construction of the Golestan Dam, which irrigates all the areas covered by the wall. At the point of the connection of the wall and the drainage canal from the dam, architects discovered the remains of the above wall. The 40 identified castles vary in dimension and shape but the majority are square fortresses, made of the same brickwork as the wall itself and at the same period. Due to many difficulties in development and agricultural projects, archaeologists have been assigned to mark the boundary of the historical find by laying cement blocks.



Attention must be likewise given to a similar Sassanian defence wall and fortification on the opposite side of the Caspian Sea at the port of Derbent and beyond. Where the Great Wall of Gorgan continues into the Sea at the Gulf of Gorgan, on the far side of the Caspian emerges from the Sea the great wall of Caucasus at Derbent, complete with its extraordinarily well preserved Sassanian fort. While the fortification and walls on the east side of the Caspian Sea remained unknown to the Graeco-Roman historians, the western half of this impressive "northern fortifications" in the Caucasus was well known to Classical authors. This project is seriously challenging the traditional Euro-centric world view. At the time when the Western Roman Empire is collapsing and even the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire under great external pressure, the Sasanian Persian Empire musters the manpower to build and garrison a monument of greater scale than anything comparable in the west. The Persians seem to match, or more than match, their Late Roman rivals in army strength, organizational skills, engineering and water management. Archaeology is beginning to paint a clearer picture of an ancient super power at its apogee.



Various Theories about Origin of Hepthelites (White Huna) and relation with other groups like Xionites and Kidarites:

In the 4th - 6th centuries AD the territory of Central Asia included at least four major political entities, among them Kushans, Chionites, Kidarites, and Hephthalites. Discussions about the origins of these peoples still continue. Ideas vary from the Hephtahlites considered as part of the Hun confederation to different other origins. It is also uncertain whether the Hephthalites, the Kidarites and the Chionites had a common or different origins – that is, are they three branches of the same ethnic group or are they culturally, linguistically, and genetically distinct from one another?.When Kushana kingdom colleposed, various small kingdom stabilized, many of them are other yuezhi groups and some part was under Shaka kingdom. Main kingdoms are Hepthelites , Kidarites and Xionites. Here we will read about many theories /debates about their origin and their relations. Hepthelites: The paucity of record in Hephthalites or Ephthalites provides us fragmentary picture of their civilization and empire. They stemmed from a combination of the Tarim basin peoples , Yueh-chih. There is a striking resemblance in the deformed heads of the early Yueh-chih and Hephthalite kings on their coinage. According to Procopius's History of the Wars, written in the mid 6th century - the Hephthalites

"are of the stock of the Huns in fact as well as in name: however they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us. They are the only ones among the Huns who have white bodies...."

Ephthalites was the name given by Byzantine historians and Hayathelaites by the Persian historian Mirkhond, and sometimes Ye-tai or Hua by Chinese historians. They are also known as the White Huns in Sanskrit.

Various authors listed here are only more prominent authors who grappled with the question of who were the Hephthalites. Many others argued that Hephthalites were Yuezhi Mongols, or Türks, or Huns, or a number of other ethnicities. That shows how fragmentary and confused the historical sources are, and that they must be combined with other lines of evidence in order to understand Hephthalite history.

For the first time in European historiography the Hephthalites were mentioned in the “Bibliotheque Orientale“ of D'Herbelot in 1697, under the name Haietelah and then in the work of Assemani (“Bibliotheca Orientalis“) in 1719 as Haithal, where were given extracts from medieval Syrian sources. Later, J. Deguignes dedicated one of the chapters in his multivolume work “Histoire generale des Huns“, to the Hephthalites, where he explained their name from the Persian word ab (water) plus Tie-lé or Telite (according to Deguignes



one of the names of the Huns who moved to Transoxiana) - Abtelite (water Huns) because they had a residency near the Amudarya river.8

V. de Saint-Martin (1802-1897) was among the first to suppose that the Hephthalites were descendants of the Yuezhi (Tokhars) and had a Tibetan origin. Ed. Specht and E. Parker, who think that they were different tribes, argued against that theory. Gumilev also gives a number of arguments against Saint-Martin theory. First, Gumilev notes that the version of identity between the Yuezhi (Tokhars) and the Hephthalites is unconvincing, because the “Beishi“, along with Yeda also referred to Da Yuezhi (Greater Tokhars). Secondly, the author of the “Suishu“ mentions only the ruling dynasty of the Hephthalites from the Yuezhi (Tokhars), but not all the people. Thus, according to Gumilev, Saint-Martin's hypothesis is unproven.

The Tokhars, Chinese name Yuezhi, fled from the Usun/Hun assault in ca 160 BC to the Fergana, Aral, and Bactria, in that order. The remnants of the Tokhars in the Central Asia were absorbed into the Hun, Usun, and Ashina Turk states, and though Tokhars left traces of their presence in those states, they did not constitute tribes as ethno-political entities. As minor tribes, remnants of the Tokhars remained in the Caspian-Aral corridor, and eventually in the Caucasus. In the Middle Asia, before the end of the 4th c. AD, Tokhars did not constitute a force that was even remotely compatible with the forces of Hephthalites, Chionites, or Kidarites, the attribution of these peoples to the Tokhars is an asynchronous conjecture that was attempted time and time again.

He put forward his own hypothesis, suggesting that the Kidarites, Chionites and Hephthalites were different peoples: the Kidarites were Yuezhi (Tokhars); the Chionites (or Huni) were residents of “Marsh sites “from the northern shore of the Aral Sea, and were descendants of the Saka tribe “Huaona“ (i.e. Huns); the Hephthalites were mountain people, tribal descendants of light-haired Baidi people, who in the 7th century BC came from the northwestern China to the mountainous area of the Pamir and Hindukush. For eight hundred years, Baidi might have mixed with the local Aryan tribes of Indo-Iranian group and in the Kushan time (1st - 2nd centuries AD), one of the branches of the tribe Hua, settled in the valley Eftal, received a new name “Hephthalites“ (Greek) or “Yeda“ (Chinese) from the name of the valley or perhaps on behalf of the first leader. At the end of 4th c. AD the Hephthalites were already an organized tribe, and at the beginning of the 5th c. AD their state claimed hegemony in Central Asia and India. This expansion, according to Gumilev, occurred through a union of all the mountain tribes of the Pamir and the Hindukush, which involved the expansion of the concept Eftal. Thus, according to the hypotheses of Gumilev, the Hephthalites were the people of the mountainous areas of the Pamir and the Hindukush.

Another argument for the local origin of the Hephthalites is that Sogd was conquered almost 20 years after (ca 440) Hephthalites had settled in Tokharistan and north-western



India (ca 420). On the base of an analysis of the “Weishu“ embassies sent from Sogd (Su-te), Enoki suggests that Sogd was conquered by the Hephthalites between AD 467-473 and 480, because the last recorded embassy from Sogd (to China) occurred in AD 479. According to the Chinese sources, the Hephthalites established their state 80 or 90 years prior to the reign of the emperor Wen-ch'eng (452-465). The first embassy of the Hephthalites to China was in AD 456, and calculating back from this date, the founding of their state would fall on AD 366 or 376. Enoki does not agree with these dates and he thought that it was impossible for the Hephthalites to start extending their power in the middle of the 4th c. AD and establish their state between 437 and 456. 17 The Hephthalites sent a second embassy to Northern (Toba) Wei in AD 507, fifty years after the first one. From AD 507 to 531, they dispatched 13 embassies to the same court. The Hephthalites conquered Gandhara between AD 477 and 520. In AD 477, the Kidarites in Gandhara sent a last embassy to the court of Northern (Toba) Wei, and in AD 520 Song Yun saw Gandhara under Hephthalite control.

The origin of polyandry, as has been indicated by E. Nerazik, is explained by the fact that the Hephthalites made ancient Bactria the center of their state and, according to numismatic data, considered themselves direct successors of the Kushans. Thereby, their rule was perceived as direct continuation of the Kushans. Starting from that idea, in the opinion of Nerazik, historical science follows to elaborate who was the first ruler in Hsi-mo-ta-lo and, in this tradition, can go back to traditions about the Yuezhi conquest. However, if this is so, then it is impossible to use it as proof of the Hephthalites' spread from Badakhshan (northeastern Afghanistan and southeastern Tajikistan).

Having deciphered legends on the Hephthalite coins, another historian ,Girshman came to a conclusion that their language belonged to the Eastern Iranian group (i.e Sogdian, Horezmian). He read an inscription as “Eptla Shaho Hio(no)“, which means - Hephtal king of Chions, and thus came to a conclusion that the Chionites and the Hephthalites were one folk; the Hephthalites were a name of the ruling class, but Chionites was the name of the common people (Generic Huns led by Tele tribe Abdaly).

Girshman writes that the Chionites were a population that appeared in the territory of Bactria already in the mid of the 4th c. AD. Several Chionite (Hun) kings carried a name “Heftal“ (Abdal, Ab-Tele), and their dynastic name was extended by the Chionites neighbors to the whole people. According to Girshman, the phonic similarity of the “Hion“ and “Hun“ explain why the Byzantine sources named these tribes “White Huns“. He suggested that Hephthalites came from Eastern Turkestan and conquered Bactria in AD 371. Before they arrived in the territory of Central Asia, and consolidated south of the Oxus (Amudarya), the Chionites passed through Karashar, Kucha, Hotan and Kashgar. The Kidarites were the late Kushans: “fourth dynasty of Kushans“. He also thought that the Hephthalites were a northern group of the Chionites, a branch of the Da Yuezhi (Greater Tokhars) and the Sakas. A southern branch were Zabulites, ruled by Mihirakula in AD 515-544.



V. Masson considers the Hephthalites as coming from the Transsyrdarya steppes (i.e. Kazakhstan steppes?), regarding them as nomads speaking languages of the Iranian group (i.e. not Sogdian language).

According to V. Masson, the Kidarites were Kushans. Kidara was one of the small Kushan rulers, he conquered Bactria from the Sasanids, creating his own state, which in the historical literature is sometimes called a Lesser Kushan state.

H. Bailey suggests that in the Pehlevi texts, in particular in the “Jamasp-name“, is information about fighting between Persia and the “White Khyōn (Khyon)“, and that the “Zand-i Vohuman Yasn“ (The Pehlevi Zandi Vohuman Yasht) (“Interpretation Vohuman Yasn“ Bakhman Yasht) reported a defeat of the Sasanids:

“Kingdom and Sovereignty will pass to slaves who are not Iranians, such as Khyōn (Khyon), Türk, Heftal, and Tibetans, who are among mountain-dwellers, and the Chinese, and Kabūlis, and Sogdians, and Byzantines, and Red Khyōn (Khyon) and White Khyōn (Khyon). They will become Kings in my country of Eran. Their commandments and desires will prevail in the world“.

Regarding the Red Khyōn (Khyon), the commentator of the “Bakhman-Yasht“ stated that their name is linked to their red hats, red armour and red banners. In the Indian sources, especially in the text of Varahamihira, there is reference to the Sveta Huna and Hara (Hala) Huna. Hara Huna is identified with Red Hiona, i.e. with the people whose name is deciphered, as red-caped, mentioned in a poem in the Khotan-Saka language of the 7th c. AD.

The Greek envoy Rhetor often referred to the "White Huns" as "Kidarite Xionites" when they united with the Uar under the Hepthalite clan. While in India, the Kidarite Xionites became known as Sveta-Hūna meaning "White Huns".

As we see in the texts appear Hions (Khyōn), Hephthalites (Heftal) and the so-called Red Hions (Khyōn) and White Hions (Khyōn). The list of people called as the same ethnic group with different ethnonyms can be explained by mistakes. Such cases were not uncommon. Thus, in particular, the “Chronicle“ of Zacharias Rhetor (5th - 6th c. AD), the list of peoples leading nomadic life has both Abdels and Hephthalites. According to P. Pelliot and S. Levi, the word “Hara“ in translation from Türkic means “black“.

We may also note that among the Khazars a separation into “White“ and “Black“ also existed.

F. Grenet proposes that there are “good reasons to take αλχοννο as originally designating a people or a confederation, just as later on the Hephthalites put their abridged name ηβ on



Bactrian coins imitating those of Peroz ... one may perhaps add the “Red Huns“ (Middle Persian Karmīr Hyōn), bearing in mind that āl means “red“ in Türkic (i..e. “Al-Honno“ stands for “Red Huns“). If the possibility that some of these Huns spoke an Altaic language may be entertained, such a derivation of Hala-/Hāra would appear more likely than that from Türkic qara “black“, as there is no other reference to “Black Huns“ in this historical context”.

The “Bahman-Yasht“ makes a clear distinction between the Huns - both Red and White - and the Hephthalites, a distinction which is perpetuated by the Bactrian coin legends αλχανο and ηβ, the latter being an abbreviation of ηβοδαλο (ēvdal).

Attention is drawn to another point in Byzantine sources: except for references to the White Huns there is also information about Κερμιχίωνες (Kermihions). In particular, Theophannes the Byzantine said that east of Tanais there are Turks, who in ancient times were called Massagets, and in the Persian language are called Kermihions. According to Bailey, they are the same people who Pehlevi sources know as Karmir Hion. Ed. Chavannes saw in the Kermihions the Rourans or Ruanruans (in Chinese Wade-Giles - Jou-jan or Juan Juan - A.K. aka Jujans). His version is close to the view of J. Marquart that Kermihion consists of two words: Kerm - worm and Hion - name of the Rourans (Jujans), known in the east in the 5th - 6th centuries.

The Chinese contemptuously called these people Rourans (Jujans), which is the name of an insect, but perhaps this name remained in the west in the Iranian form Kerm + Ηίοη.

O. Maenchen-Helfen thinks that ethnic name Hara-huna of the Indian inscriptions proves that at least those Hephthalites who invaded northwestern India were Iranian-lingual. Iranian hara - “red“ or “dark“ corresponds to kearmir “red“ in the Zoroastrian Pahlavi (karmir hyoan) and to kerm - in the Greek Kermihions. Hara-huna is not the name which the Indians gave to the invaders. It was their own name. They spoke an Iranian language. Possibly Heptal may contain Iranian hapta and mean “seven“. In the Ossetic language avd means “seven”.

On the wall paintings (south wall) in Afrasiab (Samarqand) (fig.) are depicted figures of two ambassadors, differing by color of their faces - red-faced and pale. Livshits suggested that the images are associated with White and Red Hions. This idea is supported by some other authors as well. But L. Albaum notes that the faces on the images of other ambassadors on the other three walls have different colors as well.

Fig. 45. Samarkand (Afrasiab) (after Albaum 1975)



Mandelshtam and Dyakonov thought that the division of the Chionites into the Red and the White was associated with dividing them into two “wings“, which is typical for many nomadic tribes in both early as well as more recent periods. Furthermore, these authors believe that the Chionites and the Hephthalites should be distinguished from each other; the Kidarites were Kushans, the Chionites were Iranian speaking nomadic tribes, the Hephthalites were also nomadic tribes, and the language of the legends of coins and documents of the Hephthalite time, found in eastern Turkestan, with known names of kings and rulers, suggest with considerable certainty that the Hephthalites were Iranian speaking people.

They also consider that the Kidarites and the Hephthalites had such a name due to their own generic or personal names of the kings and leaders, and played a greater role in the events of that time. According to E. Zeimal, there were two groups of tribes: the Kidarites and the Hephthalites. The Kidarites were a group that were named in the sources as the Chionites, Hunas, Da Yuezhi, and Hon, and the reason for that is the fact that they were called Kidarite Huns (or “Huns who are Kidarites“) by Priskus of Panium. Therefore, it was the Chionites (actually meaning Kidarites) who fought with Shapur II against Byzantium in the second part of the 4th c. AD.

In those sources, the Hephthalites were Abdel, Eftal, Ye-ta, Tetal. The Huns were the collective ethnic name of the Kidarites, and the term “Kidarites“ appeared from the name of their ruler Kidara. Based on the data of Enoki, Zeimal believed that by establishing a state in the late 4th or in the first decade of the 5th c. AD, certainly by the first half of the 5th century, the Kidarites (Chionites) started moving into the Hindukush and during the second half of the century, fought with the Gupta during the reign of king Skandagupta (455-467/68). The Hephthalites appeared in the first 50 years of the 5th c. AD, and helped Sasanids in their fight against Kidarites. In AD 467 Hephthalites were involved in taking the capital of the Kidarites - Baalam (according to Zeimal - Balkh). Then the Hephthalites defeated the Kidarites, firstly in Tokharistan and at the end of 5th or the beginning of the 6th c. AD also south of the Hindukush, in Gandhara and Punjab.



A. Bivar notes that the Kidarites were a dominant confederacy of Hunnish tribes and the name designates a political, rather than an ethnic group. In AD 380 Kidara, who was a Chionite chief, succeeded to take control of the Sasanid Kushan province, and took the Sasanid title of “Kušānšāh“ (King over Kushans), his name appearing in Bactrian script on Kushano-Sasanid type gold coins as Kidaro and later on Indian drachms, as Kidara in Brahmi script. The Hephthalites were a second Hunnish wave who entered Bactria early in the 5th c. AD, and they pushed the Kidarites into Gandhara.

In the opinion of Bartold, the Hephthalites were descendants of the Yuezhi (Tokhars). On that subject his opinion is close to the version of Saint Marten, however, Bartold identifies the Hephthalites with the Kidarites, but the Chionites are suggested to have come from the Kazakh steppes, which the Chinese called Yuebans (“Weak Huns“). According to Bartold, the Yuebans were Huns living in the 4th century - 5th centuries AD in the Kazakh steppe north from the Usuns. The Yuebans were displaced to the south by their enemy, the Rourans (Jujans); under pressure of these people they also began advancing southwards toward Hephthalites, coming from the Yuezhi (Tokhars), and their king Kidara was leader of the Yuezhi (Tokhars), so the Byzantine historian of 5th century, Priskus of Panium, refers to the Hephthalites as “Huns-Kidarites“.The Yueban possession was located in the valley of the river Yili and the Yuebans were a branch of the Hephthalites.

Bartold apparently calls the “Weak Huns“ (Ch. “Yuebans“, standing for the Hun Chuy tribes: Chuyue, Chumi, Chumuhun, and Chuban) with the Chinese name Yuezhi (Tokhars), and holds that Chuy tribes' Kagan Kidara was a leader of the Yuezhi (Tokhars). A slight confusion. The Uar (Hephthalites) were in fact initially displaced by the Chuy Huns from the Jeti-su, but later united with the Chuy Huns in a Chuban (“Yueban“) state, 170-480 AD

P. Lerkh and N. Veselovsky identify the Hephthalites with the Yuezhi (Tokhars) and indicated that the core of the Hephthalite state was in Khorezm. Veselovsky uses the report of the Byzantine ambassador Zemarhos from Kilikia who in AD 568, already after the fall of the Hephthalite state, was sent by the emperor Justinian II (565-578) to the Kagan of the Turks, Dizavul (Sinjubu) (Sir-yabgu; aka Silzibul, Dizabul, Silzibun). Zemarhos reported on the country of the Khoalits, a fact to which Veselovsky calls attention. He suggests that the Khoalits were the Hephthalites. He relies on the Lerkh version, who explains the origin of the name Khoalits as follows: in the word Xοαλίται “Khoalitoi”, “toi” - is a Greek attachment, but “Khoali” is a small alteration in the first half of the name of the country “Khoari“ without a second part “zm“, consequently, Khoalits are nothing other than Khorezmians. Lerkh found there a remnant of the ancient Kidarite sovereign in the name Kerder (Kurder) of a city in Khorezm, the king gave his name to that city.



Veselovsky, following the opinion of Lerkh, adds that the name Kidarites was preserved until our days by the Kazakhs of the Junior Horde (Kishi Juz), it is divided into three branches, and within one of them, Seven Clans, one of the groups carries a name “Kerderi“.

The seniority of the Kazakh Juzes (unions) has a temporal component: Ulu Juz(Senior Union) is the oldest, and its nucleus consists of the oldest known tribes, Kangars Kangly, Usuns Uisyns, and Dulo Dulats; the Orta Juz (Middle Union) predominantly consists of the tribes that formed a union during the Middle Age, Argyn, Kipchak; the Kishi Juz (Junior Union) includes tribes that formed a union in the Late Middle Age. All modern Juzes include tribal splinters that joined their union in the later periods. The fact that Kerderi tribe belongs to the Kishi Juzindicates that it is a development of the times later then Late Antique, to which period belonged Kidar and his Kidarites. It is not impossible that during the Late Middle Age the territory of the Kishi Juz expanded to include the Kerderi trritory, absorbing them, but it is also not impossible that the Kerderi tribe carries a name unrelated to the Kidar and his Kidarites. Until further investigation, the Kidarite-Kerderi hypothesis remains a conjuncture.

G. Grum-Grzhimailo believes that the Hephthalites were a branch of the Yuezhi (Tokhars), of whom a part left the Altai, united with the Dinglings (Tele) and in the 5th c. AD, destroyed (“Weak Huns“) Yuebans and moved into Tokharistan. According to Grum-Grzhimailo, the native lands of the Hephthalites were the Altai mountains, and they were named after the name of their king Akhshunwar Eftalan.

F. Altheim assumes a Türkic origin for the Hephthalites. In his own studies he affirms, that the Hephthalites were Türkic-speaking Altaic tribes. The ethnonym “Hephtal“ is drawn from the Turkic root: yap, meaning to do, to make, plus a verbal-nominal suffixes t and l. The recontructed word is yap-t-il, which means “creator, active one“ (“Schaffender, Tatiger“). The language of the Hephthalites was Türkic, and the presence of the Iranian words is explained by elements that penetrated the Hephthalites language from the subordinated Iranian-speaking population. Altheim identifies the Chionites and Hephthalites, suggesting that the Hephthalites were members of a royality, and the Chionite was a common name. A similar version is held by E. Pulleyblank. “That there should be Iranian-lingual elements in their empire is only to be expected since the subject population must have been a predominantly Iranian one. Much more significant is the evidence of Altaic connections in the ruling Hephthalites themselves”.

W. McGovern thought that the Kushans (Yuezhi) (Tokhars) and the Hephthalites were related people, and at the same time, he believes that the Hephthalites were from Turfan and spoke a Tokhar language. In AD 126 the Hephthalites helped the Chinese General Ban Yung in his war against the northern Huns and settled in Jungaria (aka Dzungaria).



The people of Turfan had blue eyes and light hair, which is consistent with McGovern's data from the Byzantine source on the Hephthalites, as distinct from the rest of the Huns, while their similarity is explained by the fact that the Hephthalites and the Huns lived together in Jungaria and mixed there. According to him Hephthalites also had some connection the with the Tibetans, as evidenced by the practice of polyandry, but nevertheless he does not say that the Hephthalites were Tibetans. Between Hephthalites and Avars (Rourans) (Jujans) were also close contacts, although they had different languages and cultures, and Hephthalites borrowed much of their political organization from Avars (Rourans) (Jujans). In particular, the title “Khan“, which according to McGovern was original to the Rourans (Jujans), was borrowed by the Hephthalite rulers. The reason for the migration of the Hephthalites southeast was to avoid a pressure of the Rourans (Jujans). Further, the Hephthalites defeated the Yuezhi (Tokhars) in Bactria and their leader Kidara led the Yuezhi (Tokhars) to the south.

In Chinese sources, the sedentary population of the Turfan basin was around 25,000 people, spread around two dozens of tiny oases, the largest of which could stage an army of couple thousands. The armies of the sedentary oases were stationary, they are known to move only when forced to by the Chinese expeditionary forces. No blonds could come to Turfan from the south, the closest were Tele-Dinlin nomads. Though the origin of the Turfan agriculturists remains unknown, osteology and genetics testify to a population considerably admixed with the nomadic Türkic neighbors, who overwhelmingly exceeded oasis dwellers in numbers and military power. To connect the force of the Hephthalite nomads with the agriculturists of the Turfan oasis is utterly unrealistic, not to mention cultural incompatibilities. The light hair of the Hephthalites points to their connection with the Tele tribes. In that respect, both Hephthalites and the Huns were offshoots of the Tele people, well admixed even prior to their appearance on the historical scene.

The anecdotal testimony on the practice of polyandry may be one of many derogatory notes on the Türkic levirate custom, equally strange to the Chinese and Greek observers, and incompatible with the Tibetan polyandry.

The direction of the borrowings in the political organization, like the linguistic and cultural borrowings, is attributed in accordance with the inclinations of the authors. There was little that the Eastern Huns could borrow from their neighbors: their 24-rank organization was not surpassed by later arrivals, and the fact that Huns, frequently being a numerical minority, managed to organize many states ruling many various people does certify to their unsurpassed knowledge of the political organization. A number of their organizational traits were widely imitated and survived into modernity.

Except for the dynastic clan, demographically there was little difference between



the Eastern Huns and Jujans. In view of almost complete obscurity of the Jujan history, any conjectures in comparing two unknowns have an equal, if little, confidence.

The work of O.Wesendonk about the Kushans, Chionites, and Hephthalites matched their ethnonyms, mentioned in Pehlevi text (Kushans, Hiyona, Hetal) and in Indian source (Kushans, Huna, Saka). As we see, the first names practically coincide, but the name of the third people “Hetal” in Pehlevi text corresponds to the “Saka“ in the Indian sources. In the opinion of K. Trever, this gives one more reason to hold that the Hephthalites were Sakas from the Massaget confederation, the “great Saka horde“, although Wesendonk did not bring up the importance of that stipulation.

Treating the term Saka as a homogenous uniform political and ethnical unit is not warranted, and can't result in accurate conclusions. Confusing the eastern Saka nomads with western Saka nomads is unproductive, since each one had its own history. The first Saka migration, caused by a chain reaction after Huns expelled Tokhars from the Gansu and Tarim Basin, and Tokhars in turn expelled Saka from the Jeti-su and Fergana valley resulted in the creation of a number Saka states and statelets across South Asia and Caucasus. The Saka tribes did not display any impressive power, they were consistently defeated by various nomadic unions that were themselves not immensely strong. These Saka, however, had an upper hand in encounters with sedentary peoples, and were invariably successful in creating their own domains.

The western Saka, called Masguts in Türkic, and Massagets in Greek, encountered the Eastern Hun's migration 2-3 centuries later, when the Eastern Huns reached the Aral Sea area. That created a new symbiosis of the nomadic tribes, a part of Masguts united with the Huns and their allied tribes, the rest moved over to the banks of the Caspian Sea, and around the Caspian Sea to the Caucasus. Masguts that did not join Huns either lost their influence, or played a subsidiary role in the Caucasus politics. Masguts that joined Huns became integrated and undistinguishable from the Huns, as an ethnic group they lost their distinction completely, they were a part and parcel of the Bulgars, and at present they can only be traced by a wide spread of people with a family name containing Masgut derivatives. For the external observers, the Aral tribes were Huns, without further subdivision into individual tribes. Linguistically, Masguts and their Alan branch spoke on a mixture of Ogur and Sogdian, as was stated by Biruni. Since all their descendent retained agglutinating morphology in their languages, it is reasonable to expect that the substrate language was Türkic, and superstrate lexicon had pronounced Sogdian admixture.



Since both terms, Saka and Huns, had a generic semantics, a general observation on the participation of the third member in the ethnonymic lineup of Kushans, Huna, Saka can only be substantiated if taken in exactly the same context, like in a bi-lingual text, otherwise it may be a conjecture that compares apples and oranges. One such scenario would be if the Indian source was familiar with western nomads called Saka, and applied that as a generic term for all generic nomads, akin to “Tatars“ in Russian terminology.

J. Marquart suggested that the Hephthalites were ancient Mongols, on the grounds of the resemblance of their names, mentioned in Indian sources, with names of Mongolian ethnic groups. According to him, under the name of “Hephthal“ we should understand only a kind of ruling political entity, while the main ethnic mass of the Hephthalite state consisted of diverse elements: the Kidarites, Kushans, Chionites, and Huns.

That kind of name games is a road to nowhere, as is clearly seen from the J. Marquart's line-up: Kushans, Chionites, and Huns are dialectal expressions for the same name, Huns, in Ku-Sün (White Hun/Sün), Chion (Hun), and Hun (Hun), all with generic semantic; Kidarites is non-ethnic designation from a proper name of the ruler. Without proper corroboration, J. Marquart's conjecture is not substantiated.

He also thought that the name of the Hephthalites is reconstructed as a self-name of these people: “Wār”. Marquart located the capital of Tokharistan as Wārwaliz, or Pat-ti-yen in Chinese sources, and sought it was located near the modern Kunduz in the north-eastern Afghanistan. He also thought that it reflected the ethnic name of the Hephthalites. That theory was criticized by Tolstov, who considered that if the reading of hieroglyphic data by Marquart is correct, then this name must be related to the name of one of two “Pseudo-Avar“ divisions of Theophilact Simokatta “War“.

Marquart raised another suggestion: from the middle of 4th c. AD the White Huns, under a name of Hion, became mercenaries in the Kushan army, then took a leading positions. Seeing in the Hephthalites the ancient Mongols, he proposed a hypothesis that the Oguz tribe Kayi did not have a Turkic, but rather a Mongol origin, and that Hephthalites were ancestors of the Kayi. According to Marquart, two names Alxon and Walxon, found in the medieval Armenian sources, were a wordplay for just one people.

Kayi is a Mongolian “snake“, a calque of the Türkic “gilan/djilan/gelon/jilan/yilan“, Herodotus Gelon, Persian Gilan, Chinese Hi/Si, later Uryanhais= Uran (a Türkic calque implying “snake“)+Kayi (Mong. “snake“). Whether initially Mongolian-speaking or Türkic-speaking, the Kayis were integrated with the Eastern Huns in ca 200 BC, and afterwards they were inseparable from the Türkic people. Neither the



history of the western Gelons, nor of the eastern Hi/Si was properly reconstructed. Kayis were a prominent tribe, they led Kimak Kaganate and N.Pontic Kipchaks. Originally, Kayis were likely a Türkic-speaking tribe, their association with the Western Scythians, Huns, and Kipchaks provides a good indicator of that; a suggestion that Kayis were a Mongol tribe rests on Chinese assertion that Kayis belonged to the Eastern Hu “Dunhu“, who are being ethnically interpreted as either Tungus or Mongols, but that does not preclude a presence of Türkic nomads among or next to the Tungus or Mongol forest foot hunters.

The first historically known association of the Kayis was with Ogur-lingual Scythians in the west, and with Ogur-lingual Huns and Uigurs in the east. In the next period, Kayis were associated with the Kipchak-speaking Kipchaks, and only in the late Middle Age a splinter of Kayis becomes associated with the Oguz tribes. The hypothesis about Kayi origin of the Hephthalites does not elucidate the Hephthalites origin, it only links one unknown with another.

Pulleyblank suggested that “wālīz” was likely an Altaic word for “city“. In his interpretation War-wālīz is a “city of the Awar”, like the Chinese A-huan ch’eng. In some of the Arabic forms it would appear that the ethnic part was omitted, and only the part Wāliğ or al-Wāliğa “the city” remained.

Harmatta proposed that the legend in Bactrian script Alxon or Alxan(n) is the same name as Alakhana, the name of a Gurjara king mentioned in Kalhana's “Rajatarangini“ (these sound as compounds with “Alat“ => Alatxon, Alatxan(n), and Alatkhana, fusing neatly with Gurjar-Gujar provenance). Against that theory, R. Frye noted that Alxon or Alxan appears on a coin with the name Khingila, and refuted Harmatta's suggestion that it is analogous to the name Lakhana.

According to Harmatta, the Kidarites were identical with the Chionites (Xyōns). In his opinion this can be proved by one of the remarks of Joshua Stylite relating to the successful fights of Peroz against the Kidarites, in that the rivals of the Sasanid king were “xiyon-s, that is hun-s”.

R. Grousset had the same opinion, and believed that at the beginning of 5th c. AD the Hephthalites were vassals of the Rourans (Jujans) of the Türkic-Mongolian environment, and that they were more Mongols than Turks.

In terms of ethnic interpretation, R. Grousset work leaves much room for improvement; his opinion that Western Huns could also be Mongols, and his utter naivete about the Türkic etiology are indicative of that.



According to K.Czegledy, the name of the Hephthalites was Uar and the name of their capital Warwaliz can be explained as “uar+waliz“ which means “city of Uar (i.e. the Hephthalites)“.

According to M.Tezcan, the Hephthalites were not the Akhuns (“White Huns“) because the two dynasties were completely different from one another, and the first replaced the second. The Hephthalites descended from a Rouran (Jujan) tribe called Hua in the Qeshi (Keshi) region (Turfan area). At the beginning of the 5th c. AD that tribe came to Tokharistan, and soon also settled in the eastern regions of Khorasan. Tezcan suggests that in a course of time, Hephthalites took over the whole of Tokharistan, and began to struggle with the Sasanids for Khorasan, earlier Aparshahr, where earlier in possession were the Kidarite Huns. After the period of the Kidarite Huns, or after arrival of the Hephthalites, the country was renamed after them (“Apar-shar“, that is, the country of the Apar). The names Apar or Aparshahr do not appear in either Persian nor Armenian texts, and the Sasanid coins do not have it, at least before the first half of the 4th c. AD, because Aparshahr (Nishapur) was founded in ca. 350-360, that is, when the Chionitae (Huns) in the east were subdued by the Sasanids. According to Islamic sources, the Sasanids renamed the region to Khorasan after they reconquered the area, and one ruler (Khusrow II) himself assumed the title “Aparve:z” claiming that he had taken possession of the earlier “Apar“ land.

When the Sasanids conquered the land of the Kushans at the time of Shapur I, they renamed it “Kushanshahr“, and gave its administrators a title “Kushanshah“. And Sasanids renamed the conquered lands of the Huns/Khionitae or Hephthalites in Khorasan to “Aparshahr“, and their Sasanid rulers were later titled as “Aparshah“ (i.e. that is a direct evidence that the term Hephthalite is synonymous with the term Avar/Awar/War/Uar).

Ed. Specht suggested that the Hephthalites were from Northern China, and they appeared in the second half of the 5th c. AD, while M.A. Stein thought the Hephthalites were closely related to the Yuezhi (Tokhars) and the Huns, who were of Turkic origin.

Frye presumes that the Hephthalites were Iranian speaking people, and that the Hephthalites were a leading tribe of the Chionites. But he does not exclude that the Huns might have been their first rulers: “... You can suggest the presence of the Altai, that is Hunnic, element among the Chionites and the Hephthalites, but there is more reason to consider them Iranian-lingual“.” In other studies, he equates the Chionites and the Kidarites, considering that one of the rulers of the Chionites named Kidara began to mint coins declaring himself as king of the Kushans , and the Hephthalites were tribes of Altaic languages and came from Altai-Mongolia, through Central Asia to India under pressure from the Rourans (Jujans). Before the beginning of 5th c. AD they displaced the Kidarites from Bactria to India . The Kidarites were competitors of the Sasanids from the middle of 4th c. AD to the middle of 5th c. AD.



S. Gomec also suggests that the origin of the Hephthalites was in the southern part of the Altai mountains, and they were a part of the Rourans (Jujans) in the Jungaria steppe before retreating to Khorasan.

In his works, Tolstov gave much attention to the Hephthalite question. He suggested that the Hephthalite name appears to be a distortion of the Türkic form of the name Massaget (“Gweta-ali“ - where “Gweta“ is a root of the Massaget name, but “el“ is from the Turkic “folk“, “tribe“ i.e. - “Gweta folk“).

Aside from the linguistic exercises of S.P.Tolstov, his expertise excels in Massaget archeology and anthropology, and it were the graves, skeletons, and artifacts that underlie his conclusion that Massagets were Türkic, as a conclusion of a preeminent expert on the Horesm archeology. With the form and etymology of the name Massaget the picture is simple and evident, “Massaget“ is a Greek rendition of the Türkic “Masgut“ meaning “head tribe“, from “Mas/Bash“ - “head, leader“, and “gut/guz/ut/ud/ uz“ - “tribe“, with “m/b“ alternation that is still characteristic of the Türkic languages in the Caspian basin: Balkar is pronounced “Balkar“ and “Malkar“ by the Balkar descendents of the Masguts/Alans. The “m/b“ alternation is totally transparent for the native speakers, like it is a single sound. If not for the influence of other languages, Balkars would never know that they have that alternation. No need for “Gweta folk“, thank you.

The Hephthalites remained in their ancient native lands of the Aral headlands, and were a product of the mixture of Massaget-Alans with the Huns, according to Tolstov (see details in Tsvetsinskaya and Yablonsky). The center of the Hephthalites was a north-eastern fringe of Khorezm during a period when functioned a joint delta of Amudarya and Syrdarya. Tolstov equates Kidarites, Hephthalites and Chionites: “under the name of the Kidarites and Chionites, as is known, Hephthalites for the first time appear on a historical arena, moreover the first of these names is closely linked with the name Kerder“ (“Под именами кидаритов и хионитов, как известно, впервые выступают на историческую арену эфталиты, причем первое из этих имен тесно связано с именем Кердер, которым еще в 10 и даже 13 в. именуется северо-восточная, приаральская окраина Хорезма.“). The “White Huns“, or Hephthalites, apparently conquered Central Asia as an association of Massaget tribes closely related to the founders of the Kushan Empire ...“, - says Tolstov in his earlier work. Tolstov reports that Kerder was identified, as far back as the 10th c. AD (and as late as the 13th c. AD) as a north-eastern Aral-foreland fringe of Khorezm. Tolstov concludes that a link exists between Hephthalites and Khorezm, based on the findings of Lerkh and Veselovsky that link a name of one Hephthalite tribe (Kidarites of Priscus of Panium) with the name of the city Kerder (Makdisi, Arabic historian of the 10th c. AD, actually names two Kerders) and Kerderanhas, located at the lower Khorezm (Amudarya), and with the name of the Kerderi group of the Kazakh Jetyru tribe (Small Horde) (Kishi Juz?), as well as the report of the Arabic geographer of the 13th century Yakut al-Khamawi (“Kerder is a terrain, in the



field of Khorezmia or on its border with the Turks, their language is not Khorezmian and not Türkic; in the field is an ensemble of villages; beside they herd animals“).Using statements of Yakut al-Khamawi, Tolstov suggests that the Hunnish-Kidarite (Hephthalite) language endured in that region until the 13th c. AD. Tolstov draws attention to the following fact: the “Beishi“ report about an embassy, which was sent in 440 AD by the Huni ruler of the Su-te (Sogd) or Yancai (Sogd=Yancai) state (according to Tolstov in the north-eastern Aral foreland) to the Chinese court.

Observation of Yakut does not conflict with the statement of Buruni about the Alan/Masgut language: their language was neither Horezmian (a dialect of Sogdian) nor Türkic, it was a blend of Horezmian and Türkic, probably as incomprehensible to a chance listener as is Ukrainian to uninitiated Russian listener, or German to an uninitiated English listener. Or even like the Southern American accent to uninitiated New Yorker. Chinese annals add to the list of languages incompatible with Hephthalite the Jujan language. Bei-shi directly states that Ephtalite language is different from Jujan, Gaoguy (Uigur, Hun, Ogur) and Sogdian.

He sees there a Kidarite king Kunghas, who was defeated in AD 468 by the Sasanid shahinshah Peroz. According to Tolstov, another factor in Hephthalite relationship with the Huns was a scheme that divided the state 24 tribes into right and left wings, with 12 tribes in each wing, following the military-administrative reform of the Xiongnu (Eastern Hun) shanyu Mode (BC 209/206-174), mentioned in the “Shiji“ (“Historical Records“) of Sima Qian. Tolstov writes that that scheme, “was preserved by the Aral headland Huns, the Kidarites-Hephthalites, and was inherited by their descendants, the tribes of the Oguz alliance in the 10th - 11th centuries AD and, finally, by the Turkmens of the 19th c. AD - beginning of the 20th c. AD“. Thus, according to Tolstov, the Hephthalites took part in ethnogenesis of the eastern group of the Oguzes. Then, that was a result of the Massageto-Hunnish merger, where not a small role in the process of their final consolidation was played by the movement of the Hephthalites westward at the beginning of the 6th c. AD, when their power reached Khotan. Or, as Tolstov writes in his other study, “Oguzes of Syrdarya were an ethnic reorganization of the Hephthalites, mixed with Turkic (i.e. Oguz, as opposed to Ogur Huns) elements, who came there from Jeti-su in the 6th - 8th centuries AD“.

A view of N. Pigulevskaya is quite different. On the grounds of her analysis of different Syrian and Byzantine sources, she came to a conclusion that Chionites, Kidarites, and Hephthalites belonged to the same ethnic type, but formed minor hordes (in this case not an army, but societies or unions) with different tribal names. A replacement of a domineering horde was accompanied by corresponding change of the state name. The bulk of semi-nomadic tribes were mostly accepting each change of the dominating horde (in this case not an army, but a leading tribal union) or dynasty, but sometimes a part of the tribes left, as was a case with Kidarites. We see that Pigulevskaya, referring to these three closely-related peoples, never confuses them. She believes that between these peoples and the Huns existed



a relationship. Specifically, she wrote: “The name of Huns, carried by the tribes and horde, at the end of the 4th century and in the 5th c. AD alerted Persia and Byzantium.

Long before that the horde (in this case not an army, but state) was known in China as Xiongnu, a name for the tribes and linguistically different peoples, united in occasional and easily disintegrating state-like structures. A part of them was called White Huns, that name was carried by splinter groups, and their new states became known under new names, such as Hephthalites, and the Kidarites“ (this is a typical scientific nonsense of the Soviet science, where dictatorship is adored, and free association of peoples scoffed at). She believes that the Chionites were related not only to the Huns, but also to the Yuezhi (Tokhar) state (Kushans). Concerning the Yuezhi (Tokhars), she writes that: “In the mix of the Kushan state were the Sakas (Scythians), Tokharians, and Türks“.In her opinion, the presence of the Türkic element is proved because five princes of the Kushans carried the Türkic title “Yabgu“.

B. Marshak agrees with the Gumilev theory mentioned above. He wrote that the of the Kidarite and Hephthalite states were “compatible not with the Central Asian steppe empires, but with the statelets formed by relatively small mountain tribes, who with varying success led a cruel fight against nearby monarchies“. At the end of the 5th c. AD the Hephthalites conquered Tokharistan (i.e. 490's), and reached and conquered Samarkand only in 509 AD.

Enoki and Gumilev accepted the Bernshtam Badakhshan (Pamir) (northeastern Afghanistan and southeastern Tajikistan) theory, in 1951 Bernshtam thought that Badakhshan could be one of possible places where Hephthalite ethnogenesis process has began: their first center was on the middle and lower Syrdarya (which is way away from the northeastern Afghanistan and southeastern Tajikistan), the second was on the upper Amudarya. Further, Bernshtam equated Chionites and Hephthalites, accepting the opinion of Girshman, and suggested that the Hun movement in the first century AD to Gaoguy (Tele Uigurs), and the movement in the 4th c. and in the 5th c. AD, were two stages of one and the same migration of “the Central Asian and Altaic tribes to the Middle Asian territory, and they came into contact with local population, and probably formed a conglomerate association - the Hephthalites, one of the ancestors of the Turkmens“.In other study Bernshtam wrote: “The Turkisation of Middle Asian tribes, from which the Oguz-Turkmens originated, begins with the Huns of Middle Asia.

These Huns coached westwards, and formed a base of the Middle Asian Huns, the later Hephthalites“.The Hephthalites were a part of the Kushan (Yuezhi) (Tokhars) tribes, in association with Massaget-Alan alliance, and according to Bernshtam, they came into contact with the Hunnish tribes of Central Asia. The Hephthalite state formed as a result of that mixture, “at first appearing as a “barbarous“ pre-feudalistic state of Central Asian nomads, inheriting the culture of the Kushan state, and playing an important role in ethnogenesis of the peoples in Asia, first of all Oguzes, and to a some degree Afghans”.Bernshtam also



connected the political ascent of the Hephthalites with the Hunnic tribes of Irnah (a son of Attila - A.K.) (aka Irnik, Irnak), who coached over from the west to the areas east of the Caspian Sea. That thesis was a subject of critique by Gumilev, who thought that Hephthalites arrived (to the Aral area?) in the first half of the 5th c. AD. However, according to Bernshtam, in the second half of the 5th c. AD the (Western) Huns, who were retreating from Europe, were located in Central Asia. In respect to Kidarites, Bernshtam indicates that the (Western) Huns moved to the east, where they divided into two branches, or more accurately tribal unions: the Huns-Akatirs (Herodotus' Agathyrsi), who played a greater role in the formation of the Khazars, and the Huns-Kidarites, who united with the Eastern-European Huns and with Middle Asian nomads, forming Hephthalites.

Bernstam appears to be the only scientist that alluded to the role of Western Huns in the events in Middle Asia related to Hephthalite cluster of subjects. However, in 384 AD at the siege of Edessa Persian army had Ephtalite mercenaries, which demonstrates that Ephtalites were a defined ethnic people before the return of the Western Huns to Horesm-Aral area (Grishman R. Les Chionites - Hephtalites. Le Caire, 1948, p. 82).

A. Cunningham suggested that the self-name of the Hephthalites was Jabula. Song Yun noted that Gandhara was formerly called a “country of Ye-po-lo“. In the Kura inscription, found in the Salt Range, Toramana is called Maharaja Toramana Shaha Jauvla. We also find the name Jabula on silver coins. Cunningham attributed Zabulistan country (land of Jauvla, Jabuli tribe of the White Huns, today's Zabul) to these people.

B. Gafurov also touched this problem in his studies and suggested that the Hephthalites formed on the basis of some “Middle Asian, eastern-Iranian language tribes“ with a certain admixture of the Türkic ethnic element.

However, he did not indicate who these “Middle Asian“ tribes were, on what basis formed Hephthalites. On the question of the Chionite origin, Gafurov comes to a conclusion that they were Iranian speaking tribes of “Middle Asian“ origin. About ethnogenesis of Kidarites he does not give any meaningful explanations, though he rejects Kidarite relationships the with the Kushans, citing those Chinese sources that are not supported by other sources. He also wrote nothing on the language of the Kidarites.

K. Trever states that the Kidarites, Chionites and Hephthalites were related with each other, and were descendants of the tribes of the White Hun confederation, the “Great Saka Horde“ - Massagets (Masguts). In the Trever opinion, the name of the Hephthalites, in the form “Heptal“ of the Armenian historian Lazar Parpetsi, enables us to derive “Hephthalites“ from “Haft or Hapt“, “seven“ in translation from Iranian, that is to say one of the names of the leading tribes of the Massaget alliance, which consisted of seven groups. About the language of the Hephthalites she writes as follows: “Insofar as it is possible to judge on the



few data, there were Türkic and Iranian-lingual elements, as well as elements neither Türkic, nor Iranian. This entire mixture is probably indicative of the extreme mix of the Hephthalite language“.Trever believed that after disintegration of the Kushan state the Chionites, originating from the extensive Massaget alliance, were able to reunite the disintegrating Massaget horde (in this case not an army, but a tribal union), and then were assimilated by the (Eastern) Huns. However, they did not lose their physical appearance and cultural traditions, since the Greek sources called them “White Huns“, noting a white color of their skin, settled way of life, and higher culture than the other nomadic Huns (while in Chinese annals, Huns were way above the level of all other nomadic tribes). Later on, Trever wrote that at the beginning of the 5th c. AD, the Kidarites (i.e. Kidarite Huns) separated from the former Massaget alliance, and occupied Tokharistan, but then had to face the Sasanid Persia. They were defeated by the Sasanids, and lost their king, Kidara, and headed by Kunkhas, a son of Kidara, escaped through the Hindukush to Gandhara (Peshawar).

However, a part of Kidarites remained in Central Asia, and subsequently was integrated in the Hephthalite state; a part that left in India subordinated the Gupta state, and controlled it for 75 years. Trever suggests that the Kushans were also related to the Chionites: “... the tribal alliance of Chionites originated from the same large Massaget alliance as the Kushans“, while the Hephthalites were an alliance related to the Kushan tribes that advanced to seize a supreme power (among Kushans? or Masgut-Massagets?).

According to M. Yamada, the Hūnas and the Hephthalites (according to Yamada: Hephthals) were independent and separate tribes which invaded and displaced native leaders and established hegemonies in two distinct parts of India. The Hephthalite king Toramana, who had a title Shāhi Jaūwla (Shakh of Jauwlas, or Zabulis), is different from śrī Toramāna, the Hūna (Huna) king. The name Toramana mentioned in central Indian inscriptions refers to the Hūna (Huna) king, while the name Toramana found on coins unearthed in Taxila refers to a Hephthalite king. Mihirakula, the son of Toramana, was an Hūna (Huna) king; he was not the Hephthalite king that Song Yun met in Gandhara in 520 AD. The Hūnas (Hunas) controlled an area that extended from Malwa in central India to Kashmir. The Hephthalites, a nomadic tribe unrelated to the Hūnas (Hunas), possibly passed through the Kabul valley and invaded northwestern India sometime after 477AD. The Hephthalite power did not extend as far as Gandhara in northwestern India. The Hephthalites invaded India from the north, and moved into Gandhara and Taxila, but they did not move any further into central India.

According to E. Rtveladze, the Hephthalites were an indigenous population of Bactria-Tokharistan, and their own name was Alkhon (according to the legends on the Hephthalite coins, written in Bactrian letters). In his opinion, the initial place of their exact location is not known: Altai, Eastern Turkestan, lower Syrdarya and Amudarya or Badakhshan being possibilities. Rtveladze notes that the Hephthalite language is also unknown, although it probably belonged to the eastern-Iranian group.



E. Nerazik suggested that the Chionites were descendants of a local Aral headland Massaget-Sarmat population, who gradually assimilated with the Huns, and in the middle of the 5th c. AD they emerged under a name of Kidarites, which indicates a long and strong connections with the Kidara Yuezhi (Tokhars). Based on the information about anthropological features and language of the Hephthalites, she believes that they were admixed people, and that in the Hephthalite association participated Hun-Türkic ethnic elements, integrated with the Iranian speaking mass. They were called the Hephthalites on behalf of the king Heftal (Ye-da of Chinese sources) as confirmed in the Chinese chronicles “Tangshu“ and “Liangshu“, which reported that “Ye-ta-i-li-to“ was a name of “Hua“ king that in 516 AD sent an embassy to China, and according to the Byzantine historian Theophanes the Byzantine (Theophanes the Confessor) who stated that Hephthalites were named after their king. In her other studies Nerazik, allowing an ethnic kinship of the Hephthalites and the Chionites, suggested that the area of Su-te (Sogd) was likely located in the Aral Sea region (ancient Yancai, then Alanya) and that the conquest of the tribes, which the Chinese chronicles call Huns, happened sometime in the 4th c. AD. The emergence of “Huns“ in Su-te (Sogd), the arrival of new-ethnic population in Kunya-Uaz and Kanga-qala, and the arrival of the Chionites in the south-western Caspian region can be understood as parts of a single movement. Against that background, a comparison of the population whose burials lie at Kunya-Uaz and Kanga-qala with the Chionite burials made by Tolstov, seems convincing. If the Hephthalites and Chionites were related tribes, and there is a reason for such an assumption, the above considerations on the involvement of the Hunnic-Uigur ethnic groups in the ethnic population of the Aral Sea region forces us to recall the report in the “Beishi“ that Yeda are a branch of Qangui (Kangju, Kangar), and consider more carefully the theories about the Gaoguy-Uigur origin of the Hephthalites.

Archeological and osteological studies found that the migration of the Hunnic-Uigur ethnic groups to the Aral Sea region started much earlier then the 4th c. AD, it started in the 1st c. BC, and did not stop for a millennia. The groups that migrated in the 4th c. AD were joining their kinfolks that lived there for centuries. Migration of the Kangars in the 4th c. AD was a part of the mass Hunnic-Uigur migration away from the China (overview by Tsvetsinskaya and Yablonsky).

Nerazik is opposing the version of a Pamir origin of the Hephthalites. Criticizing the Enoki version (without referring to the Gumilev work, who also is an adherent of the Pamir origins of the Hephthalites), she indicates that the main argument of the Japanese historian is chronological calculation, according to which the Hephthalites, under a name of the Huns, because to their collision with Skandagupta, in the northern India became known earlier than they could have conquered Bactria after taking the Sogdiana. The date of the conquest given by Enoki raises a doubt, since the break of the (Chinese) diplomatic relations with Su-te (if we acknowledge it means Sogdiana, as is the Enoki's opinion) could not be connected with the Hephthalite invasion; is also unknown, when the Eastern Turkestan area - Khotan and Kashgar - submitted to the Hephthalites, though according to Enoki that was at the end of the



5th c. AD. Therefore, Enoki draws a conclusion that the Hephthalites must have advanced from the mountain region to the upper reaches of the Amudarya. But, as Nerazik notes, in historical science it is firmly known only that in AD 457 the Balkh, Badakhshan and Garchistan came into the hands of the Hephthalite king Kushnavaz, while the chronological position of the Huna struggle with Skandagupta is totally unclear.

The settlements in the Takla Makan and Tarim Basin oases were trading posts with limited subsistence agriculture, traditionally in symbiotic relationship with much more numerous and potent nomads who used seasonal pastures around them and safeguarded the trade. From the 2nd c. BC, and likely long before that, they were controlled by the Hunnic-Uigur husbandry tribes, and even Chinese occupation and commanderies could not control the area outside the forts. The Chinese settlers in the oases also found more advantageous to cooperate with nomadic powers then with their Chinese overlords. Whatever misfortunes fell on their nomadic masters, the oases dwellers never lost their patrons for good, and paid taxes on the Silk Road trade to whoever was at the helm. In these circumstances, the Hunnic-Uigur mastery over the desert oases never stopped, and therefore could not be restored at the end of the 5th c. AD, at worst it only could be temporarily undermined for a few seasons. Under whatever names, including the Hephthalite, the Huns-Uigurs were in control of the Silk Road trade. For Chinese, the savings on the taxes paid along the road were far outweighed by the expenses of keeping expeditionary forces, and that was a cause for repeated collapse of their occupations. In terms of Hephthalite origin or timing, the Silk Road stations are totally irrelevant.

Enoki believes that a presence of polyandry among the Hephthalites is indicative of the life in conditions of geographical and cultural isolation, which also indicates that their original homeland was in the mountain region of the Hindukush. Nerazik responds to that argument by noting that the Enoki list of people practicing polyandry conflicts with his conclusions, and in her opinion the preservation of that custom could be caused by a number of different reasons. Therefore, it is impossible to reduce it to only geographical and cultural isolation.

A. Ray also criticized the Enoki theory, he stressed that “Enoki has completely disregarded the Liang-shu statement that before their rise to political eminence, the Hua were a minor power subject to the Jujan. This definitely challenges the theory of Enoki that the Ephthalites were first heard of in Central Asia, and must have originated there“.Ray also notes that the hypothesis that polyandry originated from their having lived in an isolated region like Hsi-mo-ta-lo is insufficient. Geographical reasons could not be the only cause of this system.

According to F. Grenet, a polyandrous marriage contract from the kingdom of Rob predates the earliest historical appearance of the Hephthalites by more than a century.



Possibly, the Hephthalites came from the mountain fringes of Bactria, of which the Rob kingdom formed a part. Whatever the ethno-linguistic connections of the ruling clan may have been, it seems clear that the original power base of the Hephthalites, who united various ethnic elements with different military traditions, was in the Hindukush or in the eastern Bactria. From their coins we know that the Hephthalites abandoned the title Kushanshah, and that on their coins we see a non-Sasanid physical type with deformed skull (a distinctive Hunnic trait of the time). The Hephthalite name has also been linguistically connected with such possibilities as Khotanese hītala – strong (actually, an apparent Uigur/Karluk/Kalach borrowing by Khotan settlers) or a postulated Middle Persian haft āl – the Seven. Sh. Kuwayama also thinks that there is no written source to show that the Hephthalites had occupied Badakhshan and Huo before the Türkic invasion. It is possible that the Hephthalites kept the western half, Hsi-mo-ta-lo, while the powerful invaders took the better eastern half, Badakhshan. The great Hunnic migration reached the Volga in the middle of 4th c. AD, according to E. de la Vaissiere, and had originated in the Altai. These Huns were the political, and partly cultural, heirs of the Xiongnu (Eastern Huns). Some of these migrations reached Central Asia, and the Hephthalites were among the tribes that arrived then.

“In other words, the Hephthalites were in Bactria a century before gaining control there, and were under the leadership of others. The last nomadic dynasty did not arrive in Bactria later than any of the other ones, but was there from the beginning of the nomadic period. This probably means that all nomadic kingdoms flourishing in Bactria between the middle of the fourth century and the middle of the sixth century can trace their origin back to a single episode of massive migration in the second half of the fourth century (circa 350-370), and not to a whole set of successive migrations“. During their life in Bactria, the Hephthalites later lost their original language, and adopted Bactrian.

The Kidarites, predecessors of the Hephthalite, in the middle of the 5th c. AD were the first creators of the new urban network in Central Asia, and chose a Kushan titulature that might be in agreement with their urban policy. But the Hephthalites differentiated themselves from the Kushan past. The Hephthalites, as all tribal groupings of that period, were a mixture of political and clan relationships, primarily not an ethnic or linguistic entity, so Vaissiere suggests that it is very difficult to differentiate all these dynasties on a linguistic or ethnic basis.

In the opinion of V. Solovyov, the Hephthalites were descendants of the Pamir Sakas, who resettled in Badakhshan after a defeat of Yuezhi (Tokhars) in the 2nd century BC, and they lived not only in the Pamir, but also in the neighboring regions (in particular Karategin), where are graves attributed to the Hephthalites. Their name was possibly derived from the name of the ruler. The Kidarites were descendants of the Yuezhi (Tokhars), and their new ethnonym was taken from king Kidara. The Chionites were descendants of Massagets (Masguts) from the Aral headland who under pressure of the Huns abandoned their initial



place of habitation, and moved within the borders of the Kushan kingdom, but were later subordinated to the Hephthalites. 118

The anthropologist L. Oshanin referred to the Hephthalites as a western branch of the Yuezhi-Tokhars.

J. Ilyasov accepts the Rtveladze version that the Hephthalites' self-name was Alkhon, but believes that they were highlanders of Badakhshan, ethnically close to the population of Tokharistan, but not indigenous in Bactria-Tokharistan. According to Ilyasov, one of the main reasons to infer that Hephthalites were not indigenous to the Bactria-Tokharistan is that in the 5th c. AD the Chaganian (princedom) capital was moved from Dalverzin-tepe to a new Budrach (Budrach is a later name) place. If Hephthalites were indigenous, they would not need to move the center of their region after the Sasanids gained control, and it would have been better to rebuild Dalverzin-tepe.In the 4th c. AD the Chionites, under a pressure from the Huns, left their place in K'ang-chő (Kangar) and moved to the south. They attacked the southern Middle Asia and Afghanistan, which resulted in a socio-economic crisis during the 4th and 5th centuries AD (in and around Afghanistan). The Chionites were subjugated by the Hephthalites, and later were integrated among them (Chionite-Alchons), which is reflected by the reports of various sources about the White and Red Hions.

Some scholars (E. Smagulov, Yu. Pavlenko) think that the Hephthalites were originally the Huns who left catacomb graves beneath kurgans in the Talas river valley and in the piedmont of the Tian-Shian. The Hephthalites, after a collapse of Qangui (Kangar), became a political power in the modern region of southern Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and then extended their power to the Kidarites and Chionites, who were then called Huns as well.

An unusual theory of G. Maitdinova may also be mentioned here. She suggests that in the Pamir region from the 1st - 2nd c. AD to the 5th - 6th c. AD existed a state Kirpand, where Kushan, Kidarite, Chionite and Hephthalite dynasties (!) ruled replacing each other. In that state Buddism was a main religion, and its capital was Tashkurgan in Eastern Turkestan (Chinese Xinjiang). Kirpand, from Old Persian (?), may have meant mountainous road, where kir is mountain, and pand is road. This name may be constructed because Kirpand {state on mountainous road) played a major role in the Silk Road trade.

According to Maitdinova, the Kidarites and Hephthalites were related.

G. Karpov thought that the Hephthalites were people of Iranian-lingual origin, who later carried the name “Kushans“, and in Badakhshan (modern Afghanistan) was established a main region of that tribe. He also noted that the modern Abdel group are certainly the remains of those (Iranian-lingual) Huns-Hephthalites.



One of the chapters of a two volume “History of the Turkmen SSR“ was dedicated to the Hephthalites. The author of the section, S. Vyazigin, identifies the Chionites and Hephthalites, suggesting that the “name of the “Hephthalites“ originated from a ruling dynasty in a Chionite state“. In his opinion, the Chionite-Hephthalite association was a conglomerate of different by origin tribes, including both Türkic speaking, and Iranian speaking tribes. Vyazigin stipulates that the Kidarites were Kushans, he is not associating Kidarites with the Chionites and Hephthalites. Similarly, exploring the early medieval (Sasanid) period in the history of Turkmenistan, A. Gubaev suggests that existed a conglomerate of tribes, including the Kidarites and Chionite-Hephthalites, stipulating in their ethnic aspect a mixture of tribes of Türkic speaking and Iranian speaking origins.

Contrary to that, Kh.Yusupov thinks that the Chionites, Kidarites and Hephthalites were minor tribes. The Chionites were Iranian speaking, with a certain Mongol admixture introduced by the Huns. In respect to the origin of the Hephthalites, Yusupov agrees with the Gumilev theory that they were Iranian speaking mountain tribes of European (i.e. Caucasoid) type, who were sedentary and originated from the Eftali valley.

M. Durdyyev also suggested that the Hephthalite name was the name of the ruling dynasty in the Chionite state; in other words he equated Chionites and Hephthalites. He wrote about the origin of the Hephthalites that “the Hephthalites were association of local tribes (not stating exactly which - A.K.) that formed their own independent state after overthrowing the Parthian state, and who led a war against Sasanid Persia“.He identified the language of the Hephthalites as an Iranian group.

A philologist S.Ataniyazov notes that the Hephthalites were Türkic speaking, they migrated from the Mongolian steppes as a result of a pressure from Rourans (Jujans), who in the middle of 5th c. AD settled in the Kazakhstan steppes. They split into two parts: one went to the Volga, the other went to the Amudarya, where they founded a capital in Badakhshan. In his analysis of the ethnonym “Abdal“, Ataniyazov brings three possible versions of its origin:

1. From the name of the Hephthalite king, Akhshunwar Hephthalan, who fought with the Sasanid shahinshah Peroz and vanquished him in 484;

2. The version of Turkologist N. Baskakov, who thought that the name of the ancient Bulgarian tribe Abdal may be traced back to Chuvash “avat“ (dig, plow) + suffix “al“, an affix of the instrument (the person) of the action, with the whole word meaning “tiller“;

3. The version of Balami, a Middle Age historian (10th c. AD), who reported that the “name “Haitila“ is a plural of “Haital“, which in the Bukhara (Sogdian) language means “strong man“. The Bukhara word for “power“ is haital, and it was changed into Haital in the



Arabic language “. 131 Within that interpretation would also fit an ancient Uigur word Aptal meaning hero, strong person.

Ataniyazov himself supports the third version. The name of the people was Abdals (Abdaly in Tr. plural), meaning strong people, since in the names of people and tribes we often encounter the idea of strong, brave, and that already has a tradition.

Ataniyazov also mentioned an interesting fact about the connection of early medieval Hephthalites with the modern Abdals (Abdaly). Specifically, he notes that the Hephthalite princes wore tetragonal and hexagonal hats (tahya), and similar headdresses are presently worn by the children of Turkmen-Abdals (it is also a traditional headdresses of modern Afganistan Pashtuns).

In a suggestion by O.Gundogdyyev, the Kidarites, Chionites and Hephthalites were ethnically the same people. The Chionites were the Huns who at some time departed to the east, but then returned and joined confederation of their former kinfolks. Gundogdyyev mentions a deformation of the skull, practiced by the Huns and Chionites, as one of the evidence in favor of his theory. He thinks that in the 4th c. AD the Kidarites separated from the Chionites, and became independent. Kidara stood at their helm, and seized power in the weak Kushan state. In an attempt to conquer the Chionites, the Kidarites were defeated. After that, the Chionites had a chieftain named Hephtal (Abdal), and consequently Chionites gain a name Hephthalites. That idea is based on two independent sources: the 6th c. AD author Theophanes the Byzantine (about the name of king Hephtal) and the Chinese chronicle (about the name of a ruler Ye-da or Ye-ta-i-li-to). Eftal defeated Kidarites and displaced them from Kushania, then they left from there to the northern India. The Hephthalites became legal successors of the Kushan Empire.

Clearly many opinions on various aspects of the early medieval history of Central Asia are competing, no general agreement is emerging at the moment. Most of these theories are mainly based on the often contradictory written sources, sometimes the numismatic evidence is also taken into account. The archaeological materials are rarely appreciated, and even when they are, only a partial selection is used to support one view or another.

We have discussed various theories about the Hepthelites and other related kingdoms. From upper theories we can conclude that these groups are originated from Yuezhi Tribe and rulled in various region of Central Asia and Europe. some of them are as follows,

1. Hepthelites/White Huna 2. Xionites 3. Kidarites



Fourth Huna group was related to small Yuezhi . In 3rd century some Sub-tribes of Yuezhi migrated to the west-north side and reached upto Eastern Europe and the Balkans via the lands north of the Black Sea, where they -founded powerful states such as the Western Hun Empire, the Avars’ state, and Bulgaria. These Turkish states put pressure on the western and eastern portions of the Roman Empire. Other tribes, such as the Pechenegs and the Kypchaks, stopped and settled in the lands north of the Black Sea areas on their way to the west.

Generalogy of Huna Kings:

Kidarite Hun of Red Huns or Kidarites Principality of the Kota Kula in the Punjab Kidara I fl. c. 320 CE

Kungas 330's ?

Varhran I fl. c. 340

Grumbat c. 358-c. 380

Kidara (II ?) fl. c. 360

Brahmi Buddhatala

fl. c. 370

(Unknown) fl. 388/400

Varhran (II) fl. c. 425

Goboziko fl. c. 450

Salanavira mid 400's

Vinayaditya late 400's

Kandik early 500's

Alchon (Uarkhon)

Khingila I 430 - 490

Akshunwar 490-550 Raja Lakhana Udayaditya 550

Mepame



Kings ruling Afghanistan / Gandhara (Turko‐Hepthalites in Gandhara) Napki (Nezak) Malka...................................c. 475 - 576 Sri Shaho...........................................after c. 576

White Huns Khans o Toramana.................................................515 - 528 o Mihirakula...............................................528 - 542 o Hephthalite rule was overthrown in c. 570 and they escaped west.

Nezak Huns (at Kabul / Ghazni / Zabulistan and probably Seistan) o Narana (Narendra).....................................c. 570 - 600 o Vasu Deva......................................................after

c. 624 o Mardan Shah....................................................after

c. 624 o Shahi Jaya.....................................................c.

700 o Shahi Tigin...........................................c. 719 – 739 o Sri Vajara Vakhu Deva..........................................

The Hephtalites were destroyed in the 560's by a combination of Persian (Sassanid) and proto-Turkic forces. Narana /Narendra ( was probably their last ruler. This last Hephthalite king Narana/Narendra managed to maintain some kind of rule between 570 and 600 AD over the 'nspk' or 'napki' or 'nezak' tribes that remained after most of the Alchon had fled to the west.).c. 570-600

We will read in details about these groups in next chapters.

Ancient History of Central Asia- Introduction of Ancient Huna Tribe

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Transcript of Ancient History of Central Asia- Introduction of Ancient Huna Tribe