Ancient History of Central Asia - Introduction of Ancient Huna Tribe

AncientHistoryofCentralAsiaIntroductionofAncientHunaTribe(ArticleNo03)
*Notacopyrightmaterial,onlyastudymaterialCompiledBy:AdeshKatariya
AncientHistoryof
CentralAsia
(Articleno03:NotesonAncientHuna: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).
CompiledBy:
AdeshKatariya
(ChemicalTechnologistandHistoryResearcher)
Email:plast.adesh@gmail.com,Contactno:+919540992618
ProposeddescendentClans(Gotras)/currentnamesofAncientClansof
Yuezhi(GurjarswerecalledYuezhiinChineeseLiterature)Origin:
ClanofGurjars NamesinAncientLiteratures MajorRullingArea
TobedefinedNext
version
RulingClanofGreatYuezhi TarimBasin,China
Kashana/Kusanna Kushana NorthwestIndia,Pakistan
Khatana Kings of Khotan under Kushana
Empire
Khotan,WesternChina
Bokkan Xim() Walkhan,NortheastedgeofAfghanistan
Nagadi/Naggars Nagar of Kashmir under
Kushanaempire
Kashmir
Bhatti Bhati of Doab under Kushana
Kingdom
WesternUPState,India
Kataria/Kadara/Kidaria Kidarite kingdom under kink
Kidara
Afganistan
TobedefinedNext
version Shuangmi()
Shughnan,BadakhshanProvince,
Afganistan
TobedefinedNext
version Xidun()
Balkh,NorthernAfghanistan.
TobedefinedNext
version Dm()
Termez,southernmostpartof
Uzbekistan
Huna WhiteHuna/Hepthelites
CentralAsia
TobedefinedLater
version Xionites
AfganistanandPakistan
Karhana/KaraHuna
NorthernHuna/Ak(Black)
Khazar
GeorgiaandWestAsia
Panwar/Parmar GurjarPratihar
NorthernandCentralIndia
Chandela/Chandila Chandela
CentralIndia
TobedefinedNext
version Chalukya
WestandSouthIndia
Chawda Chap
WestandSouthIndia
Chechi Chechi
Chechenya,NorthWestAsia
TobedefinedNext
version Gurja/Gurza
Georgia,Gurjistan
BadGujar BadGujar
WestIndia
Tanwar/Tomer Tanwar
Delhi,india
Mavi Mavai
Mavanaregion,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 dont 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 Yeh-chi /Great Yeh-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 Yeh-
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 4
th
and 5
th
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 /Raghus 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 Trks 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: ;
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-gu) is a title. The second part of this
compound, hou (<gu), meant a title of second hereditary noble of the five upper
classes. Sihou (<*xiap-gu) corresponds to the title yavugo on the Kushan (Ch. Uechji) coins
from Kabulistan, and yabgu of the ancient Trkic 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 Butsz-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 Hayatelles 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 Bukhr, 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, Anushirvn 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 Irans most ancient regions and is situated just to the Caspian Seas
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 Persians 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 Trks, 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-l 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 Khyn (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 Khyn
(Khyon), Trk, Heftal, and Tibetans, who are among mountain-dwellers, and the
Chinese, and Kablis, and Sogdians, and Byzantines, and Red Khyn (Khyon) and
White Khyn (Khyon). They will become Kings in my country of Eran. Their
commandments and desires will prevail in the world.
Regarding the Red Khyn (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-Hna meaning "White Huns".
As we see in the texts appear Hions (Khyn), Hephthalites (Heftal) and the so-called Red
Hions (Khyn) and White Hions (Khyn). 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 Trkic 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 as originally designating
a people or a confederation, just as later on the Hephthalites put their abridged name on
Bactrian coins imitating those of Peroz ... one may perhaps add the Red Huns (Middle
Persian Karmr Hyn), bearing in mind that l means red in Trkic (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-/Hra would appear more likely than that from
Trkic 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
and , the latter being an abbreviation of (vdal).
Attention is drawn to another point in Byzantine sources: except for references to the
White Huns there is also information about (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 + .
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 Kunh (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 X 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 Juz
indicates 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 Trkic origin for the Hephthalites. In his own studies he affirms,
that the Hephthalites were Trkic-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 Trkic, 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 Trkic
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 Trkic 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 Trkic, 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 Trkic, 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-Sn (White Hun/Sn), 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: Wr. Marquart located the capital of Tokharistan as Wrwaliz, 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 Trkic gilan/djilan/gelon/jilan/yilan,
Herodotus Gelon, Persian Gilan, Chinese Hi/Si, later Uryanhais= Uran (a Trkic
calque implying snake)+Kayi (Mong. snake). Whether initially Mongolian-
speaking or Trkic-speaking, the Kayis were integrated with the Eastern Huns in ca
200 BC, and afterwards they were inseparable from the Trkic 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 Trkic-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 Trkic 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 wlz was likely an Altaic word for city. In his
interpretation War-wlz is a city of the Awar, like the Chinese A-huan cheng. In some of
the Arabic forms it would appear that the ethnic part was omitted, and only the part Wli or
al-Wlia 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 (Xyns). 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 Trkic-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 Trkic 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 Trkic 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 Trkic, 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
Trkic 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
Trkic 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 (
, , ,
, 10
13 . -, .). 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
Trkic; 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 Trkic, it was a blend of Horezmian and Trkic, 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 Trks.In her opinion, the presence of the
Trkic element is proved because five princes of the Kushans carried the Trkic 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 Trkic 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 Trkic and Iranian-lingual elements, as well as elements neither Trkic,
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 Hnas 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 Shhi Jawla (Shakh of Jauwlas, or Zabulis), is different from r Toramna,
the Hna (Huna) king. The name Toramana mentioned in central Indian inscriptions refers to
the Hna (Huna) king, while the name Toramana found on coins unearthed in Taxila refers to
a Hephthalite king. Mihirakula, the son of Toramana, was an Hna (Huna) king; he was not
the Hephthalite king that Song Yun met in Gandhara in 520 AD. The Hnas (Hunas)
controlled an area that extended from Malwa in central India to Kashmir. The Hephthalites, a
nomadic tribe unrelated to the Hnas (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-Trkic 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 htala strong (actually, an apparent Uigur/Karluk/Kalach
borrowing by Khotan settlers) or a postulated Middle Persian haft l the Seven. Sh.
Kuwayama also thinks that there is no written source to show that the Hephthalites had
occupied Badakhshan and Huo before the Trkic 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-ch (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 Trkic 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 Trkic 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 Trkic 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 3

rd
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:
KidariteHunofRedHunsorKidaritesPrincipalityoftheKotaKulainthe
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)
Khi ngi l a I 430 - 490

Akshunwar 490- 550
Raj a Lakhana
Udayadi t ya
550
Mepame
KingsrulingAfghanistan/Gandhara(TurkoHepthalitesinGandhara)
Napki ( Nezak) Mal ka. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . c. 475 - 576
Sr i Shaho. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . af t er c. 576
WhiteHunsKhans
o Tor amana. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515 - 528
o Mi hi r akul a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528 - 542
o Hephthaliterulewasoverthrowninc.570andtheyescapedwest.
NezakHuns(atKabul/Ghazni/ZabulistanandprobablySeistan)
o Nar ana ( Nar endr a) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . c. 570 - 600
o Vasu Deva. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . af t er
c. 624
o Mar dan Shah. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . af t er
c. 624
o Shahi J aya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . c.
700
o Shahi Ti gi n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . c. 719 739
o Sr i Vaj ar a 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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Imp.Note: Till now many researches publoished on the history of

Various Theories about Origin of Hepthelites (White

Fourth Huna group was related to small Yuezhi . In 3

Khi ngi l a I 430 - 490

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