Hephthalite Empire

Hephthalite Empire
408–670
The Hephthalites (green), c. 500.
Capital		Kunduz (Walwalij, Drapsaka, or Badian) Balkh (Pakhlo) Sialkot (Sakala)
Languages		Bactrian Gandhari (Gandhara) Sogdian (Sogdiana) Chorasmian Tocharian Turkic Saka dialects Sanskrit
Religion		Tengrism Zoroastrianism Nestorianism Manichaeism Buddhism
Government		Not specified
Tegin
•	430/440 – ≈490	Khingila
•	490/500 – 515	Toramana
•	515–528	Mihirakula
Historical era		Late Antiquity
•	Established	408
•	Disestablished	670
Preceded by Succeeded by Kushan Empire Sassanid Empire Gupta Empire Kidarites Kabul Shahi Göktürk Empire Zunbils Principality of Chaghaniyan
Today part of		Afghanistan China India Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Pakistan Tajikistan Turkmenistan Uzbekistan

The Hephthalites, Ephthalites, Ye-tai, White Huns, or, in Sanskrit, the Sveta Huna, were a a confederation of nomadic and settled people in Central Asia who expanded their domain westward in the 5th century. At the height of its power in the first half of the 6th century, the Hephthalite Empire controlled territory in present-day Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, India and China.

Earlier history

The stronghold of the Hephthalites was Tokharistan on the northern slopes of the Hindu Kush, in what is present-day northeastern Afghanistan. By 479, the Hephthalites had conquered Sogdia and driven the Kidarites westwards, and by 493 they had captured parts of present-day Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin in what is now Northwest China.

The Hephthalites invaded India for the first time in the 5th century and were defeated by Emperor Skandagupta of the Gupta Empire. By the end of the 5th century, the Hephthalites overran the part of the Gupta Empire that was to their southeast and conquered Central and North India. Emperor Bhanugupta of the Guptas defeated the Huns under Toramana in 510. Later the Hephthalites were defeated and driven out of India by the Indian kings Yasodharman and Narasimhagupta in the early 6th century.

Christopher I. Beckwith, referring to Étienne de la Vaissière, says the Hephthalites should not be called White Huns. According to de la Vaissiere, the name of the Hephthalites was not mentioned alongside that of the White Huns.

In Chinese chronicles, the Hephthalites are called Yanda or Yediyiliduo or "Bikova", while older Chinese sources of c. 125 call them Hua or Hudun and describe them as a tribe living beyond the Great Wall in Dzungaria. Elsewhere they were called the Xionites or "White Huns", known to the Greeks as Ephthalite, Abdel or Avdel, to the Indians as Sveta Huna ("White Huns"), or Turushka, to the Armenians as Haital, and to the Persians and Arabs as Haytal or Hayatila, while their Bactrian name is ηβοδαλο (Ebodalo).

According to most specialist scholars, the spoken language of the Hephthalites was an Eastern Iranian language, but different from the Bactrian language written in the Greek alphabet that was used as their "official language" and minted on coins, as was done under the preceding Kushan Empire.

Etymology

Although the Hephthalite Empire was known in China as Yàdā (嚈噠), Chinese chroniclers recognized this designated the leaders of the empire. The same sources document that the main tribe called themselves huá (滑). The modern Chinese variation Yanda has been given various Latinised renderings such as "Yeda", although the corresponding Cantonese and Korean pronunciations Yipdaat and Yeoptal (Korean: 엽달) are more compatible with the Greek Hephthalite. In Middle Persian sources Hephthalites are known as Heftal, which according to Bailey is a variant as a north Iranian Saka term related to Khotanese Saka hitala-tsaa, "heroic". Historian Muhammad Bal'ami derives the word "Hephthalites" from Bukharan with the meaning "strong man", which seems similar to a Khotanese Saka word with the meaning "brave, valiant".

According to B.A. Litvinsky, the names of the Hephthalite rulers used in the Shahnameh are Iranian. According to Xavier Tremblay, one of the Hephthalite rulers was named "Khingila", which has the same root as the Sogdian word xnγr and the Wakhi word xiŋgār, meaning "sword". The name Mihirakula is thought to be derived from mithra-kula which is Iranian for "the Sun family", with kula having the same root as Pashto kul, "family". Toramāna, Mihirakula's father, is also considered to have an Iranian origin. In Sanskrit, mihira-kula would mean the kul "family" of mihira "Sun", although mihira is not purely Sanskrit but is a borrowing from Middle Iranian mihr. Janos Harmatta gives the translation "Mithra's Begotten" and also supports the Iranian theory.

Origins

Hephthalite coin of King Khingila, 5th century, legend: "Khiggilo Alchono".

There are several theories regarding the origins of the White Huns, with the Iranian and Turkic theories being the most prominent.

For many years, scholars suggested that they were of Turkic stock. Some have claimed that some groups amongst the Hephthalites were Turkic-speakers. According to the Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania the ancestry of the Hephthalites is still:

Uncertain but possibly Eastern Iranian within the larger Indo-European family for the majority. Some experts have also suggested the majority were of Turkic origins. They were certainly a mixed group who included peoples with many different origins. ... Probably dominated by Eastern Iranian language, but their mixed ancestry also led to multilingualism.

The Hephthalites enscribed their coins in the Bactrian (Iranian) script, held Iranian titles, the names of Hephthalite rulers given in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh are Iranian. Based on gem inscriptions and other evidence Maenchen-Helfen and V. Livshits conclude that the official language of the Hephthalite elite was East Iranian. In 1959, Kazuo Enoki proposed that the Hephthalites were probably Indo-European (East) Iranians as some sources indicated that they were originally from Bactria, which is known to have been inhabited by Indo-Iranian people in antiquity. Richard Frye is cautiously accepting of Enoki's hypothesis, while at the same time stressing that the Hephthalites "were probably a mixed horde". More recently Xavier Tremblay's detailed examination of surviving Hephthalite personal names has indicated that Enoki's hypothesis that they were East Iranian may well be correct, but the matter remains unresolved in academic circles.

Asia in 500, showing the Hephthalite Khanate at its greatest extent.

According to the Encyclopaedia Iranica and Encyclopaedia of Islam, the Hephthalites possibly originated in what is today Afghanistan and Pakistan. They apparently had no direct connection with the European Huns, but may have been causally related with their movement. It is noteworthy that the tribes in question deliberately called themselves Huns in order to frighten their enemies.

Some White Huns may have been a prominent tribe or clan of the Chionites. According to Richard Nelson Frye:

Just as later nomadic empires were confederations of many peoples, we may tentatively propose that the ruling groups of these invaders were, or at least included, Turkic-speaking tribesmen from the east and north. Although most probably the bulk of the people in the confederation of Chionites and then Hephhtalites spoke an Iranian language... this was the last time in the history of Central Asia that Iranian-speaking nomads played any role; hereafter all nomads would speak Turkic languages.

Oxford historian Daniel T. Potts remarks that despite the Hephthalites are often regarded as "Turkic", their personal names in coin legends are Iranian. Emphasizing the French historian Étienne de la Vaissière cited in Xavier Tremblay, Pour une histoire de la Sérinde, 186.:

"This does not mean that they were Iranian from the beginning... but only that the pace of assimilation for a tribe or a clan not at the height of the political hierarchy was swift after one century in Bactria.... The Hephthalites went Bactrian." Originally, "The Hephtalites might have been Oghuric, and certrainly came from the Altai" (p. 124).

This view is seconded by F. Altheim who argued that the Hephthalite language was Turkic and the presence of Iranian words was connected with the penetrations from subordinated Iranian tribes. Vaissière, being more precisely, presumes Hephthalites were a Gaoju-Oghuric Turkic tribe. British orientalist N. Sims-Williams at least determines that:

“Since we know from Chinese sources that the title tegin was already used by the Hephthalites, it is tempting to regard this as evidence of the Altaic affinities of the Hephthalites... but in Bactrian, names which appear to derive from tegin occur in texts which probably predate the Hephthalite period”.

According to the Concise Encyclopeida Of World History, the Ephthalite establishment in Samarkand (in 410 AD) could be seen "as a marker for the start of the gradual Turkification of Transoxiana." Richard N. Frye, presuming that the Hephthalites were Iranian speaking people, but being more specific, equates that the Hephthalites were originally tribes of Turkic or Altaic speech and came from the Mongolian Altai region via Central Asia to the Indian subcontinent by virtue of pressure from the Rourans.

History

Billon drachm of the Indo-Hephthalite King Napki Malka(Afghanistan/ Gandhara, c. 475–576).

Hephthalite ruler.

Hephthalite silver coin copying Gupta Empire horse type, 5th century

The 6th-century Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea (Book I. ch. 3), related them to the Huns in Europe:

The Ephthalitae Huns, who are called White Huns [...] The Ephthalitae 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, for they occupy a land neither adjoining nor even very near to them; but their territory lies immediately to the north of Persia [...] They are not nomads like the other Hunnic peoples, but for a long period have been established in a goodly land... They are the only ones among the Huns who have white bodies and countenances which are not ugly. It is also true that their manner of living is unlike that of their kinsmen, nor do they live a savage life as they do; but they are ruled by one king, and since they possess a lawful constitution, they observe right and justice in their dealings both with one another and with their neighbours, in no degree less than the Romans and the Persians

Scholars believe that the name Hun is used to denote very different nomadic confederations. Ancient Chinese chroniclers, as well as Procopius, wrote various theories about the origins of the people:

• They were descendants of the Yuezhi or Tocharian tribes who remained behind after the rest of the people fled the Xiongnu;
• They were descendants of the Kangju;
• They were a branch of the Tiele; or
• They were a branch of the Uar.

They were first mentioned by the Chinese, who described them as living in Dzungaria around 125. Chinese chronicles state that they were originally a tribe of the Yuezhi, living to the north of the Great Wall, and subject to the Rouran (Jwen-Jwen), as were some Turkic peoples at the time. Their original name was Hoa or Hoa-tun; subsequently they named themselves Ye-tha-i-li-to (厌带夷栗陁, or more briefly Ye-tha 嚈噠), after their royal family, which descended from one of the five Yuezhi families which also included the Kushan.

They displaced the Scythians and conquered Sogdiana and Khorasan before 425. After that, they crossed the Syr Darya (Jaxartes) River and invaded Persian lands. In Persia, they were initially held off by Bahram Gur but around 483–85, they succeeded in making Persia a tributary state by defeating the Sassanid forces at the Battle of Herat where they killed the Sassanid king, Peroz I. After a series of wars in the period 503–513, they were driven out of Persia and completely defeated in 557 by Khosrau I. Their polity thereafter came under the Göktürks and subsequent Western Turkic Khaganate of the Türk yabghu of Tokharistan with residence in Kunduz and military forces in Gandhara, Kapisa and Zabulistan. These territories were later populated by additional Turkic tribes such as the Karluks and Kalach, as attested in Chinese, Persian and Arabic sources. The population of these lands consisted of eastern Iranians, Persians, Türks, Indians, Dards and Kafirs, and the cultural tradition was equally represented by Bactrian, Persian, Hephthalite, Türkic and Indian elements. According to the tenth-century geography book Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam, most Kalach settled down in the Ḡazna region, of which many became assimilated to the local Pashto-speaking population and also likely formed the core of the Pashto-speaking Ḡalzay tribe. Further Kalach conurbations existed in the Balḵ, Toḵārestān, Bost, and Guzgān regions.

The Hephthalites also invaded the regions Afghanistan and present-day Pakistan, succeeding in extending their domain to the Punjab region.

The Hephthalite was a vassal state to the Rouran Khaganate until the beginning of the 5th century. Between Hephthalites and Rourans were also close contacts, although they had different languages and cultures, and Hephthalites borrowed much of their political organization from Rourans. In particular, the title "Khan", which according to McGovern was original to the Rourans, was borrowed by the Hephthalite rulers. The reason for the migration of the Hephthalites southeast was to avoid a pressure of the Rourans. Further, the Hephthalites defeated the Yuezhi in Bactria and their leader Kidara led the Yuezhi to the south.

Procopius claims that the White Huns lived in a prosperous territory, and that they were the only Huns with fair complexions. According to him, they did not live as nomads, did acknowledge a single king, observed a well-regulated constitution, and behaved justly towards neighboring states. He also describes the burial of their nobles in tumuli, accompanied by their closest associates. This practice contrasts with evidence of cremation among the Chionites in Ammianus and with remains found by excavators of the European Huns and remains in some deposits ascribed to the Chionites in Central Asia. Scholars believe that the Hephthalites constituted a second "Hunnish" wave who entered Bactria early in the 5th century, and who seem to have driven the Kidarites into Gandhara.

Newly discovered ancient writings found in Afghanistan reveal that the Middle Iranian Bactrian language written in Greek script was not brought there by the Hephthalites, but was already present from Kushan times as the traditional language of administration in this region. There is also evidence of the use of a Turkic language under the White Huns. The Bactrian documents also attest several Turkic royal titles (such as Khagan), indicating an important influence of Turkic people on White Huns, although these could also be explained by later Turkic infiltration south of the Oxus.

According to Simokattes, they were Chionites who united under the Hephthalites as the "(Wusun) vultures descended on the people" around 460.

Uar

This article is about a culture of ancient Asia. For UAR, see UAR (disambiguation).

The Uar (also Var or War; Chinese: 滑; pinyin: Huá) were one of the many ethnic components constituting the confederation known to the west as the Hephthalites and to the Chinese as Yanda (嚈噠) and the dominant ethnicity of Khwarezm. Peoples with similar names had been present along the Silk Road for centuries, and several Central European family names actually derive from the names of these tribes.

Theophylaktos Simokattes uses the name Uar, sometimes written as War or Var. According to the Chinese classic Liang Zhigongtu the name Huá was an endonym used by the Hephthalites themselves while 嚈噠 was an exonym derived from their ruling dynasty and applied to them by outsiders.

Origin and migration

Like Procopius, contemporary Chinese chroniclers had different theories about the origins of the Uar and the Hephthalites:

• That they were related in some way to the Indo-European Yuezhi. Based in Turpan and conquered by the Rouran, they were an important part of the early jade trade.
• That they were a branch of either the Kangju (believed to be Turkic, Iranian or even Tocharian in origin) or Tiele people, descending from the general Bahua, based in Turpan. They sided with the Southern Xiongnu of Pingyang against the Northern Xiongnu (hence the Huá clan's presence in Pingyang) but were later conquered by the Rouran.

Throughout the 5th century, it was the Uar who managed to succeed to the steppe heritage in a campaign which spread from the Tian Shan to the Carpathian Mountains. By around 460, the Uar had taken over much of Central Eurasia from Xinjiang to the Volga River, and founded a capital at the city of Badiyan or Panjakent, near what is now Khujand, though very little is known about the area from the late 5th to early 6th centuries.

Hephthalites

According to the Book of Liang, the Yanda (Hephthalites) were an offshoot of the Yuezhi. It mentions an envoy sent in 516 by their Yandaiyilituo/Hephthalite king to the court at Nanjing. Chinese chronicles define Yanda as the name of a clan leading the Uar. In the Book of Wei they are supposed to be a variety of the Yuezhi, while the Uar, who are also described, are possibly an offshoot of the Tiele. The Book of Wei indicates, however, that the Yanda do not share a similar language with the (Tungusic or Mongol) Rouran or the (Turkic) Tiele. It is said that the Yanda language can be easily translated by the Tuyuhun, a group of people from the Koko Nor.

Kazuo Enoki believed the Yanda to be an Iranian Satem-language, in which case they cannot be related to the Indo-European Centum-branch of Tocharians.

Hunnoi

Asia in 400, showing the Kidarite lands and their neighbors.

The Kidarite dynasty which ruled the Xionites came from the Uar. As a result, the Xionites have sometimes been called Uar-Hunnoi.

Uar and Hunnoi are the names associated with the two biggest tribes of Procopius's White Huns, commonly identified with the Sanskrit Sveta Huna but called Varkhon or Varkunites (OuarKhonitai) by Menander Protector. Procopius writes that these White Huns are white-skinned and have an organized kingship. According to him, their life is not wild or nomadic, and they live in cities.

Avars

Simokattes mentions the Hunnoi as the other major component under the Hephthalite ruling elite. These were identified as the "True" Avars of the east, and the political force behind what Simokattes calls the "Pseudo-Avars" who eventually settled down in Pannonia. The Göktürks also considered the Khwarezmian Uar (possibly associated with the Uyghurs) as the true Avars and encouraged the Byzantines to regard the "Avars" who had entered Europe as Pseudo-Avars.

Around 630, Simokattes wrote that the European "Avars" were initially composed of two nations, the Uar and the Hunnoi tribes. He wrote that: "...the Barsilt, the Unogurs and the Sabirs were struck with horror... and honoured the newcomers with brilliant gifts..." when the Avars first arrived in their lands in 555.

Religion

According to Song Yun, the Chinese Buddhist monk who visited the Hephthalite territory in 540 and "provides accurate accounts of the people, their clothing, the empresses and court procedures and traditions of the people and he states the Hephthalites did not recognize the Buddhist religion and they preached pseudo gods, and killed animals for their meat." It is reported that some Hephthalites often destroyed Buddhist monasteries but were rebuilt by others. According to Xuanzang, the third Chinese pilgrim who visited the same areas as Song Yun about 100 years later, the capital of Chaghaniyan had five monasteries.

"Interestingly in the Hephthalite dominion Buddhism was predominant but there was also a religious sediment of Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism." Balkh had some 100 Buddhist monasteries and 30,000 monks. Outside the town was a large Buddhist monastery, later known as Naubahar.

White Huns in Southern Central Asia

Hephthalite successor kingdoms in 600.

Main article: Hunas

In the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, the Hephthalites were not distinguished from their immediate Chionite predecessors and are known by the same name as Huna (Sanskrit: Sveta-Hūna, White Huns). The Huna had already established themselves in Afghanistan and the modern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan by the first half of the 5th century, and the Gupta emperor Skandagupta had repelled a Hūna invasion in 455 before the Hephthalite clan came along.

The Hephthalites had their capital at Badian, modern Kunduz, but the emperor lived in the capital city for just three winter months, and for the rest of the year, the government seat would move from one locality to another like a camp. The Hephthalites continued the pressure on ancient India's northwest frontier and broke east by the end of the 5th century, hastening the disintegration of the Gupta Empire. They made their capital at the city of Sakala, modern Sialkot in Pakistan, under their Emperor Mihirakula. But later the Huns were defeated and driven out of India by the Indian kings Yasodharman and Narasimhagupta in the 6th century.

Descendants

The last Hephthalite King, Yudhishthira, ruled until about 670, when he was replaced by the Kabul Shahi dynasty.

Hephthalites are believed to be among the ancestors of modern-day Pashtuns and in particular of the Abdali Pashtun tribe. According to the academic Yu. V. Gankovsky,

"The Pashtuns began as a union of largely East-Iranian tribes which became the initial ethnic stratum of the Pashtun ethnogenesis, dates from the middle of the first millennium AD and is connected with the dissolution of the Epthalite (White Huns) confederacy. [...] Of the contribution of the Epthalites (White Huns) to the ethnogenesis of the Pashtuns we find evidence in the ethnonym of the largest of the Pashtun tribe unions, the Abdali (Durrani after 1747) associated with the ethnic name of the Epthalites — Abdal. The Siah-posh, the Kafirs (Nuristanis) of the Hindu Kush, called all Pashtuns by a general name of Abdal still at the beginning of the 19th century."

The Hephthalites could also have been ancestors of the Abdal tribe which has assimilated into the Turkmens and Kazakhs. In India, the Rajputs formed as a result of merging of the Hephthalites and the Gurjars with population from northwestern India, though this is disputed.

Contemporary literature

Umberto Eco's novel Baudolino makes reference to the "White Huns", portrayed as a fearsome warrior race.

Eric Flint's Belisarius series makes frequent reference to Ye Tai warriors.

See also

• Historic states represented in Turkish presidential seal
• Huna people
• Kidarites (Red Huns)
• Kushan Empire
• Xionites

External links

• "The Ethnonym Apar in the Turkish Inscriptions of the VIII. Century and Armenian Manuscripts" Dr. Mehmet Tezcan.
• The Anthropology of Yanda (Chinese) pdf
• The Silkroad Foundation
• Columbia Encyclopedia: Hephthalites
• Hephthalite coins
• Hephthalite History and Coins of the Kashmir Smast Kingdom- Waleed Ziad at the Wayback Machine (archived October 27, 2009)
• The Hephthalites of Central Asia – by Richard Heli (long article with a timeline)
• The Hephthalites at the Wayback Machine (archived February 9, 2005) Article archived from the University of Washington's Silk Road exhibition – has a slightly adapted form of the Richard Heli timeline.
• (pdf) The Ethnonym Apar in the Turkish Inscriptions of the VIII. Century and Armenian Manuscripts – Mehmet Tezcan
• iranicaonline hephthalites