13 June 2018

“Huns and Xiōngnú: New Thoughts on an Old Problem” — Christopher P. Atwood

Needless to say, there were no recording devices in Ancient Chinese, and the exact pronunciations of old Chinese words are not known with certainty. They all are unattested without an exception. Yet, countless people including the author publish papers based on sheer speculations and conjectures about the pronunciation and etymology of old words in Chinese annals. Even he admits that “[o]f course, Xiōngnú is only the modern Mandarin pronunciation of the characters 匈奴.”

What is worse is the irrefutable fact that there are loan words with phonemes not found in Chinese, ancient or modern. Therefore, these kinds of papers must be read with caution.

The author accepts Étienne de la Vaissière’s (“Huns et Xiongnu,” Central Asiatic Journal 49 (2005):3–26) assertion that “the people identified in Sogdian as Xwn and in Sanskrit as Hūṇa are indeed exactly the same people as the Chinese Xiōngnú.”

His only problem is that de la Vaissière does not explain adequately how Chinese Xiōngnú ended up being Greek Ounnoi. He considers this “a major philological puzzle,” and embarks on a somewhat meandering journey to solve it “by highlighting the key role of India in the process of sound change.”

Also note that in Sassanid mind, Türks are a part of Huns: “In Sassanid usage, the name designated both the ancient enemies of Mazdeism, but also the contemporary Huns broadly speaking, of which the Türks were seen as but a variety.”

He discusses in great detail the etymology of four Greek forms [Ounnoi, Khōnai(oi), Khiōn(es~itae), and Khounoi~Khōn(itai)] that have been used to signify Huns.

The latter is of particular importance, because it connects Huns to Turks.

Firstly, Khounoi is placed by Ptolemy in the 2nd century in the western Pontic steppe between the Iranian Rhoxolani and the Germanic Bastarnae. Then, it appears in a compound form in the 6th century twice: in the Chronicle of Menander Protector as Ouarkhōnitai, covering years A.D. 558–82, and in the continuation by Theophylactus Simocatta as Ouar and Khounni [sic] together, covering years 582–602. “This twin people is part of the Turkic Oghurs and is identified with the Avars (Abaroi) in the Pontic and Caspian steppes. The name, thus, appears to be of a Turkic people.”

“There is, moreover, a very similar ethnonym attested in Turkic languages: the Qun (attested in Chinese as , pronounced Hūn in Modern Mandarin). This name appears as one of many clan names among the original Turkic-speaking peoples, the Oghuz (also known as Tegreg or “High Carts”), during the Türk and Uyghur eras… Just as the War-Khōn were opponents of the Türk empire, so too in the Súishū, the Abar (Ābá 阿拔) and Qun appear alongside the Tegreg 鐵勒, Izgil 思結, and others in a list of peoples rebelling against the qaghan Tardu of the new Türk empire… There is every reason to accept the identity of the War-Khōn(itai) with the Qun of Turkic history. It is, thus, the only Greek ethnonym I have reviewed so far which actually has a clear link to the Altaic world. Qun is often related to Quman, as two derivations from a single stem, Turkic quba ‘pale yellow, grey, dun’ or Mongolian gho’a ‘beautiful, elegant; fallow (as an animal color).’”

Then, he concludes: “if we accept an identification of the Qun with Ptolemy’s Khounoi, then it is most likely not an originally Turkic term, but one derived from Iranian or some other language… In any case, I can see no justification for associating any of these terms with the Huns or Xiongnu.

Why can it not be Turkic and associated with Huns or Xiongnu? There are a lot of irrefutable evidence that Huns were mostly Turkic-speaking people, and Xiongnu in the East and the Huns in the West are one and the same.

The only motive for his conclusion could be the raison d'être of this paper, namely, the argument that Greek and Latin words for Huns in the 4th century a.d. are ultimately derived from Sanskrit.

According to him, Sanksrit Hūṇa is “a straightforward transcription of” [*xoŋa] (with a variant [*xoŋai]), the unattested but assumed original pronunciation of Xiōngnú. “[T]he Buddhist translator Dharmarakùa (Ch. Zhu Fahu 竺法護) in 288 and 308 found the word Hūṇa mentioned in two different Buddhist sutras… and translated them both into Chinese as Xiōngnú The earliest known use of the term in Sanskrit is in the Buddhist sutras… they must obviously have been written before they were translated, that is, before 288308… Étienne de la Vaissière has argued that the historical context of the other references to peoples such as the Śaka, Parthians, Greeks (Yavana), and Tokharians (Tukhāra), but without Kushans, place this text roughly around the first century b.c., and in any case before the Kushan expansion. Within this context, the Tathāgatācintyaguhyanirdeśasūtra refers to the Hūṇa/Xiōngnú as a language group, one distinct from these others mentioned. Thus, knowledge of the Hūṇa/Xiōngnú must have entered India as part of an early expansion of Indian geographical knowledge and international trade, long before the Hūṇa actually impinged on India’s borders.

Therefore, he concludes that “the eastern Iranian languages (Sogdian, Khorazmian, and Khotanese Saka) derived their name for these nomads from the south, from Sanskrit, and not directly from them as neighbors.”

Then, he reminds us the “two avenues of contact between China and the West”:

1. “[T]hrough the Gansu 甘肅 corridor and the Tarim Basin that was opened by HanWudi’s 漢武帝 conquests, from 121 b.c. on.

2.  During the “Qin dynasty conquest of Sichuan 四川 in 316 b.c.”

His conclusion: “It is by no means impossible then, that the Xiōngnú came to the attention of India as early as the second century b.c., and via trade through Sichuan and Yunnan, not Central Asia.”

Around 375, the East Roman Empire designates the new nomads (Huna~Ounna~Ounnoi) with a Greco-Baktrian version of the Sanskrit word for the Xiōngnú:

“Although Ammianus Marcellinus presents his Huns as utterly alien, with no conceivable policy or desire other than slaughter, the fact that he and the other Greco-Roman historians used for them a term which had passed through Baktria and Sogdiana shows that South Central Asians must have mediated the knowledge that the Roman frontier generals and armies had about this people.”

Previously, he had stated:

Ounnoi, without the initial h-, is probably the origin of the Latin Hunni of Ammianus Marcellinus, Marcellinus Comes, and Jordanes. Given the Greek form, it is likely that the Latin h- in Hunni was in fact not pronounced, any more than Ammianus Marcellinus’s h- in Halani “Alans” or Jordanes’ h- in Hunuguri “On-Oghur” (Greek Onongouroi) was intended to be pronounced. Later Latin variants in ch- should be the result of confusion with either the name War-Khunni that designated the Avars and/or Ptolemy’s Khounoi.

He summarizes his major conclusions at the end of the paper:

1. Sanskrit Hūṇa and Greek Khōnai are transcriptions of the word Xiōngnú 匈奴, transcribed in Old Chinese as *Xoηa (variant: *Xoηai). Sanskrit writers were using this term well before any migration of the Xiōngnú from Mongolia. They may have learned about the Xiōngnú not via the “Silk Road” but via the Sichuan-Yunnan route.

2. Sanskrit Hūṇa was read by Greeks in Baktria as Ounna (Middle Chinese ‘Onna), a term that was probably used for the far off Xiōngnú nomads by the first century b.c. Only in the fourth century a.d. did these Ounna/’Onna become a matter of immediate political importance.

3. Sogdian xwn~γwn is to be read as Hun. It is a close relative of Khorazmian Hūn and Saka Huna. All derive from an original Sanskrit Hūṇa.

4. Sometime around a.d. 350, a polity in today’s Kazakhstan/Caspian steppe formed, in which Central Asian (Sogdian? Baktrian?) merchants played a major part as merchant partners. People from the old *Xoηa(i) empire also certainly played a leading role in this new polity.

5. Starting around 350 in South Central Asia, and around 375 in the Pontic Steppe, this new Hūṇa/’Onna/Hun force launched various attacks on the Sassanid empire and the Alans of the Pontic Steppe.

6. Greeks called these new invaders Ounna following Baktrian Greek usage, soon nativized to Ounnoi (Latin Hunni). The Sassanids used an archaic scriptural term to call them Khyōn from the name of the enemies of Zarathustra in the Avesta. But the Syriac and Armenian writers used their reflexes (Syriac Hunāyē, Armenian Honk’) of the most common Sogdian form Hun (written xwn~γwn) to refer to them.

7. After a ‘Onna/Hūṇa/Khōnai/*Xoηai king conquered Sogdiana, the rulers of Samarqand called themselves ‘Onnashah, or King of the *Xoηai/Khōnai, a title modeled on that of their Baktrian liege lord, “Kushānshāh.”

The author does not provide full citations for the references in Tables 1 and 2. Furthermore, notes to Tables 35 omit Tu. = Turkic.


Huns and Xiōngnú: New Thoughts on an Old Problem

Christopher P. Atwood

Dubitando: Studies in History and Culture in Honor of Donald Ostrowski, ed. Brian J. Boeck, Russell E. Martin, Daniel Rowland, 
Bloomington, Indiana:2012.

It is a pleasure to present this scholarly contribution to Donald Ostrowski on the occasion of his 65th birthday. I also would like to thank my colleagues Richard Nance (e-mails, 17 and 30 January and 2 February 2011) and Jamsheed Choksy (e-mails, 21 January and 1 February 2011) for their valuable discussions of questions of Sanskrit and Iranian philology with me. Dr. Mark Dickens of Cambridge likewise gave me invaluable assistance with Syriac sources (e-mails of 18 February, and Mark Dickens, “References to Chionites in Syriac Literature,” unpublished ms. prepared for Christopher P. Atwood). Needless to say, I am of course solely responsible for all the remaining errors. In order to highlight the peculiar problems associated with using Chinese transcriptions for non-Chinese words, I have added tone markers to all the cases where Chinese words are used to transcribe foreign names and terms.

In a recent article, Étienne de la Vaissière has marshaled a strong case that the people identified in Sogdian as Xwn and in Sanskrit as Hūṇa are indeed exactly the same people as the Chinese Xiōngnú.[1] Given that Xwn and Hūṇa are usually identified with the Greek Ounnoi or Latin Hunni, this would lead us to agree with de la Vaissière that the old theory that Xiōngnú = Hun has defeated its antagonists and is worth of consideration once again.

There is one serious problem with this equivalence, though, one that de la Vaissière does not address very concretely. This is the very poor phonological match between Chinese Xiōngnú, Sogdian Xwn, Sanskrit Hūṇa, Greek Ounnoi, and Latin Hunni.[2] As Otto Maenchen-Helfen put it long ago: “the equation Hun = Hiung-nu is phonetically unsound.”[3] While de la Vaissière criticizes H. W. Bailey for just assuming that the Avestan Ẋyaona and Hun must be phonological matches, he too offers no explanation for the rather large gap between Chinese Xiōngnú and, for example, Greek Ounnoi, except to invoke vaguely different dialects and unnamed potential intermediaries.[4]

Taking the western Eurasian transcriptions together, they differ from Xiōngnú in up to four significant ways:

1. Xiōngnú[5] is a two-syllable word, but Sogdian xwn~γwn, Syriac Hūn, Armenian Hon,[6] and Pahlavi Xyōn have no second syllable, while the second syllable in Greek Ounnoi, and Latin Hunni seems to be simply a case ending;
2. Xiōngnú begins with a velar spirant [x], but Sanskrit Hūṇa, Syriac Hūn, and Armenian Hon have a glottal spirant [h], and Greek Ounnoi has no initial spirant at all;[7]
3. Xiōngnú has a velar nasal [η]; Sanskrit Hūṇa has a retroflex , while the other forms have a dental nasal [n];
4. Xiōngnú has some form of glide or semi-vowel [j] or [i] preceding the main vowel; except for Avestan Ẋyaona and Pahlavi Xyōn, the other western Eurasian variants do not.

I will not belabor here the additional fact that the rounded vowel seems to vary between u and o both within and between the various transcriptions.

Of course, Xiōngnú is only the modern Mandarin pronunciation of the characters 匈奴. Perhaps some or all of these features might be the result of developments in Chinese phonology postdating the time when those characters were first applied to the Xiōngnú. In fact, only with the last of the four discrepancies mentioned is this possible. Xiōngnú 匈奴 was pronounced in Early Mandarin (of the Yuan dynasty) as [xjuŋ-nu],[8] in Tang-era Middle Chinese (Northwest dialect) as [xiuŋ-ndu].[9] Older reconstructed pronunciations include Wei-era Middle Chinese of Luoyang as [xuawŋ-nɔ][10] and *huoŋ-no in Old Northwest Chinese, c. A.D. 400.[11] Finally, for the Han era, when the transcription would have been actually coined, Old Chinese (Han or Zhou dynasty) reconstructions include:

*x(r)joŋ-na;[12]
*hioŋ-na < *hoŋ-nâ;[13]
*xoŋ-NA.[14]

As one may see, the speculations of Pulleyblank[15] about an initial consonant cluster in xiōng have mostly not been confirmed by subsequent researchers, although Baxter does posit a possible initial consonant cluster. Three of the four features that differentiate Xiōngnú from Ounnoi —the second syllable, the velar spirant [x], the velar nasal [ŋ] — can be found as far back as one can go. Only the glide, whether [j], [u], or [i], might be a feature of later Chinese phonetic evolution.

It is sometimes thought that the second syllable in the Chinese transcription, , must have been added simply in its meaning as “slave” and hence may be removed from consideration in analyzing the phonetic elements. But this [is] purely arbitrary; no case of xiōng alone is ever attested for this ethnonym in Chinese. Nor is a semantically significant classifier attached to a purely phonetic core transcription; xiōng  and  form a whole phrase, “savage slaves,” and are both simultaneously phonetic and semantic in content.

We thus have a serious problem: while the Sogdians used the word xwn and the Indians the word Hūṇa to designate quite specifically the people called Xiōngnú in Chinese, the names appear to be quite different. So far there have been three broad schools addressing this problem (my analysis follows that of de la Vaissière in “Huns et Xiongnu”).[16] The first, represented by Otto Maenchen-Helfen insists that the philological difficulties cannot be overcome and the whole issue has been an issue of coincidences and misunderstandings. As I have stated, I believe the data marshaled by de la Vaissière makes this position untenable. Sogdian Xwn and Sanskrit Hūṇa were used to designate the historical Xiōngnú that is a plain fact which must be explained, not just ignored.

A second position is what de la Vaissière calls the “pan-Iranian” position, espoused by Harold Bailey, S. Parlato, and recently by Jamsheed Choksy.[17] In this position, all or most of the terms — Sogdian xwn~γwn, Khorazmian Hūn, Khotanese Saka Huna, Syriac Hun-, Armenian Hon, Pahlavi Xyōn, and Sanskrit Hūṇa — are to be derived from the same Iranian word, attested in Avestan as Ẋyaona, which has the generic sense of “hostiles, opponents.” Greek Ounnoi, Khounoi, Khiōnes, etc. are all derivatives of these Iranian forms, in various stages of phonetic evolution. Thirdly, de la Vaissière’s own explanation may be called the “steppe transmission” position. In this position, Xiōngnú and Ounnoi are connected as autonyms of steppe peoples of uncertain language. The philological difficulties involved in their connection are outgrowths of our ignorance of the particular languages involved. Such a position has the benefit of not offering any hypotheses which can be disproven, but it can hardly be considered satisfactory. Nor does it offer any way to distinguish real cognates from fake.

How these terms could be versions of one another is a major philological puzzle involving the very first case in which a people originating in Mongolia impinged on the history of Europe. I believe that I can shed significant new light, particularly by highlighting the key role of India in the process of sound change. Its resolution will be a fitting tribute to Donald Ostrowski, whose research has so illuminated a later phase in this history of East-West interaction in Central Eurasia.

The Greek Terms and Their Eastern Correspondences

The place to begin this discussion is with the range of Greek forms that have been linked to the Huns, considering for each their possible origins in Central Asian or Eurasian steppe languages.

Ounnoi

The general Greek term for the Huns, and the only one used for those in the Pontic and Hungarian steppes and in Roman service, is Ounnoi or Ounoi. This is a masculine plural, implying the unattested singular Ounnos~Ounos, with the -os being the nominative ending and presumably not part of the root. Greek had already lost the glottal spirant by the second century a.d.,[18] so it is not surprising that the original form lacked the “rough breathing” that in Ancient Greek had marked the glottal spirant [h]. The geminate consonant -nn- is presumably not significant, since it varies with a non-geminate spelling in -n- and in any case Greek geminate consonants had become simple consonants long before this time.[19] This Ounnoi, without the initial h-, is probably the origin of the Latin Hunni of Ammianus Marcellinus, Marcellinus Comes, and Jordanes. Given the Greek form, it is likely that the Latin h- in Hunni was in fact not pronounced, any more than Ammianus Marcellinus’s h- in Halani “Alans” or Jordanes’ h- in Hunuguri “On-Oghur” (Greek Onongouroi) was intended to be pronounced. Later Latin variants in ch- should be the result of confusion with either the name War-Khunni that designated the Avars and/or Ptolemy’s Khounoi.

In John Malalas’s Chronography, however, there is one attested example of a different form: Ounna~Ouna (a feminine singular). Given the expectation that ethnonyms would be masculine plurals, the less expected feminine form is more likely to be the original, which was then conformed to the expected masculine plural. This also then demonstrates that the second syllable in Greek is not simply a case ending, but was originally part of the word, and was only later reinterpreted as a case ending.

What non-Greek form can be linked with Ounna~Ouna? Only forms with an initial glottal spirant [h] could possibly be considered, since any form with a velar spirant [x] would become kh- in Greek. Similarly, if the original form is a disyllabic Oun(n)a, then any form with only one syllable may be excluded. Finally, any form with the glide -y- may be excluded, since that too would be represented in Greek (see Khyōn below). These considerations eliminate Ptolemy’s earlier Khounoi, Armenian Hon-, Syriac Hun-, Khorazmian Hūn, Sogdian xwn~γwn,[20] Avestan Ẋyaona, and Pahlavi Xyōn from consideration. The only extant Asian variant which could conceivably be the origin of the Greek Oun(n)a is Sanskrit Hūṇa and Khotanese Saka Huna-. But Saka Huna- is attested only in the ninth century and in an obviously “generic” context.[21] By contrast, Sanskrit Hūṇa is attested from at least the third century a.d., and probably from the first century b.c., and in an ethnically specific context (see below). Thus, the Sanskrit version would seem to be the only possible origin of Greek Oun(n)a.

But historically, deriving a Greek name for a people of the Pontic steppe directly from a Sanskrit name seems quite problematic. Could there be a basis for Ounna in an Iranian language, one that would be more historically and geographically plausible? Since Henning’s seminal article (1948)[22] it has been proposed that the xwn found in the Ancient Sogdian Letter II of c. 312 is the origin of Greek Ounna, etc. Since then, the term has been found as γwn and xwn in the eighth-century documents of Mug.[23] As mentioned, a Greek origin in Sogdian would presuppose that γwn~xwn must represent a form in initial h-. Sogdian itself has only a velar spirant [x], although a glottal spirant [h] has been recently proposed as an allophone.[24] But in foreign words, x (Semitic hēth) may represent “any kind of foreign h-sound,” and hence Xwn could represent Xun, Xūn, Hun, or Hūn.[25] The variant in γ is particularly significant here, since γ (Semitic gimel) is the usual representation of Sanskrit h in Sogdian (Table 1 at the end of this article). That this word is a glottal spirant is confirmed by the form in Arabic-script Khorazmian, where it is hūn, with a glottal spirant [h] (the Arabic script has both a glottal and a velar spirant). Syriac Hunāyē and Armenian Honk’ would suggest the same reading in [h].[26]

Even so, however, Sogdian-Khorazmian Hun~Hūn cannot be the origin of the Greek Ounna, because it does not have the second syllable. Fortunately, however, Chinese records preserve a word used in Sogdiana with a second syllable ending in the vowel -a. In a well-known passage from the Wèi shū , deriving from the record of a tribute mission sent from Sogdiana to North China in 457, a new dynasty in Sogdiana is described as of Xiōngnú origin:

The country of Sogd 粟特 is situated to the west of the Congling [Pamir mountains].... It is also called Wēnnà Shā ....[27]

Formerly, the Xiōngnú killed its king and took over the country. King Hūní 忽倪 was the third ruler of the line.

特國, 在葱西 。。。一名。。,匈奴其王而其國, 至王 倪已. [28]

This passage has a long history in Western writings about the Xiōngnú and Huns. Enoki and de la Vaissière have clarified its historical situation, purging it of previous speculations about Alans and Crimea and so forth. Even so, the passage still clearly links the history of the Xiōngnú with the Ounna~Ounnoi.

As Kazuo Enoki recognized, Wēnnà , to be read in Middle Chinese as 'Onna, can be identified with Greek Ounnoi, and even more exactly with John Malalas’ original Ounna.[29] With shā being the well-known Iranian royal title shāh, Wēnnàshā 溫那沙 is “Shāh/King of the ‘Onna.” Later, Wēn (approximate Middle Chinese: ‘On), in an abbreviated form minus , became the family name of the kings of Samarqand.[30]

But a closer look at the Chinese transcription and its historical context shows, I believe, that this form found in Sogdiana must be derived from a Baktrian Greek reading of Sanskrit Hūṇa.

The phoneme in Middle Chinese marked in the transcription above by ‘ represents the glottal stop [ʔ], the presence or absence of which remained a phonemic distinction in Chinese up through the Ming dynasty, depending on the dialect.[31] Within the Chinese transcription of Sanskrit (which should also apply to South Central Asian[32] languages generally), the glottal stop corresponds to a “plain vocalic onset,” while Sanskrit h- (which may [have] been voiced as [ɦ], at least in some contexts) is always represented by Chinese syllables with reconstructed initials as [x] or [γ].[33] Wēnnàshā 溫那沙 and Wēn  thus must represent a variant that has already lost any initial spirant and has a plain vocalic onset. In short, something more or less identical to Greek Ounna can be found as far east as Sogdiana in the fifth century, if not before.

The word shāh, in this variant ‘Onnashāh,[34] offers an important clue to its historical origin, linking it to Baktria after the Sassanids. Sogdian has a variety of forms for “king” — ‘γš’wn’k,[35] ‘yš’ywn’k,[36] xšwny,[37] and xšywny,[38] to be read as khshēwanē or variations thereof — which all represent a much more conservative form of this common Iranian word than the Pahlavi shāh. The term shāh is attested in Sogdian only in a borrowed compound form, “shah of shahs”:š’nš’y (read as shanshāy), cf. Saka shahenishāhi.[39] But in Baktria, after the fall of the Kushans, the term shāh was used under Sassanid influence widely in coins and documents as a compound in terms such as Košanoša(h)o “Kushānshāh” and Sahanosao “Shāhanshāh.”[40] The term ‘Onnashāh closely parallels this form in having an ethnonym followed by the word shāh, in its Pahlavi form; it thus indicates influence from the post-Kushan rulers of Baktria.

This derivation of the ‘Onnashāh from Baktrian fits perfectly with the history of Sogdiana at this time. The ‘Onnashāh dynasty came to Sogdiana not by a fresh invasion from the northern steppes, but by a conquest of Sogdiana from the south. The conquest is associated with the Baktrian king Kidāra whose people appear in Sanskrit sources as Hūṇa and in Greek as Ounnoi.[41] According to de la Vaissière’s reconstruction, Kidāra began to expand from his Baktrian base area both north into Sogdiana and south into India around 420.[42] The southern origin of the ‘Onnashāh title and the ‘On family is confirmed by the Chinese statement in the later Súi shū 隋書 that Samarqand’s Wēn/’On dynasty was of Yuèzhī  origin.[43] By this time, in Chinese, Yuèzhī designated Baktriana, where the Yuèzhī had settled, and all its resident people.

For the same reasons as Greek Ounna, the ‘Onna in this title ‘Onnashāh can only be derived from Sanskrit Hūṇa, out of all known ethnonyms in the region. The only differences are the alteration of the retroflex to a coronal n and the elimination of the initial glottal spirant. (The gemination of the -n- is probably an artefact of the Greek and Chinese transcriptions and has no significance.) Both of these changes would normally be expected in any Greek transcription of a Sanskrit word. To be sure, the Baktrian language did have a glottal spirant (represented in the Greek script as the upsilon υ) and did not necessarily eliminate that sound in its transcriptions of Sanskrit.[44] But we do find examples of eliminated [h], as seen for example, in the name Heracles (Erakilo) and the Hephthalites (Evadhalo).[45] Given the profound influence of Greek in Baktria, and the attested Greek inscriptions, some written by ethnic Indians,[46] it is an irresistible conclusion that the transition from Sanskrit Hūṇa to Greek Ounna happened not in the East Roman Empire, but directly in Baktria.

This is also suggested by the attestation of the form Ounnia in the Christian geographer Cosmas Indicopleustes, writing around a.d. 550. In this work, he alternates Ounnoi and Ounnia (each used twice) and links them consistently to Baktria and northern India.[47] If that is the case, and given the rapid decline in Baktrian Hellenism after the first century b.c.,[48] the first use of Ounna in Greek should long predate the “great invasions.”

But where did Sanskrit Hūṇa come from? I believe the clue to this lies in two terms, Greek Khōnai and Chinese Hūní , which have not yet been linked.

Khōnai(oi)

This name, as the “nation of the Khōnai(-ōn),” appears in an East Roman itinerary to the Garden of Eden, dating to the sixth century. Such an itinerary may seem unpromising as a source of geographical data. Indeed, Otto Maenchen-Helfen has arbitrarily rejected its value, claiming these Khōnai are to be sought “somewhere around the Red Sea.[49] But the itinerary, especially when read alongside Cosmas Indicopleustes,[50] clearly links this “nation of the Khōnai” to India.[51] Moravcsik associated the name with the Pahlavi term Xyōn, and thus with Greco-Roman Khiōn(itai) and with the War-Khōn(itai).[52] In fact, it looks quite different from either Khiōn(itai) or War-Khōn(itai), themselves quite distinct from each as well in origin and form. From Khiōn it differs in the absence of the glide -i-, while from both it differs in the presence of a second syllable with a diphthong -ai. This diphthong, as well as velar spirant [x], makes it likewise different from Sanskrit Hūṇa.

There is, however, a name with which this term may be matched quite closely, and that is found in the passage from the Wèi shū I have already cited. In addition to the title ‘Onnashāh K那沙K already examined, there also appears the name of the current king, Hūní 忽倪. In Tang-era Mandarin, Hūní is attested as xwər-ngiäi,[53] while Coblin reconstructs the Old Northwest Mandarin as *hot-ŋiei and Pulleyblank reconstructs the Wei-era Luoyang Mandarin as *xwət-ŋεi.[54] Keeping in mind that shēng 入聲 (“entering tone”)[55] characters were used very freely in transcriptions, with their character being usually determined by the initial consonant of the following character,[56] the actual Middle Chinese pronunciation of this binome should be something like *xuŋjai or *xoŋεi, that is, a rather close match for the Greek Khōnai. The only major difference was the switch from a velar nasal to a dental nasal. But this is easily understood by the limitations of Greek syllable structure, where a velar nasal can be found only at the end of a syllable and before a g-, k-, or kh- which begins a new syllable (i.e., -γγ-, -γχ, etc.). From the Chinese transcription, it is evident that the syllable structure was *xo-ŋεi, and in this situation, transforming the velar nasal to a dental nasal did no more violence to the word than would have the other possibility, transforming it into *xoŋgεi.

The semantic implication is that *xoŋεi 忽倪 represents not a personal name, but the king’s title, “King of the *Xoŋεi/Khōnai. Such a confusion of royal titles and personal names is common enough and should cause no surprise. But such an identification also leads irresistibly to an identification of King of the Khōnai/*Xoŋεi with the Shāh of the Onna/Hūṇa, and both ethnonyms with the Xiōngnú.

Now, if Onna/Hūṇa may seem hard to relate to Xiōngnú, Khōnai/*Xoŋεi actually bears a rather close resemblance to *Hoŋ-nâ which in one reconstruction, at least, is given as the conjectural common Chinese form of the word.[57] The two significant differences are the ŋ in *Xoŋεi for ŋ-n in *Hoŋ-nâ and the final -i in *Xoŋεi.

The first may actually be an idiosyncrasy of the transcription. As mentioned, Chinese transcriptions of foreign words frequently geminate consonants in transcription. In the original Chinese transcription of Xiōngnú, one may plausibly assume that ŋa was rendered as na (modern Mandarin nu ) both because of its meaning and because the final velar nasal of xiong “covered” that part of the pronunciation. That is, the ŋ-n combination could be simply rendering a ŋ.[58] As for the -ai vs. -a, Paul Pelliot early recognized a paradigm in Mongolian in which personal, place, or ethnonyms appear frequently in three forms: -Æ, -i, and -n, giving as examples alasha~alashai~alashan, as well as altai~altan and qitai-qitan as examples of the second two.[59] To the latter two one may add alta, a common form of “gold” today, and khatā, the form that qitai~qitan took in many Western transcriptions. The same three-way variant is found in adjectives and verb forms as well: thus, with the adjective “bad,” we have maghu, maghui, and maghun.[60] The exact semantic valences of -Æ, -i, and -n are still unclear (definiteness and plurality seem to be involved), but they were certainly productive of variant forms in ethnonyms.

Nor does invoking such a variation necessarily depend on seeing the Xiōngnú as Mongolic in language. As Pelliot's examples show, the variant forms once generated easily cross language boundaries. Kitan is found in Mongolian, Khitay is found in Russian, and Khatā is found in Turkic languages — but all were generated as variant forms of a single stem. Moreover, the -i and  -n as morphemes, perhaps having a collective or plural meaning, may well cross language family boundaries, just as the Altaic vocational suffix -chi was borrowed into Tajiki and the Romance plural in -s was borrowed into English.

But if Khōnai can, via *Xoŋεi 忽倪, be seen as a variant of Xiōngnú 匈奴, then Hūṇa too can likely be seen as a variant of Xiōngnú. If we assume the Chinese -ngn- of Xiōngnú actually represents a single velar nasal, then Sanskrit too, just like Greek, would have a serious problem representing this sound. Velar nasals (whether the ṇ or ü) must be followed by a stop, not a vowel. Sanskrit also has no velar spirant [x] and so would have to represent it with an [h]. Khōnai and Hūṇa can both be seen, therefore, as independent transcriptions, not mediated through each other or through any other attested form, of the term Xiōngnú in two reconstructed variant forms: *Xoŋai~*Xoŋa.

With regard to the four differences between Ounnoi and Xiōngnú, the exact point at which they occurred can now be pinpointed:

1. The second syllable was lost twice independently, once in Greek as the final vowel -a was assimilated into the nominative plural -oi, and once in the Eastern Iranian languages Sogdian and Khorazmian as a result of a usual process of dropping short final -a from Sanskrit loan words.
2. The velar spirant [x] became a glottal spirant [h] in the Sanskrit transcription, because Sanskrit does not have velar spirants. It was lost in the process of transfer from Sanskrit to Greek, which took place in Baktria.
3. The semi-vowel or glide -i- or -y- in Xiōngnú is an artefact of later Chinese phonetic evolution.
4. The nasal was originally a velar nasal [ŋ] followed immediately by a vowel. This sequence was impossible in Sanskrit and so [ŋ] was replaced by the retroflex dental nasal . The retroflex sound was likewise impossible in Greek and Iranian languages, and was replaced by a coronal dental.

For a general summary of my conclusions on this group of terms related to Greek Ounna and Khōnai, see Table 3.

Khiōn(es~itae)

This term appears by itself only in Latin, in Ammianus Marcellinus’s account of the years 35659. There the Chionitae appear as a people in the east of the Sassanid empire, under their king Grumbates, who first fought against and then allied with the Sassanids. Ammianus Marcellinus explicitly defines these Khionites as a type of Hunni (“Huns”), although he says they were racially different from the other Hunni.[61] As Etienne de la Vaissière has pointed out, the name Grumbates is now attested in Baktrian as Gorambad, adding to the verisimilitude of the account.[62] The Latin name Chionitae appears to be also related to the term Kermikhiōnes, which the historian Theophanes Byzantios (author of a chronicle covering a.d. 566–81) says was the Persian name for the Türks. This may be analyzed as Middle Persian Karmīr Xyōn (Red Xyōn).[63]

Although Khiōn(es~itae) is not particularly common in Greco-Roman sources, it is well-known in the Persian world. There it appears in Pahlavi sources as Xyōn and in Syriac as Xyōn-. The Pahlavi Middle Persian certainly goes back to Avestan, where the name appears twice in the Mazdean scriptures as local enemies of the prophet Zarathustra. The Avestan form is Ẋyaona, where the marks a unique letter with a diacritical, of unclear reading.[64] As Jamsheed Choksy has noted, this certainly gives yaona the appearance of being a foreign word, even as the scriptural narrative seems to treat him as the ruler of an Iranian kingdom, whose king, Arejataspa (Pahlavi: Arjasp), has an Iranian name.[65] In any case, the Avestan form is certainly the origin of the Greco-Roman variants: Avestan Ẋyaona > Pahlavi Xyōn > Latin Chionitae, Greek Khiōnes. Moreover, the vehicle of transmission to the Roman empire was via the Sassanid Empire, not the Pontic steppe. In Sassanid usage, the name designated both the ancient enemies of Mazdeism, but also the contemporary “Huns” broadly speaking, of which the Türks were seen as but a variety.

Can yaona be linked to the Xiōngnú? Not according to the present state of knowledge. Until Zarathustra's time and place is located more specifically than “Bronze Age Central Asia,” any proposed link of Xiōngnú/*Xoŋa(i) to Avestan Ẋyaona must remain purely speculative. Moreover, while Baxter reconstructs the name as *x(r)jorŋ-na, in which the initial [x(r)j] could possibly represent the rare initial Ẋy-, Schuessler's reconstruction of the Xiōngnú name goes back to *hioŋ-na and eventually to *hoŋ-nâ which I link to Hūní/*Xoŋa(i) 忽倪.[66] This much simpler initial is rather harder to link to Ẋyaona than Baxter's complex reconstruction. Finally, Xiōngnú/*Xoŋa(i) was not an ethnonym, but a dynastic name, almost or completely unknown before the time of the first ruler Mòdùn 冒頓 around 200 b.c.[67] This makes a historical link to Ẋyaona, a term attested at least several centuries earlier and far to the west, problematic, to say the least.

Not so difficult, but also not without its problems is any relation of Pahlavi Xyōn to the parallel Sogdian xwn~γwn and Syriac Hunāyē. As regards the Sogdian, the Khorazmian form Hūn would seem to indicate that Henning was correct in his argument that the initial consonant in xwn-γwn is to be read as a glottal spirant [h], not a velar spirant [x]. Likewise, although Choksy points out that the -yao- of Avestan “experienced a variety of resolutions ranging from (as discussed below for xyōn) to ō (written as w and v),”[68] it seems very doubtful, even on the evidence he presents, whether an evolution of -yao- to -ō- could have occurred by the 3rd century a.d. in the conservative Eastern Iranian dialects, if it had not occurred in the more progressive Pahlavi dialects even by the 9th century. Meanwhile in Syriac, that Hunāyē (hwny’) does not derive from Xyōn is indicated by the fact that Syriac does have a direct derivation from Xyōn which is quite different: Xyonāyē (kywny’).[69] The presence of k instead of h, and yw instead of w in this second written form makes their absence in the first all the more significant. Joshua the Stylite indeed uses both forms, with Kīyūnāyē as a kind of specialized equivalent of Hūnāyē: “In our own time, the Persian king Peroz received gold on many [occasions] from the Romans for his wars against the Kīyūnāyē, i.e., the Hūnāyē.”[70] Clearly, this passage demonstrates that Kīyūnāyē and Hūnāyē are seen as two different words for the same people. The term is also found occasionally in other historical works, such as the Martyrdom of Mar Ma’īn (dated to c. 363), and the list of maphrians (roughly metropolitans) in Bar Hebraeus, demonstrating that the term here is no corruption.[71] Since Kīyūnāyē is obviously derived from Pahlavi Xyōn, Hūnāyē is then just as obviously not.

Moreover, even if Sogdian xwn~γwn could be derived from yaona that does not mean it was. The Sanskrit Hūṇa, which as I have argued had already spawned Greco-Baktrian 'Onna/Ounna in Baktria, and would later spawn Khotanese Saka Huna, could certainly have spawned Sogdian xwn~γwn, to be read as Hun.

If there is a link between Sogdian xwn~γwn, then certainly Sanskrit Hūṇa must be the origin of Sogdian Hun, not the other way around.

First, while Sanskrit has both retroflex and ordinary coronal n, Sogdian has only the coronal n. If this Hun(n)a form was borrowed into Sanskrit from Sogdian, it would be represented with an ordinary coronal n and not with a retroflex, but a retroflex in Sanskrit can only be represented by a coronal n in Sogdian (see Table 2). Secondly, Sogdian frequently omits final -a in borrowed Sanskrit words, but there is no reason for Sanskrit to add a paragogic -a to Sogdian or other Iranian words. In Tokharian languages, it is a general rule that Sanskrit final -a becomes -e/ä with animate nouns and -Æ (zero) in inanimate nouns.[72]

In Sogdian, however, even animate nouns ending in -a frequently go to -Æ (see Table 2).[73] We see another example of this in the dynastic name Wénnà 溫那 < ‘Onna which from the mid-fifth to the late sixth century was abbreviated to Wén < ‘On.

Finally, if xwn~γwn is to be read like Khorazmian Hūn, then it has a glottal spirant, a sound not native to the language,[74] but found in Sanskrit. As noted, the Sogdian γ is used especially for the h borrowed from Sanskrit (see Tables 1 and 2). Thus, Sanskrit Hūṇa could generate Sogdian Hun but not vice versa.

For these reasons, I think it most likely that de la Vaissière[75] is correct and Pahlavi Xyōn, when used to designate various nomads to the east, is a purely learned Sassanid and Mazdean term, derived not from any living tradition, but solely from an identification of contemporary nomads with the yaona of the Zoroastrian scriptures. It is, thus, the equivalent of the Greek designation of the Ounna as Massagetai or Sauromatai, one more of the many “archaistic names” of the Huns.[76] Sogdian xwn~γwn, Khorazmian Hūn, and Khotanese Saka Huna- are all most likely to be derived from Sanskrit Hūṇa, not from Avestan yaona.

For a general summary of my conclusions so far, see Tables 3 and 4.

Khounoi~Khōn(itai)

This brings us to the last Greek forms with a velar spirant. Under a form with a velar spirant [x] comes the earliest name to be identified, by some at least, with the “Huns”: Khounoi in Ptolemy, placed in the western Pontic steppe between the Iranian Rhoxolani and the Dacian or Germanic Bastarnae.[77] A form in Kh- next appears in the Chronicle of Menander Protector, covering years a.d. 558–82, and in the continuation by Theophylactus Simocatta, covering years 582–602.

In these sixth-century instances, the name appears in a compound with Ouar (= War), as Ouarkhōnitai in Menander, and as Ouar and Khounni [sic] together in Theophylactus Simocatta and Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopulos (c. 1256–1317) who cites him. This twin people is part of the Turkic Oghurs and is identified with the Avars (Abaroi) in the Pontic and Caspian steppes.[78]

The name, thus, appears to be of a Turkic people. No explicit identification is made with the “Huns” by any ancient author, although the variant in Theophylactus Simocatta, with -ou- for ō, the geminate n, and a plural in -i, seems influenced by a Greek back-translation of Latin Hunni. This name could be dismissed except that it is the only one of the names found in Greek sources that can be plausibly associated with Sogdian Xwn (probably Khōn). This name would certainly have entered Greek with an initial velar spirant [x] (= kh-). Moreover, in the link with the War-Khōn, this seems to be the first name that we can convincingly call an autonym of the steppe peoples themselves, uninfluenced by Sanskrit or Avestan.

There is, moreover, a very similar ethnonym attested in Turkic languages: the Qun (attested in Chinese as , pronounced Hūn in Modern Mandarin).[79]

This name appears as one of many clan names among the original Turkic-speaking peoples, the Oghuz (also known as Tegreg or “High Carts”),[80] during the Türk and Uyghur eras.[81] The Greek velar spirant kh [x] regularly corresponds to [q] in Old Turkic.[82] Indeed, the Greek and Chinese histories of the Qun and War-Khōn appear to refer to the same events. Just as the War-Khōn were opponents of the Türk empire, so too in the Súishū, the Abar (Ābá 阿拔) and Qun appear alongside the Tegreg 鐵勒, Izgil 思結, and others in a list of peoples rebelling against the qaghan Tardu of the new Türk empire.[83] Later, the Qūn also appear in al-Bīrūnī’s Tafhim (c. 1029), and the geography of al Marwazī (fl. 1056–1120) as one of the “eastern Turks.”[84]

There is every reason to accept the identity of the War-Khōn(itai) with the Qun of Turkic history. It is, thus, the only Greek ethnonym I have reviewed so far which actually has a clear link to the Altaic world. Qun is often related to Quman, as two derivations from a single stem, Turkic quba “pale yellow, grey, dun” or Mongolian gho’a “beautiful, elegant; fallow (as an animal color).”[85] This etymology is reflected in such terms as “pallid ones” that later become closely associated with the western half of the Qipchaq confederacy, which dominated the Pontic steppe from the 12th to 13th century. As part of the Quman-Qipchaq confederacy taking refuge in Hungary, Qun became the origin of the well-known Kun family name there.[86] On the other hand, if we accept an identification of the Qun with Ptolemy's Khounoi, then it is most likely not an originally Turkic term, but one derived from Iranian or some other language; its association with quba~gho’a “fallow, pallid” would then be a folk etymology. In any case, I can see no justification for associating any of these terms with the Huns or Xiongnu.

For a general summary of my conclusions on these terms, see Table 5.

From *Xoŋa(i) to Hūṇa

Given the picture presented so far, the greatest difficulty in understanding the succession of variant names is not in their philological connections but in their historical connections. It has generally been assumed that the movement of the names for Xiōngnú and Hun followed the steppe migration routes westward. But instead we find a succession of variant forms that leap from Mongolia to India, and then from India spread north and west to the Roman empire.

To help explain this seemingly anomalous pattern, I would like to return now to Sanskrit Hūṇa and the origin of the “Huns.” As I have argued, Hūṇa is likely a straightforward transcription of the name Xiōngnú, in its original pronunciation as [*xoŋa] (with a variant [*xoŋai]). Confirming this fact is the clear evidence that Hūṇa was believed by well-informed Indians to be the same word as Xiōngnú. As Etienne de la Vaissiére has demonstrated, the Buddhist translator Dharmarakùa (Ch. Zhu Fahu 竺法護) in 288 and 308 found the word Hūṇa mentioned in two different Buddhist sutras, the Tathāgatācintyaguhyanirdeśa-sūtra and the Lalitavistarasūtra as one of the far-flung peoples of the world and translated them both into Chinese as Xiōngnú. As a man of Yuèzhi/Tokharian ancestry working at Dunhuang, he was presumably well-informed about these things.[87]

When was *Xoŋa(i) transcribed into Sanskrit as Hūṇa? This certainly happened well before the fifth-century Hūṇa invasions of India. The earliest known use of the term in Sanskrit is in the Buddhist sutras from which those translations were drawn, the Lalitavistarasūtra and Tathāgatā-cintyaguhyanirdeśa-sūtra. Sadly, these two texts, like most Buddhist sutras cannot be dated, except that they must obviously have been written before they were translated, that is, before 288308. However, Étienne de la Vaissière has argued that the historical context of the other references to peoples such as the Śaka, Parthians, Greeks (Yavana), and Tokharians (Tukhāra), but without Kushans, place this text roughly around the first century b.c., and in any case before the Kushan expansion. Within this context, the Tathāgatācintyaguhyanirdeśa-sūtra refers to the Hūṇa/Xiōngnú as a language group, one distinct from these others mentioned.[88] Thus, knowledge of the Hūṇa /Xiōngnú must have entered India as part of an early expansion of Indian geographical knowledge and international trade, long before the Hūṇa actually impinged on India’s borders.

It may seem surprising that the eastern Iranian languages (Sogdian, Khorazmian, and Khotanese Saka) derived their name for these nomads from the south, from Sanskrit, and not directly from them as neighbors. But the same is probably true for their terms for China itself. The Indian and Iranian terms for China are fairly similar: Sogdian čyn > čynstan, Sanskrit Cīna,[89] and as Pelliot demonstrated, they certainly derive from the Qin dynasty.[90] The rather important philological question of whether the sequence of Qin in Middle Chinese dzin > cīna > čyn or dzin > čyn > cīna is more plausible or else whether dzin generated čyn and cīna independently has never been investigated, to my knowledge. But once again, a form with final -a is much more likely to be the origin of a form without, than the other way around.

Two avenues of contact between China and the West are documented. The first one is that through the Gansu 甘肅 corridor and the Tarim Basin that was opened by HanWudi’s 漢武帝 conquests, from 121 b.c. on. The other began almost two centuries earlier with the Qin dynasty conquest of Sichuan 四川 in 316 b.c. This opened up trade through Yunnan 雲南 through Assam and Bengal into Northern India. That this route, much less famous than the much bally-hooed “Silk Road,” predated the Central Asian route is demonstrated by the astonishment of the Han envoy and scout Zhang Qian who found Sichuanese cloths and bamboos already in the markets of Baktria.[91] It is by no means impossible then, that the Xiōngnú came to the attention of India as early as the second century b.c., and via trade through Sichuan and Yunnan, not Central Asia.

As de la Vaissière argued, the Xiōngnú do not appear to have actually directly impinged upon the eastern Iranian speakers until around A.D. 350. Serindia was mostly Tokharian-speaking, and one might imagine that there would be an independent Tokharian reflex of the Xiōngnú name in those languages, but such names have not survived. But Serindia itself was in no position to be an exporter or transmitter of Chinese or Xiōngnú names and terms to the eastern Iranian people. The image of Kashghar, Khotan, Kucha and others as flourishing cities along the Silk Road must not be projected back anachronistically. In a seminal article, Erich Zurcher pointed out that Serindia was until about 120 a.d. quite poor and underpopulated. Chinese was its only written language. By 260 at the latest, Serindian cities had begun writing in a non-Chinese language — not the native vernacular, but instead Prakrit in the Kharoùñhī script, derived from northwest India. Far from being a transmitter of East-West interaction, Serindia, until the third century, was an obstacle to cultural interchange (Zürcher 1990; Boucher 2006:34–37; Hansen 1998). Even after that time, until the sixth century, Serindian cities continued to use Indian languages exclusively, at least for religious purposes (Nattier 1990). It should, thus, not be surprising that the eastern Iranians did not adopt whatever term the Serindians had been using for the Xiōngnú but instead simply adopted the already well-known Indian term. This the Serindians carried with them to the cities of China when they began trading there.

Contact with the Hūṇa/Xiōngnú, or at least with those that they and their neighbors all identified with Hūṇa/Xiōngnú, became much closer in the mid-fourth century. After a period of nomadic settlement in South Central Asia, around a.d. 350, Baktria emerged again, as it had under the Kushans/Yuèzhī, as a base for an expanding empire built by the new settlers. The Sassanids reached back into their history and revived the ancient Avestan term Ẋyaona/Xyōn/Khiōn to designate the invaders. By 420, these nomads, who continued the Kushan tradition of writing in Greek-script Baktrian, seem to have accepted the Sanskrit version of their ethnonym, i.e., Hūṇa, as their own. Thus Kidāra’s dynasty was called Ounnoi by the Greeks, Hūṇa in India, and, as I have demonstrated, 'Onna by its own branch dynasty in Sogdiana.[92] But with an actual influx of Xiōngnú, the native ethnonym finally made its occasional appearance in direct transcriptions: *Xoηεi/Hūní 忽倪 into Chinese and Khōnai into Greek.


Hūna, ‘Onna, and the Origin of the “Huns”

But how did it happen that around 375, when the East Roman Empire heard of a new nomadic empire from across the Don attacking the Alans, the term that they took over to designate these new nomads was not an Iranian, Turkic, or other native term, but a Greco-Baktrian version of the Sanskrit word for the Xiōngnú of Mongolia?

The answer must be that this encounter was the first chapter in the well-documented history of symbiosis between Central Asian merchants and sedentary empires. Although Ammianus Marcellinus presents his Huns as utterly alien, with no conceivable policy or desire other than slaughter, the fact that he and the other Greco-Roman historians used for them a term which had passed through Baktria and Sogdiana shows that South Central Asians must have mediated the knowledge that the Roman frontier generals and armies had about this people. Either the people of this new polity themselves actually called themselves Huna/Ounna, in which case their state or confederation must be seen as a result of Sogdian/Baktrian leadership and organization, or else this term was simply what they called themselves when speaking with Romans, in which case South Central Asians must have been their interpreters and diplomats. Either way, the appearance of the name Huna~Ounna~Ounnoi beyond the Don River can only mean that oasis Iranian influence had penetrated through the steppes of Kazakhstan and was shaping a political unit on the Don River, at least in part, to fulfill its purposes.

But this Central Asian mercantile influence must have been working on an ethnic reality that was already being shaped by movements from the east. In the case of South Central Asia, the fact that the new fifth-century monarchs in Samarqand titled themselves not just the ‘Onnashāh, but also the King of the *Xoηai (transcribed as *Xoηεi/Hūní 忽倪 or Khōnai) bears witness to a fresh influx of people named *Xoηai/Xiōngnú into South Central Asia. In the Pontic steppe, the evidence is less direct, but the fact that even the earliest of these Khiōnites and the Kidarites were identified by their Greek and Roman historians as species within the genus of Hunni/Ounnoi speaks to some linkage, however distant. And if nomads calling themselves *Xoηa(i) were the titular powers in this new polity, it would explain why at least the Greek writers, unlike the Syriac and Armenian ones, borrowed the name in a form that preserved the final -a.

The *Xoηai/’Onna/Ounna assault west over the Don was likely intended to serve the aims of mercantile clients, by establishing an outlet to the sea, such as at Sudak in Crimea which was later known as a Sogdian colony.[93] Jordanes refers to “Cherson [i.e., Crimea], where the avaricious traders bring in the goods of Asia” as being under the protection of the Akatziri Huns.[94] This is quite late, around A.D. 551, but at least testifies that this link between Asian commercial centers and Crimea predated the rise of the Türk empire. But if Sudaq in Crimea was one anchor of a “Silk Road,” the other anchor was not in China, but in India. In the year 313, Sogdian merchants were writing about China that “all the details of how China fared, it would be a story of debts and woe; you have no wealth from it”[95] — nor by 375 had Chinese affairs improved much. By contrast, India was under the powerful and stable Gupta empire. Although Indian merchants and their trade in Central Asia and Russia have too long been neglected by historians,[96] India was probably the ultimate destination in view for the money used to pay for the “goods of Asia.”

Conclusions

My conclusions may be summarized fairly briefly in the form of certain identifications and historical propositions:

1. Sanskrit Hūṇa and Greek Khōnai are transcriptions of the word Xiōngnú 匈奴, transcribed in Old Chinese as *Xoηa (variant: *Xoηai). Sanskrit writers were using this term well before any migration of the Xiōngnú from Mongolia. They may have learned about the Xiōngnú not via the “Silk Road” but via the Sichuan-Yunnan route.
2. Sanskrit Hūṇa was read by Greeks in Baktria as Ounna (Middle Chinese ‘Onna), a term that was probably used for the far off Xiōngnú nomads by the first century b.c. Only in the fourth century a.d. did these Ounna/’Onna become a matter of immediate political importance.
3. Sogdian xwn~γwn is to be read as Hun. It is a close relative of Khorazmian Hūn and Saka Huna. All derive from an original Sanskrit Hūṇa.
4. Sometime around a.d. 350, a polity in today’s Kazakhstan/Caspian steppe formed, in which Central Asian (Sogdian? Baktrian?) merchants played a major part as merchant partners. People from the old *Xoηa(i) empire also certainly played a leading role in this new polity.
5. Starting around 350 in South Central Asia, and around 375 in the Pontic Steppe, this new Hūṇa/’Onna/Hun force launched various attacks on the Sassanid empire and the Alans of the Pontic Steppe.
6. Greeks called these new invaders Ounna following Baktrian Greek usage, soon nativized to Ounnoi (Latin Hunni). The Sassanids used an archaic scriptural term to call them Khyōn from the name of the enemies of Zarathustra in the Avesta. But the Syriac and Armenian writers used their reflexes (Syriac Hunāyē, Armenian Honk’) of the most common Sogdian form Hun (written xwn~γwn) to refer to them.
7. After a ‘Onna/Hūṇa/Khōnai/*Xoηai king conquered Sogdiana, the rulers of Samarqand called themselves ‘Onnashah, or King of the *Xoηai/Khōnai, a title modeled on that of their Baktrian liege lord, “Kushānshāh.”




[1] Étienne de la Vaissière, “Huns et Xiongnu,” Central Asiatic Journal 49 (2005):3–26.
[2] The list of Greek and (in less exhaustive detail) Latin, Sanskrit, Armenian, and Iranian variants is found in Gyula Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, 2: Sprachreste der Türkvolker in den byzantinischen Quellen, 2nd ed. (Berlin:Akademie-Verlag, 1958).
[3] Otto Maenchen-Helfen, “Archaistic Names of the Hiung-nu,” Central Asiatic Journal 6 (1961):249–61, here 249.
[4] De la Vaissière, “Huns et Xiongnu,” 7–8.
[5] It should be noted that the X in Xiōngnú is a conventional marker used in the modern Pinyin transcription system to mark the Chinese phoneme [ɕ]. It has nothing to do with the velar spirant [x], although in this case it does develop historically from [x] in Early Mandarin and earlier.
[6] I omit here the Syriac and Armenian gentilics -āyē, and -k'.
[7] The rough breathing mark found in some cases seems to be everywhere insertions of later editors, influenced by the Latin.
[8] W. South Coblin, A Handbook of 'Phagsba Chinese (Honolulu: University of Hawai'I Press, 2007), §§36, 244.
[9] Tokio Takata, Tonkō shiryō ni yoru Chūgokugo shi no kenkyū: Kyū jisseiki no Kasei hōgen (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1988), §§1199, 0088a.
[10] Edwin G. Pulleyblank, Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1991), s.v. xiōng  and .
[11] W. South Coblin, A Compendium of Phonetics in Northwest Chinese, Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series, no. 7 (Berkeley, CA: Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 1994), §§1199, 0088.
[12] William H. Baxter, A Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology (Berlin:Mouton de Gruyter, 1992), 798, 779.
[13] Axel Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese (Honolulu:University of Hawaii Press, 2007), 541,404.
[14] Paul R. Goldin, “Steppe Nomads as a Philosophical Problem in Classical China,” in Mapping Mongolia: Situating Mongolia in the World from Geologic Times to the Present, ed. Paula Sabloff (Philadelphia:University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 220–46, here 226; cf. Laurent Sagart, The Roots of Old Chinese (Amsterdam:John Benjamins, 1999). The initial *h- in the Coblin and Schuessler reconstructions is a conventional representation, common in Chinese philology, of the velar spirant [x]. Chinese has, in fact, never had a genuine glottal spirant, although the velar spirant phoneme is often realized in a similar way.
[15] Edwin G. Pulleyblank, “The Consonantal System of Old Chinese,” Asia Major, n.s., 9 (1962):58–144, 206–65.
[16] De la Vaissière, “Huns et Xiongnu,” 3–10.
[17] Jamsheed Choksy, “Ẋiiaona- or Hun Reconsidered,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hung. 65, no. 1 (2012): 93–98.
[18] E. B. Petrounias, “Development in Pronunciation during the Hellenistic Period,” in A History of Ancient Greek from the Beginning to Late Antiquity, ed. A.-F. Christides (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2001), 599–609, here 607.
[19] Ibid., 607–08.
[20] B. Gharib, Sogdian Dictionary: Sogdian-Persian-English (Tehran:Farhangan Publications, 1995), §4377, 10732.
[21] W. B. Henning, “The Date of the Sogdian Ancient Letters,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 12, no. 3–4 (1948): 601–15, here 615; Otto Maenchen-Helfen, “Pseudo-Huns,” Central Asiatic Journal 1 (1955): 101–06, here 101; Harold W. Bailey, Culture of the Sakas in Ancient Iranian Khotan (1981; repr., Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1982), 91.
[22] Henning, “The Date of the Sogdian Ancient Letters.”
[23] Gharib, Sogdian Dictionary, §4377, 10732; de la Vaissière, “Huns et Xiongnu,” 10.
[24] Gharib, Sogdian Dictionary, xxxii–xxxiii.
[25] Henning, “The Date of the Sogdian Ancient Letters,” 615.
[26] Cf. ibid.
[27] I have omitted the phrases “It is what was Yancai in ancient times,” and “It lies on a great salt sea and to the northwest of Kangju. It is 16,000 li distant from Dai.” As Kazuo Enoki already realized, all of these comments are taken from the Hanshu account of Yancai, and are relevant to Sogd only on the condition that Sogd is in fact “Yancai”; Enoki, “Sogdiana and the Hsiung-nu,” Central Asiatic Journal 1 (1955): 43–62, here 47–50. This identification is, however, certainly incorrect. See also A. F. P. Hulsewé, China and Central Asia: The Early Stage. 125 b.c.– a.d. 23 (Leiden:Brill, 1979), 129–30; Edouard Chavannes, trans., “Les pays d’Occident d’après le Wei Lio,” T’oung Pao, ser. 2, vol. 6 (1905):519–71, here 558–59; Chavannes, “Les pays d’Occident d’après le Heou Han chou,” T’oung Pao, ser. 2, vol. 8 (1907):149–234, here 195–96.
[28] Wèi shū, Wèi shū (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 102/2285; cf. Li Yanshou, Beishi (Beijing:Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 97/3221; cf. Du You, Tongdian (Beijing:Zhonghua shuju, 1988), 193/5258.
[29] Enoki, “Sogdiana and the Hsiung-nu,” 59, 62 n. 60. For the Tang Middle Chinese pronunciation, see Takata, Tonkō shiryō ni yoru Chūgokugo shi no kenkyū, §§0781, 0005, 0054: *ʔwən, ndâз, ṣa1. Actual Tibetan spellings are 'on-þda-sha. The denasalization of the na is a special dialect feature of Northwest Chinese probably not found in the dialect being used here. Coblin reconstructs the Old Northwest Mandarin reading of c. 400 as *ʔon, *na, *ṣä (Compendium of Phonetics in Northwest Chinese, §§0781, 0005, 0054).
[30] Although the form in o-, rather than u- may seem to be a block to associating this with Greek Ou- and Sanskrit -u-, Chinese at this time did not have a final in -un, only -on, and syllables with this final transcribed Tibetan -on and Sanskrit -un indifferently; W. South Coblin, Studies in Old Northwest Chinese, Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series, no. 4 (Berkeley:Project on Linguistic Analysis, University of California, 1991): 94–95. Thus, its use as transcription is not significant for our purposes.
[31] Ibid., 23; Coblin, A Handbook of ‘Phagsba Chinese, 45.
[32] Inspired by the use of “East Central Asia” to refer to Xinjiang in Mallory and Mair’s The Tarim Mummies, I use the term “South Central Asia” to refer to roughly modern day Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and the neighboring areas of northeast Iran and northwest Pakistan. See J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair, The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West (London:Thames and Hudson, 2002).
[33] Coblin, Studies in Old Northwest Chinese, 23.
[34] I will write this variant hereafter with the geminate consonant, given that it is found as such in both Greek and Chinese reflex. But Greek had already lost geminate consonants and the gemination of consonants is a common feature of Chinese transcriptions and does not necessarily represent a geminate -n- in the original.
[35] Gharib, Sogdian Dictionary, §719.
[36] Ibid., §727.
[37] Ibid., §10666.
[38] Ibid., §10676.
[39] Ibid., §9157.
[40] Nicholas Sims-Williams, “Ancient Afghanistan and Its Invaders: Linguistic Evidence from the Bactrian Documents and Inscriptions,” Proceedings of the British Academy 116 (2002):225–42, here 232.
[41] Richard N. Frye, The History of Ancient Iran (Munich:C. H. Beck, 1984), 345–46, 349, 355; Moravcsik, Sprachreste der Türkvölker, 159, citing Priscus.
[42] Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders, trans. James Ward (Leiden:Brill, 2005), 97–117.
[43] Wei Zheng et al., Suishu, ed. Linghu Defen (Beijing:Zhonghua shuju, 1973), 83/1848; cf. Enoki, “Sogdiana and the Hsiung-nu,” 158–59.
[44] Sims-Williams, “Ancient Afghanistan and Its Invaders,” 230–31.
[45] Ibid., 228, 233.
[46] Nicholas Sims-Williams, “News from Ancient Afghanistan,” The Silk Road 4, no. 2 (2006–07): 5–10, here 5.
[47] E. O. Winstedt, ed., The Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1909), 69, 119, 325, 324 [text], 335, 345, 356 [notes].
[48] Sims-Williams, “News from Ancient Afghanistan,” 5.
[49] Maenchen-Helfen, “Pseudo-Huns,” 103–04. Maenchen-Helfen claimed that since the “neighbors of the Chonai to the West were the Diaba (Diva in Latin, Davad in Georgian) [who] lived east of India major (Ethiopia), Axioma (Aksum), and India minor (Southern Arabia), the Chonai must be sought somewhere around the Red Sea” (104). What he hides from his readers is that between this Diaba~Diva and the African and Arabian places mentioned later is stated to be a journey to a port and a sea voyage of seven stages. Nor does he mention Pigulevskaia’s plausible link of this Diaba~Diva to Sanskrit dvīpa; N. Pigulevskaia, Vizantiia na putiakh v Indiiu (Moscow:Akademiia nauk, 1951), 121–22.
[50] Cosmas Indicopleustes has Ounnia, and the Georgian text of the “Itinerary” corrupted Greek Khōnai to Khounia. I wonder, therefore, if Cosmas Indicopleustes did not originally have Ounnai, which might have been corrupted to Ounnia, as a parallel to the India associated with it.
[51] Z. Avalichvili, “Geographie et legend dans un écrit apocryphe de Sainte Basile,” Revue de l’Orient chrétien, 3rd ser., 26 (1927–28):279–304, here 281, 285,  289–90; Pigulevskaia, Vizantiia, 119–22, 409–410.
[52] Moravcsik, Sprachreste der Tiirkvölker, 236, s.v. Ounnoi.
[53] Takata, Tonkō shiryō ni yoru Chūgokugo shi no kenkyū, §§0787, 0227.
[54] Coblin, Compendium of Plwnetics in Northwest Chinese, §§0787, 0227; Pulleyblank, Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation, s.v. hū and ní .
[55] This term in Chinese philology refers to characters which were pronounced in Middle Chinese and earlier forms with non-nasal final consonants, -p, -t (or -r), and -k.
[56] Edwin G. Pulleyblank, “The Chinese Name for the Turks,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 85, no. 2 (1965):121–25.
[57] Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese, 541, 404. Note that Schuessler's *h is actually an [x].
[58] On such use of a syllable final and syllable initial together to render a single foreign sound, again see Pulleyblank, “The Chinese Name for the Turks.”
[59] Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo, 3 vols. (Paris:Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1959–63), 1:136, 31, 220; Paul Pelliot and Louis Hambis, Histoire des campagnes de Gengis Khan: Cheng-wou ts'in-tcheng lou (Leiden:E. J. Brill, 1951), 23, 129, 252.
[60] D. Tumurtogoo, Mongolian Monuments in Uighur Mongolian Script (XIII–XVI Centuries): Introduction, Transcription, and Bibliography (Taipei:Institute of Linguistics, Academica Sinica, 2006), 464–65.
[61] Ammianus Marcellinus, History, trans. J. C. Rolfe, 3 vols. (1935; repr., Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1982), 16:9.4, 17:5.1, 18:6.22, and 19:1.7; cf. Frye, History of Ancient Iran, 311.
[62] De la Vaissière, “Huns et Xiongnu,” 19.
[63] Moravcsik, Sprachreste der Tiirkvölker, 158–59, s.v. Kermikhiōnes.
[64] Ibid., 236, s.v. “Ounnoi”; Choksy, "Ẋiiaona- or Hun Reconsidered"; cf. Harold W. Bailey, “Iranian Studies,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies 6, no. 4 (1932):945–55, here 946; and Bailey, “Hyaona-,” in Indo-Celtica: Gedächtnisschrift für alf Sommerfelt, ed. H. Pilch and J. Thurow (Munich:Max Hueber, 1972), 18–28. Since the Greek and Latin transcriptions of the Pahlavi Xyōn clearly indicate a reading closer to [x] than [h], I follow Choksy in using rather than for the initial consonant.
[65] Choksy, “Ẋiiaona- or Hun Reconsidered.” For these references in context, see the translations from the Mazdean scriptures in Mary Boyce, trans. and ed., Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1990), 77 (Ẋyaona), 76, 77, 78, 79 (Xyōn), 96.
[66] Baxter, Handbook of Old Chinese Phonology, 798, 779; Schuessler, ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese, 541, 404.
[67] Edwin G. Pulleyblank, “Ji Hu: Indigenous Inhabitants of Shaanbei and Western Shanxi,” in Opuscula Altaica: Essays Presented in Honor of Henry Schwarz, ed. Edward H. Kaplan and Donald H. Whisenhunt (Bellingham:Western Washington University, 1994), 499–531; Goldin, “Steppe Nomads.”
[68] Choksy, “Ẋiiaona- or Hun Reconsidered,” 98.
[69] Moravcsik, Sprachreste der Türkvölker, 236, s.v. “Ounnoi,” citing Janos Harmatta.
[70] Frank R. Trombley and John W. Watt, trans., The Chronicle of Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite (Liverpool:Liverpool University Press, 2000), 9–10.
[71] Jean-Maurice Fiey, “Ma’īn, général de Sapor II, confesseur et Évéque,” Le Muséon 84 (1971): 437–53, here 441; Jean-Baptiste Abbeloos and Thomas Joseph Lamy, ed. and trans., Gregorii Barhebraei Chronicon Ecclesiasticum, 3 (Louvain:E. Peeters and Maisonneuve, 1877), 159–60. See Dickens, “References to Chionites in Syriac Literature.” I would like to thank Mark Dickens for sharing with me his expertise on Syriac philology.
[72] Masahiro Shōgaito, “On Uighur Elements in Buddhist Mongolian Texts,” Memoirs of the Toyo Bunko 49 (1991):27–49, here 29.
[73] The same is true in Baktrian; see Sims-Williams, “Ancient Afghanistan and Its Invaders,” 230–31.
[74] Henning, “The Date of the Sogdian Ancient Letters,” 605; Gharib, Sogdian Dictionary, xxxii–xxxiii.
[75] See de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders, 98.
[76] Maenchen-Helfen, “Archaistic Names of the Hiung-nu.”
[77] Moravcsik, Sprachreste der Türkvölker, 236, s.v. “Ounnoi”; Claudius Ptolemy, The Geography (1931; repr., New York:Dover, 1991), 80.
[78] Moravcsik, Sprachreste der Türkvölker, 223, 348; R. C. Blockley, trans., The History of Menander the Guardsman (Liverpool:F. Cairns, 1985), 171–79, frag. 43; Michael Whitby and Mary Whitby, trans., The History of Theophylact Simocatta (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1986), 188–93.
[79] Cf. Early Mandarin γun (Coblin, Handbook of ‘Phagsba Chinese, §378); Middle Chinese *γon-xwәm (cf. Coblin, Compendium of Phonetics in Northwest Chinese, §§0782, 0616–17; Takata, Tonkō shiryō ni yoru Chūgokugo shi no kenkyū, §§0782, 0616–17).
[80] Cf. Edwin G. Pulleyblank, “The ‘High Carts’: A Turkish-Speaking People before the Türks,” Asia Major, 3rd ser., 3, pt. 1 (1990):21–26.
[81] Wei Zheng, Suishu, 84/1879; Wang Pu, comp., Tang huiyao [唐會要] (Shanghai:Commercial Press, 1936), 96/1725, cf. Liu Xu [] et. al., Jiu Tangshu [舊唐書] (Beijing:Zhonghua shuju, 1975), 199B/5343; Liu Xu, Jiu Tangshu, 3/59; Wang Pu, Tang huiyao, 73/1314, cf. Liu Xu, Jiu Tangshu, 195/5196, 199B/5348; and Wang Pu, Tang huiyao, 98/1744.
[82] Moravcsik, Sprachreste der Türkvölker, 36, 344, s.v. “Kherkhis.”
[83] Wei Zheng, Suishu, 51/1335; cf. Li Yanshou, Beishi, 22/822. The Abar (Ābá 阿拔) or Awars appear elsewhere as a component people in the Oghuz or “High Cart” confederacy. See Wei Zheng, Suishu, 54/1368 and 84/1869, cf. Li Yanshou, Beishi, 99/3294. In the last citation, the Abar are called a kingdom/empire (guó ).
[84] V. Minorsky, Sharaf al-Zämān Tāhir Marvazi on China, the Turks, and India (London:Royal Asiatic Society, 1942), 29–30, 95–100; Omeljan Pritsak,”Two Migratory Movements in Eurasian Steppe in the 9th–11th Centuries,” in Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress of Orientalists (New Delhi:Ghosh, 1968), 157–63.
[85] J. Marquart, “Über der Volkstum der Komanen,” in Osttürkische Dialektstudien, edited by W. Bang and Marquart, Abhandlungen der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Philologisch-historische Klasse, N.F., 13, no. 1. (Berlin:Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1914); Paul Pelliot, “A propos des Coman,” Journal asiatique 15 (1920):125–85. Cf. P. B. Golden, “Cumanica IV: The Tribes of the Cuman Qıpčaqs,” Archivum Eurasiae medii aevi 9 (1995–97): 99–122, here 101.
[86] Imre Baski, “On the Ethnic Names of the Cumans of Hungary,” in Kinship in the Altaic World, ed. Elena V. Boikova and Rostislav B. Rybakov (Wiesbaden:Harrassowitz, 2006), 43–54, here 48 and 52.
[87] De la Vaissière, “Huns et Xiongnu,” 11–12; Boucher, “Dharmarakùa and the Transmission of Buddhism to Olina,” Asia Major 19, no. 1–2 (2006):13–37, esp. 24, 26.
[88] De la Vaissière, “Huns et Xiongnu,” 11–14.
[89] See Bailey, Culture of the Sakas, 81–82; Gharib, Sogdian Dictionary, §§3341, 3355; Henning, “The Date of the Sogdian Ancient Letters,” 608–09.
[90] Paul Pelliot, “L’origin du nom de ‘Chine,’” T’oung pao, 2nd ser., 13, no. 5 (1912):727–42; Pelliot, “Encore à propos du nom de ‘Chine,’” T’oung pao, 2nd ser., 14, no. 3 (1913):427–28.
[91] A. F. P. Hulsewé, China and Central Asia: The Early Stage. 125 b.c.–23 a.d. (Leiden:Brill, 1979), 211.
[92] That the *Xoηa(i) accepted their sedentary neighbors’ version of their own ethnonym, Hūṇa, as their own can be compared to how the Mongols in Central Asia eventually came to call themselves by the Persian version of their name, i.e., Moghuls or Mughals.
[93] De la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders, 242–49.
[94] Charles C. Mierow, trans., The Gothic History of Jordanes (1915; repr., Merchantville, NJ:Evolution Publishing, 2006), 59, §36–37).
[95] Henning, “The Date of the Sogdian Ancient Letters,” 607, citing Ancient Letter II, 30–31.
[96] See, however, Scott Cameron Levi, The Indian Diaspora in Central Asia and Its Trade, 1550–1900 (Leiden:Brill, 2002).


Table 1
Sanksrit Sogdian Reference
Arhat rγ'nt Kara 2000, s.v. arqad
Vihāra βrγ'r Kara 2000, s.v. buqar
Mahā- mγ' Kara 2000, s.v. maqarač

Table 2
Sanskrit Sogdian Tokharian Reference
Ānanda ''n'nt ānant Shōgaito 1991: 31
Asura ''swr asūre Kara 2000, s.v. asuri
Pretyekabuddha pr'tykpwt pratikapañakte Kara 2000, s.v. biratikabud
Preta pr'yt prete Kara 2000, s.v. birid
Bodhisattva pwtystβ bodhisātve Kara 2000, s.v. bodistv
Canḍāla čnt'r caṇḍāle Kara 2000, s.v. čandalčid
Gandharva knt'rβ gandharve Kara 2000, s.v. gandari
Kiṃnara kynntr kinnare Kara 2000, s.v. kinari
Mahārāja mγ'r'č n.a. Kara 2000, s.v. maqarač-nu'ud
Śramaṇa šrm'n ṣamāne Kara 2000, s.v. širamani
Śrāvaka šr'βk n.a. Kara 2000, s.v. širavag
Vidyādhara βyty'δr vidyādhare Kara 2000, s.v. vidyadari

Table 3
Ancient Terms Medieval Terms Modern Terms
*Xoŋa(i) > OC *hoŋ-nâ 匈 奴 > MM Xiōngnú 匈奴
> MC *Xoŋεi 忽倪 > MM Hūní 忽倪 
> Gk. Khōnai
> Skt. Hūṇa > Gk. Oun(n)a > Gk. Oun(n)oi > L. Hunni
> MC 'Onna 溫那 > MM Wēnnà 溫那
> MC  'On > MM Wēn
> Sgd. Hun (xwn~γwn) = Kh. Hūn > Syr. Hunāyē (hwny’ > Arm. Honk'
> Sk. Huna
Table 4
Ancient Terms Medieval Terms
Av. Ẋyaona  > Pah. Xyōn > Syr. Kywny'
> L. Chionitae
> Gk. Khiōnes
Table 5
Ancient Terms Medieval Terms Modern Terms
Qun/Xun? > ?  Tu. Qun > MC *xwən > MM Hūn
> Gk. Khōn
> Gk. Khounni
? > Khounoi

Notes to Tables 3-5
Ancient and Medieval are roughly divided about A.D. 150-200.
OC = Old Chinese
Arm. = Armenian
Av. = Avestan
Gk.= Greek
Kh. = Khorazmian
L. = Latin
MM = Modern Mandarin
MC = Middle Chinese
Pah. = Pahlavi
Sk. = Khotanese Saka
Skt. = Sanskrit
Sogd. = Sogdian
Syr. = Syriac
> indicates derivation


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