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.
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 渾, 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 渾 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 288–308… 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 3–5 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 ṇ, 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匈 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, nú 奴, 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匈 alone is ever attested for this ethnonym in Chinese. Nor is nú
a semantically significant classifier attached to a purely phonetic core
transcription; xiōng 匈 and nú 奴 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 魏書, 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 溫那沙....[27]
Formerly,
the Xiōngnú killed its king and
took over the country. King Hūní was the third ruler
of the line.
粟特國, 在葱嶺之西 。。。一名溫那沙。。。先是,匈奴殺其王而有其國, 至王忽 倪已三世矣. [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 溫那, 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 沙 being the well-known Iranian royal title shāh, Wēnnàshā is “Shāh/King of the ‘Onna.”
Later, Wēn 溫(approximate Middle Chinese: ‘On), in an abbreviated
form minus nà 那, 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 and Wēn 溫 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 that Samarqand’s Wēn/’On dynasty was of Yuèzhī 月氏 origin.[43] By this time, in
Chinese, Yuèzhī月氏 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 ṇ 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 忽倪, 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溫那沙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 rùshēng 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 奴) both because of its meaning and because the final velar
nasal of xiong 匈 “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 ṇ. 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 356– 59. 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 Ẋ marks a unique letter with a diacritical, of unclear reading.[64]
As Jamsheed Choksy has noted, this certainly gives Ẋyaona 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 Ḣyaona
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 yō (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 Ẋyaona 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 ṇ 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 溫
< ‘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 Ẋyaona 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 Ẋyaona.
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 渾, 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 渾 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 288–308. 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 秦 dynasty.[90]
The rather important philological question of whether the sequence of Qin 秦 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 張騫
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 匈 and nú 奴.
[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 忽 and ní 倪.
[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 ẋ rather than ḣ 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 [劉昫]
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 國).
[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 溫 | > MM Wēn 溫 | |||||
| > 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 渾 |
| > Gk. Khōn | ||||
| > Gk. Khounni | ||||
| ? > Khounoi | ||||
| Notes to Tables 3-5 | |||||||||||||||
|
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