The text delves into the origins of the Huns and their ties to the Eurasian steppe world. It explores the significance of the Huns’ name and its association with the link to the Xiongnu empire, two nomadic groups that played pivotal roles in the political landscape of Inner and Central Asia. The text further investigates the evidence supporting the Huns’ potential migration routes. It examines the relationship between the European Huns and the Inner Asian Xiongnu, outlining the three stages of their history: the imperial Xiongnu, their northern descendants, and the subsequent groupings resulting from their migrations in Europe as well as Central Asia.
The author contends that the Huns, who entered Europe in the fourth century, identified themselves with the name “Xiongnu” as indicated in Chinese sources. The text also touches upon the misconception of three successive waves of Huns in Central Asia, providing evidence of their presence from the onset of the Hunnic invasions. Additionally, the text confirms the identification of the Chionites as Huns in both Western and Chinese accounts.
Dynastic histories, notably the Weishu, offer crucial insights into the political history of Inner Asia. The Kidarites and Hephthalites emerged as prominent nomadic dynasties in Central Asia during the 4th and 5th centuries, with the Hephthalites possibly originating as vassals of a northern power, such as the Avars. Archaeological findings, such as the distinctive bell-shaped cauldrons, suggest a north Altaic origin for the Hunnic groups that invaded Central Asia and Europe.
Moreover, the text explores the continuity of rituals and culture from the Minusinsk region to Hungary, supported by archaeological evidence and textual sources. It underscores the significance of the Altai region as the starting point for the Hunnic migration to Central Asia and the West, with climate change potentially influencing this movement.
Étienne de la Vaissière “The Steppe World and the Rise of the Huns,” in The Cambridge Companion to THE AGE OF ATTILA, 2015.
The origin of the Huns in the steppe is a topic that has occupied
historians for hundreds of years. In 1776, Joseph de Guignes
wrote, at the beginning of the preface to his Histoire générale des
Huns, des Turcs, des Mogols, et des autres Tartares occidentaux: “I propose to
present in this work the history of an almost unknown people, which
at different times established powerful kingdoms in Asia, Europe, and
Africa. The Huns... who originated in a country in the North of
China, between the rivers Irtish and Amur, gradually took control of all
of Great Tartary.” The argument of this founding father of Orientalism
was based on nothing more than the similarity of the lifestyle of the
European Huns, who invaded Roman Europe in the first half of the
fifth century, and the nomadic Xiongnu, the chief enemy of the Qin
and Han Chinese dynasties. The great nomadic empire formed by
the Xiongnu in the Ordos region and Mongolia lasted from the third
century BCE until the first century CE, before its ultimate defeat in
Mongolia in 155 at the hands of other nomads, the Xianbei (map 2).
The far eastern provenance of the Huns was also of great interest to
intellectuals in the nineteenth century, who thought in terms of nation,
people, bloodlines, and language. Through detailed analyses of Chinese
sources, these scholars tried to find more precise parallels between the
name Hun and Xiongnu. They sought to pinpoint some of their tribal
names, to identify their language, and to reconstruct the trajectory of
their movement from Asia to Europe. In the face of this quest for origins,
the study of the Huns who established themselves on the Hungarian
plain in Europe, and especially what archaeology could reveal about
them, seemed less important.
In reaction to this situation, O. Maenchen-Helfen, a Sinologist
with a deep knowledge of Soviet archaeology and ethnology, tried after
the Second World War to change the approach of research on the Huns
of Europe. He strongly criticized the philological character of previous
scholarship and its emphasis on names as well as its lack of interest
in archaeological realities. He sought to create a new field of Hunnic
studies that was disengaged from the question of origins.[1]
[1] Otto Maenchen-Helfen, “The Legend of the Origin of the Huns,” Byzantion 17
(1945) 244–251; Maenchen-Helfen, “Pseudo-Huns,” Central Asiatic Journal 1 (1955)
101–106; Maenchen-Helfen, “The Ethnic Name Hun,” in Studia Serica Bernhard
Karlgren Dedicata, ed. Soren Egerod (Copenhagen, 1959) 223–238. In distinguishing
the question of origins from that of the organization of Attila’s empire, this Companion
to the Age of Attila validates Maenchen-Helfen’s approach.
In the following pages, while I acknowledge the force of
Maenchen-Helfen’s arguments, I offer a primarily political hypothesis
that addresses the still open question of origins and of whether or
not the Xiongnu in any way were connected to Attila’s empire.[2] I
argue that a group of Hunnic tribes, once part of the former Xiongnu
Empire, actually migrated westward in the middle of the fourth century,
two centuries after the Xiongnu state collapsed in Mongolia. This
does not mean that the Huns who arrived in Europe had not changed
considerably in the course of their long migration. The complexity and
fluid character of ethnogenesis is an accepted fact, seen especially in the
formation of confederations on the steppe. The language of the Huns
might have changed, too; Maenchen-Helfen was right that we cannot
prove that their spoken tongue remained the same. What I will try to
show in this chapter, however, is that in the course of their migration
the Huns kept their name as a political reference point, and that this
perceived connection is of great historical importance for understanding
the Hunnic domination of the tribes of the Pontic steppe. Precise
evidence from the early medieval steppe shows that migrating tribes
made use of their prestigious name with its powerful reference to the
imperial past to rule over smaller tribes less blessed by fortune and
history.[3]
[2] On this point see Hyun Kim, The Huns, Rome, and the Birth of Europe (Cambridge,
2013).
[3] See the famous story narrated by Theophylact Simocatta on the fleeing Avars in
the middle of the sixth century: Michael Whitby and Mary Whitby, ed. and trans.,
The History of Theophylact Simocatta: An English Translation with Introduction and Notes
(Oxford, 1986) 189–190.
The origins of the Huns and their links to the world of the steppe
are pertinent political questions that scholars have approached differently.
I will attempt to clarify their conflicting opinions, first regarding
events in the fourth century and the arrival of the Huns in Europe, and
then moving on to the links of the Europe-based Huns to the Central
Asian steppe in the fifth century.
Did they come from beyond the Volga?
The first challenge is to prove that the Huns did indeed arrive from
beyond the Volga, and that they did so in Late Antiquity, not earlier.
The classical sources place the origins of the Huns beyond the Sea
of Azov but say very little more, and one might easily envisage a local
ethnogenesis or at least a very ancient arrival in the region. Some Soviet
scholars took this position.[4] The fourth-century historian Ammianus
Marcellinus places the Huns far to the Northeast (31.2.1): “The people
of the Huns, but little known from ancient records, dwelling beyond
the Maeotic [Azov] Sea near the ice-bound ocean.” He adds, furthermore,
that the Huns went as far as the lands of the Alans North of the
River Don (31.2.12–13), “which divides Europe from the measureless
wastes of Scythia [the steppe].” Jordanes, writing two centuries later in
Constantinople, also placed the Huns’ origin to the East of the Sea of
Azov, between the Volga and the Don Rivers (Get. 5). But Ammianus,
notably, adds: “This race of untamed men, without encumbrances,
aflame with an inhuman desire for plundering others’ property, made
their violent way amid the rapine and slaughter of the neighbouring
peoples as far as the Halani [Alans],” and defines some limits to the
North of the Alans: “The river Tanaïs [Don], which separates Asia
from Europe. On the other side of this river the Alans... inhabit the
measureless wastes of Scythia” (Amm. 31.2.12–13). The Huns clearly
arrived in the Don-Volga region and were not native to it. No classical
source contradicts Ammianus’ assertion that the Huns were completely
unknown to the Mediterranean world before the 370s, and that they
appeared quite suddenly. The date conventionally assigned to their
crossing of the Volga is around 370, but it could have been somewhat
earlier. It is not known how much time the Huns spent in the region
between the rivers Volga and Don, but it was undoubtedly less than a
generation. No source, however, explains the reasons for their advance
into the West. We may conclude that the Huns arrived in the Volga-Don
region, having come from somewhere far to the East unknown to
the Greek, Latin, and Syrian observers of the fourth century.
[4] Otto Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns (Berkeley, 1973) 447 n. 21.
We may know the region where the Huns arrived, but not their
point of origin or the path they took to reach the West. I believe that the
Huns had an origin in Inner Asia, and more precisely from the regions
surrounding the Altai Mountains; all the archaeological and textual
evidence points in this direction, as we will see. They could have taken
any number of routes to reach the Don-Volga area from their far-eastern
point of origin. Perhaps, they crossed the Turgai Plateau if they came
via Central Asia. (map 2.) An alternate route could have brought them
down the Volga from the North, a detour from their point of origin
in Asia. In this scenario, the Huns left the Altai, traversed the northern
steppe, crossed the Ural Mountains where the city of Yekaterinburg
now lies, and then pushed South along the Volga.[5] Their steppe way of
life, however, precludes a northern origin in the forest zone. We turn
now to eastern evidence for their eastern origins and their relation to
the empire of the Xiongnu.
[5] Miklòs Erdy, “An Overview of the Xiongnu Type Cauldron Finds of Eurasia in
Three Media, with Historical Observations,” in The Archaeology of the Steppes, ed.
Bruno Genito (Naples, 1994) 379–438.
The Huns and the Xiongnu: The Central Asian Evidence
To address the question of the connection between the Huns known
to Europeans in the West and the Xiongnu, we must examine two
fundamental texts, written in the region of Dunhuang and Gansu on
the borders between Central Asia and regions populated by Chinese
(Han) people at the end of the third century and beginning of the
fourth, by two direct witnesses, Zhu Fahu and Nanaivande.
The first text is a translation, composed by Zhu Fahu (his Chinese
name), also known as Dharmarakṣa (his Indian name), a Buddhist monk
and one of the main translators of Buddhist texts in China in the third
century.[6] Zhu Fahu’s family, which had come from Bactria (northern
Afghanistan) and had lived in Dunhuang for generations, was typical of
the wealthy merchants who had established Buddhism in China. Zhu
Fahu moved to central China and participated fully in Chinese culture
but maintained very close ties to Central Asia. He knew many of the
languages of the region and regularly returned to Dunhuang.
[6] Emil Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China (Leiden, 1972) 65–70.
In two of his translations into Chinese of canonical Indian texts,
Zhu Fahu renders the name of the Huṇa people as “Xiongnu” (Taisho
Tripitaka, 11.310, 3.186).[7] “Huṇa” was not a common word in any
Indian language, and his two mentions of it are the oldest known. The
name reappears later in inscriptions that designate invaders from the
Northwest who attack India in the fifth century, and in literary texts
such as the Mahābharata. In one of Zhu Fahu’s texts, the Tathāgataguhyasutrā,
the Huṇa are cited in a list that identifies the major peoples of
Asia and those neighboring India: the Saka (from Seistan), Parthians,
Tokharians (from Bactria), Greeks, Kamboja (mountain people of the
Hindu Kush), Khasa (mountain people of the Himalayas), Huṇa, Chinese,
Dards (from the Upper Indus), and others. The rest of the list
enumerates ever more imaginary peoples. The structure of this list is
absolutely clear. It begins by cataloguing all the foreign peoples that the
Indian authors whom Zhu Fahu was translating could name. At the
end of the list, these groups are juxtaposed with others who were either
imagined or who came from a far distant and semilegendary past. The
Huṇa would not have been placed in the first part of the list if they
were not a people with an ethnic and geographic reality on the order of
the Parthians, Bactrians, Greeks, and Chinese. The text indicates that
the Huṇa were among the great peoples at the time of the list’s original
composition, which can be dated to the first century BCE or slightly
thereafter. The list places the Huṇa among the political powers that
bordered the Chinese in this period. Could they be the Xiongnu?
[7] See Sylvain Lévy, “Notes chinoises sur l’Inde, V: Quelques documents sur le
bouddhisme indien dans l’Asie centrale,” Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient 5
(1905) 253–305, esp. 289. See also Étienne de la Vaissière, “Huns et Xiongnu,”
Central Asiatic Journal 49.1 (2005) 3–26, esp. 11–13.
As noted above, Zhu Fahu used the word “Xiongnu” to translate
the term “Huṇa” into Chinese. This is not a vague, generic Chinese
formulation. All the terms in the Indian text are rendered word for
word, either by translation or transcription.[8] Zhu Fahu did not consider
Huṇa a generic name; he could easily have placed them further
down the list, among the semihistoric peoples. He also could have
simply transcribed the name, as he did the name of the Dards, or
eliminated it and replaced it by another, as he did with many names. On
the contrary, the use of the name Huṇa in these texts has a precise
political reference to the Xiongnu and the period when they were the
great nomadic adversaries of China and the principalities of Central
Asia. It was perfectly logical for the Indian writers to include them in
their lists, and perfectly normal for Zhu Fahu to render the name as
“Xiongnu.”
[8] Only the names exclusively connected to the Indian way of looking at things are
replaced by others: just as the Pahlava are replaced by the Arsacid Parthians (Anxi), the
Tukhara by the Yuezhi (the invaders of Bactria), the Yavana by the Greeks (Daqin,
roughly eastern Roman Empire, in other words, the Hellenistic world), and the
Chinese by the Qin.
The second text is a letter written by a Sogdian merchant named
Nanaivande, who, like Zhu Fahu, came from the circle of Central
Asian merchants who traded between China, the steppe, and India.
The Sogdian traders came from Sogdiana, an Iranian-speaking land of
settled peoples located between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers,
and were the main merchants on the Silk Road from the fourth to
the ninth century.[9] The letter allows us to equate one name with
another, as in Zhu Fahu’s text, though this time in reverse. In 1948,
the Iranologist W. Henning published a copy of a letter dated to 313,
which was sent by Nanaivande on the route from Gansu to Samarkand.
This letter describes in apocalyptic terms the raids by Xwn (the accurate
Sogdian transcription of what the western sources called Hun) on
the main towns of northern China, ruining its economy and trade.
Henning demonstrates beyond all possible doubt that the Xwn raiders
from North China described in the letter were those that contemporary
Chinese texts called Xiongnu, the very people who were at
that time destroying the Qin dynasty.[10] We see, then, that around the
year 300, “Xiongnu” was only the Chinese transcription of the name
Hun used by the extremely well-informed members of the Central
Asian mercantile communities who traveled the length and breadth of
Asia.[11] “Hun/Xwn/Huṇa” were the exact transcriptions of the name
that the Chinese, always eager to play on words and to condemn their
great enemies from the North, had rendered as “Xiongnu,” “howling
slaves.”
[9] Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (Leiden, 2005).
[10] Walter B. Henning, “The Date of the Sogdian Ancient Letters,” Bulletin of the
School of Oriental and African Studies 12.3–4 (1948) 601–615. Nicholas Sims-Williams
and Frantz Grenet, “The Historical Context of the Sogdian Ancient Letters,” in
Transition Periods in Iranian History, ed. Philippe Gignoux (Paris 1987) 101–122; La
Vaissière, Sogdian Traders, chap. 2.
[11] On these mercantile and monastic communities, see La Vaissière, Sogdian Traders,
chap. 3.
All the contemporary sources agree that the Huns of Europe
of the fourth and fifth centuries were called Huns by everyone who
encountered them, and that they used this name to refer to themselves.
Furthermore, the name Hun never changes among all the populations
affected by the extremely rapid advance of the Huns, whether in Europe
or South of the Caucasus, proving that it was the Huns themselves who
diffused the name. If the contemporary sources are correct, the Huns
of Europe arrived there bearing the name that the Chinese transcribed
as “Xiongnu,” that is, “Hun.”
Huns and Xiongnu: Some Attempted Counterarguments
Only a reinterpretation of the use of the word “Xwn” by the Bactrian
monk Zhu Fahu and the Sogdian merchant Nanaivande could sever
the link between the Xiongnu and the Huns. Some commentators
have tried to do so by invoking the accident of phonology[12], or the
bad conservation of manuscripts.[13] Others have claimed that the word
“Hun” was simply a generic term that had lost all precise meaning,
because it was applied to so many tribes.[14] The examples of generic use
that these scholars cite, however, all come from sources written after
the great invasion and so obviously cannot be used to refute earlier
texts. While it is true that the term “Hun” became generic after the
fifth century, that does not mean that it was so before then. Only
the Iranologist H. Bailey has proposed a coherent line of refutation of
the thesis that there was a link between the Huns and the Xiongnu.[15]
He advances the hypothesis that the Sogdian “Xwn” was a name for
the Hyaona, who were an enemy people mentioned in the Avesta, the
sacred texts of Zoroastrianism. Bailey’s idea is attractive, but lacks a
philological basis. His thesis, nonetheless, was elaborated recently by S.
Parlato.[16] According to her, the word had a literary, epic character, and
was spread through the steppe by the bards from the Parthian empire.
In the steppe world, she claims, the term was received with enthusiasm
and served as a generic term for any nomadic and demonic enemy. In
other words, it was not the Huns who migrated, but a generic name that
spread across the steppe in the context of a culture that spoke Iranian
languages.
[12] Paolo Daffinà, “Chih-chih Shan-Yü,” Rivista degli Studi Orientali 44.3 (1969) 199–232.
[13] Maenchen-Helfen, “Pseudo-Huns.”
[14] Denis Sinor, “The Hun Period,” in The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, ed.
Denis Sinor (Cambridge, 1990) 177–205, here 179.
[15] Harold Bailey, “Harahuna,” in Asiatica: Festschrift Friedrich Weller (Leipzig, 1954)
12–21.
[16] Sandra Parlato, “Successo euroasiatico dell’etnico ‘Unni,’” in La Persia e l’Asia
Centrale da Alessandro al X secolo (Rome, 1996) 555–566.
This hypothesis is not convincing, however. The steppe was not
Zoroastrian, and it is hard to see how a secondary figure in the Avestic
literature could have acquired such a presence. The theory overestimates
the influence of these hypothetical Parthian minstrels wandering across
the steppe in causing a name derived from Hyaona to be adopted from
Asia to Europe. Moreover, if “Hun” was a generic term of Iranian
origin, why would the Huns of Europe use it to refer to themselves?
If one thing is clear, as Maenchen-Helfen showed years ago,[17] it is that
the Huns did not speak Iranian languages. “Hun,” then, cannot be a
generic Iranian term.
[17] Maenchen-Helfen, “The World of the Huns,” 376ff. and 443.
I have demonstrated thus far that the Huns who arrived in Europe
from 370 onward called themselves by the name transcribed in Chinese
as “Xiongnu.” Maenchen-Helfen cautioned against such reasoning on
several occasions, because it relied entirely on the evidence of names
to establish identity. He argued instead that only ethnographic and
archaeological evidence should be taken into account. His thesis is
unacceptable, however. The political implications of a name must never
be ignored; otherwise, one would have to dismiss as negligible a good
part of the history of political ideas. If the Rhomaioi of Byzantium
could claim to be the political heirs of the Romans, then the Huns
could equally claim to be the heirs of the Xiongnu. The steppe has the
right to have political ideas and history, and we must not deny the Huns
those important aspects of their identity.
In Central Asia
The Hunnic period of Central Asia’s history lasted until Turks achieved
preeminence in the 560s, and the details of this period’s political history
remain very confused. In this section, I argue against the long-held belief
that there were three successive waves of Huns in Central Asia, that of
the Chionites in the 350s, the Kidarites in either the 370s or much
more probably the 420s,[18] and the Hephthalites, whom Procopius calls
the White Huns, around 450 (Proc. 1.3.2–8). Instead, Chinese textual
evidence shows that these groups had in fact been in Central Asia from
the beginning of the great Hunnic invasions of the fourth century,
and that some of them had stayed there for a generation before they
crossed the Volga, while others stayed for a while to the North of the
Caspian Sea. I will consider each group in turn.
[18] Pace Joe Cribb, “The Kidarites, the Numismatic Evidence,” in Coins, Art and
Chronology, vol. 2: The First Millennium CE in the Indo-Iranian Borderlands, ed. Michael
Alram (Vienna, 2010) 91–146.
The Chionites. In the 350s, the great Persian king Shapur II
(r. 309–379) probably fought invading nomads at the Amu Darya river,
which marked the Northeast frontier of the Sasanian empire. That, at
least, is what is implied by Ammianus Marcellinus, who was always
attentive to the whereabouts of the Persian king of kings. At the same
time, the dynasty of Kushanshah, a vassal of the Sasanids based in the
territory of modern-day Afghanistan, came to an abrupt end. In 356,
Ammianus gave the name Chionites to these eastern enemies of the
Persians. In 359, however, after the Chionites had changed sides and
made a new arrangement with the Persians, Shapur brought a force
of them under the command of their king Grumbates to the siege of
Amida, modern-day Diyarbakir (Amm. 16.9, 17.5, 18.6, 19.1).
The name “Chionites” is an Iranian plural form (with final -t) of
“Hyon,” a deformation of “Xwn” influenced by the name “Hyaona”
mentioned earlier. In a similar manner, western writers in medieval
times gave the name “Tartars” to the Tatars, the dominant element in
the armies of the Mongol Empire, confusing them with the name of
the ancient river of Hell from which they seemed to have emerged.
Chinese sources confirm the identification of Chionite and Hun.
The dynastic histories, and especially the history of the northern Wei,
called the Weishu, are the key to understanding what went on in Inner
Asia in the middle of the fourth century. The northern Wei, who were
themselves of nomadic origin, took special interest in Mongolia and
Central Asia. Although the original chapter of the Weishu devoted to
the Western neighbors of China was lost and later reconstituted from
various quotations in Chinese historical literature by imperial scholars,
some additional data from the original Weishu have been preserved in
other works, especially an encyclopedia published in 801, the Tongdian.
The Weishu mentions the conquest of Samarkand by the Xiongnu
three generations before 457, which – if we use the traditional Chinese
calculation of thirty years to a generation – places this conquest around
367, the same time that the Persians were fighting the Chionites (Weishu,
102.2270).
The Armenian historian Faustus of Byzantium tells us that Shapur
II renewed the fighting against Chionite Huns on the eastern front in
368, using Armenian troops, and that he was strenuously attacked on
several occasions by a “king of the Kushans” who reigned over the
Bactrians (Faustus 5.7, 5.37).[19] Another Armenian text mentions the
combat of the Armenian prince Babik of Syunik, sent by Shapur very
probably also into Central Asia against a Hun called Honagur.[20]
[19] Translated in Nina Garsoïan, The Epic Histories Attributed to P’awstos Buzand (Buzandaran
Patmut’iwnk) (Cambridge, Mass., 1989) 187–198 and 217–218.
[20] Movsês Daskhurants’i (or Kałankatvats’i), in The History of the Caucasian Albanians by
Movses Dasxuranci, trans. Charles J. F. Dowsett (Oxford, 1961) 63–64; also Stephannos
Orbelian, trans. in Marie-Félicité Brosset, Histoire de la Siounie par Stephannos Orbelian
(St. Petersburg, 1864–1866) 24–25.
The Kidarites: While some numismatists would like to place them
in the 370s,[21] it is very clear from the combination of the Chinese and
classical sources that the Kidarites were the dominant nomadic dynasty
in Central Asia from the 420s to the 470s.[22] Even while maintaining
their Hunnic identity, the Kidarites engaged and promoted the local
past of the sedentary people they ruled, and they built cities on the
Hippodamian grid plan in their empire. They also revived the title of
king of the Kushans, assuming it for themselves.[23] We find this title
on a seal bearing the inscription “King of the Oghlar Huns, king of
the Kushans, prince of Samarkand”[24] that was made some decades after
their installation in Central Asia.
[21] Most recently Cribb, “The Kidarites.”
[22] Kazuo Enoki, “On the Date of the Kidarites (I),” Memoirs of the Research Department
of the Toyo Bunko 27 (1969) 1–26.
[23] Frantz Grenet, “Regional Interaction in Central Asia and North-West India in the
Kidarite and Hephtalite Period,” in Indo-Iranian Languages and Peoples, ed. Nicholas
Sims-Williams (London, 2002) 203–224.
[24] Ahmad ur Rahman, Frantz Grenet, and Nicholas Sims-Williams, “A Hunnish
Kushan-Shah,” Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology 1 (2006) 125–131, here
128.
The Hephthalites: The Tongdian also tells us that another group
of Huns, the Hephthalites, arrived from the Altai Range sometime
after the year 360.[25] They were destined to play an important role in
the political history of Central Asia between 450 and 560. The
Hephthalites and their subordinate confederation of tribes seem to have been
more oriented to the nomadic world than the Kidarites. At least until
the 520s, the Hephthalites continued to live as nomads in the high
plateaus of what is now Northwest Afghanistan. The Alkhon tribes,
who dominated the southern wing of the Hephthalite confederation,
lived mostly in southern Afghanistan and in Northwest India. They
issued coins showing their leaders with cranial deformation, their skulls
elongated into a dome shape, presumably to distinguish themselves from
other local peoples.[26] It is possible that the name Alkhon, if one accepts
“Al-” as the Turkic for scarlet, means “the red Huns,” those of the
South, as opposed to the White Huns of the East (the Hephthalites), in
a geographic scheme of colors native to the world of the steppe.
[25] Étienne de la Vaissière, “Is There Any ‘Nationality of the Ephthalites’?,” in Hephthalites,
ed. Madhuvanti Ghose and Étienne de la Vaissière, Bulletin of the Asia Institute
17 (2007) 119–137.
[26] On the Alkhon, see Klaus Vondrovec, The Coinage of the Iranians Huns and Their
Successors from Bactria to Gandhara (4th to 8th Century CE), Studies in the Aman ur
Rahman Collection, vol. 4, Vienna, forthcoming.
Thus, we see on the basis of the Tongdian and other materials that
the Hephthalites, far from being a new wave of nomads, had been one of
several groups of Huns that had been in Central Asia from the middle
of the fourth century at the beginning of the great invasions. There
are, therefore, no grounds for arguing in terms of successive waves;
what we have are dynasties or tribal groupings coming to power in
succession among the nomads who arrived in Central Asia during the
second half of the fourth century. There was just one massive single
episode of migration in the years 350–370, perhaps followed by some
more limited movement during the fluid circumstances of the following
decades.[27]
[27] La Vaissière, “Is There Any Nationality?”
Between Central Asia and Europe
Our sources locate these different groups (Chionites, Kidarites,
Hephthalites, and others) in Central Asia, but say almost nothing about the
connections that the Huns may have retained with the steppe, North
of sedentary Central Asia, in modern Kazakhstan, or with the Huns
of Europe. The Kidarites are mentioned unreliably by Priscus as being
on the eastern shore of the Caspian around 468 (Prisc. 51). Moreover,
nothing is known of the northern reach of the Hephthalite empire. That
it included Sogdiana, between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers,
is certain, but we do not know if the empire controlled the nomadic
groups of present-day Kazakhstan. One trace of a northern connection
dates reliably to the years 440–460 and shows that the Hephthalites were
originally subjects of a power from the North, probably the Avars. We
learn this from Chinese texts that mention an incursion into Central
Asia made by the Rourans, the dominant power of Mongolia in the fifth
century and the early sixth, where they fought against Kidarites and
subjected the Hephthalites (Weishu, 102.2275, 2277; Beishi, 97.3210;
Liangshu, 54.812). An Armenian geographer refers to this same episode when
he mentions the Hephthalites, the Warkhons, and the Alkhons not far
from the Zeravshan River, on which the Sogdian capital Samarkand
was situated. If the Alkhons lived further to the South in Afghanistan,
the Warkhons are very probably the Rourans – the “Avars” of later
sources. Byzantine writers of the second half of the sixth century call
them Ouarchonitai or Varchonites (Menander 19.1).
Another piece of evidence from the same period makes a
connection between Central Asia and the Pontic steppe. In 463, after the
disintegration of Attila’s empire, new tribal groups began to appear in
the steppes. One of these groups passed through Central Asia. The
fifth-century historian Priscus (Prisc. 40) writes: “At this time, the Saragurs,
Urogs and the Onogurs sent envoys to the eastern Romans. These tribes
had left their native lands when the Sabiri attacked them. The latter had
been driven out by the Avars who had in turn been displaced by the
tribes who lived by the shore of the Ocean.” Theophylact Simocatta,
the early seventh-century Byzantine historian, mentions an Onogur city
named Bakath, which was destroyed by an earthquake. Since Bakath is
a Sogdian name, we may infer that the Onogurs had spent some time
in Central Asia.
The different groups of Huns were firmly based in Central Asia
at the middle of the fourth century. Thus, they bring a unity of time
and place to the question of the origins of the Huns of Europe. To
summarize my argument so far, I have demonstrated that around 350, a
group bearing the name Huns was active in the Kazakh steppe, some of
whom moved South and others West, and that a Chinese text precisely
ascribes to the Altai the origin of the migration of some of these
tribes.
In the Altai Mountains and the Minusinsk Basin: The Question of Cauldrons
We have seen that one Chinese source on Central Asia, the Tongdian,
wrote that among those making the great migration of the 350s, the
Hephthalites at least originated in the Altai region. It is, thus, logical to
search in that region to see if these Chinese texts can be confirmed by
archaeology or other texts.
The archaeological evidence from Central Asia is woefully
meager. Hunnic cemeteries are poorly known,[28] and very little other
material survives. Given the current state of knowledge, the Weishu text
can neither be confirmed nor invalidated. The archaeological aspect of
Hunnic/Xiongnu settlement in Central Asia is simply missing.[29]
[28] See, however, Daniel Schlumberger, “La nécropole de Shakh tépé près de Qunduz,”
Comptes-rendus des séances de l’année: Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres 108.2 (1964)
207–211.
[29] On Xiongnu archaeology, see most recently Ursula Brosseder and Bryan K. Miller,
eds., Xiongnu Archaeology: Multidisciplinary Perspectives of the First Steppe Empire in Inner
Asia (Bonn, 2011).
The archaeological evidence for the Huns of Europe is quite
different, however, and permits us to draw important inferences about
their origin in East Asia. The chief evidence comes from the cauldrons
that the Huns may have used for cooking, ritual purposes, or both.
People of the steppe had used cauldrons since much earlier times, but the
Hunnic vessels are quite distinctive, constituting a true archaeological
marker.[30] They are bell-shaped and crudely made, with squared handles
surmounted by ornaments in the shape of mushrooms. This evidence
shows clear links to Inner Asia (that is the Altai Mountains, Mongolia,
southern Siberia, and the northern part of China). A concentration of
similar cauldrons occurs on the northern flank of the Altai Mountains
and the Minusinsk Basin (map 2). In the Minusinsk region,
furthermore, there are petroglyphs depicting the cauldrons, with the same
protuberances on the handles, though these are rounded not squared.
In Hungary as well as Asia, these cauldrons were buried near springs or
rivers, indicating a continuity of ritual and culture from the Minusinsk
region to Hungary.[31]
[30] Toshio Hayashi, “Hunnic Cauldrons,” in Studies on Ancient Cauldrons: Cultic or Daily
Vessels in the Eurasian Steppes (Tokyo, 2011) 341–382.
[31] Erdy, “An Overview.”
In the absence of a complete typology of the evolution of the cauldrons’
forms and their archaeological contexts, however, these
observations must remain inconclusive albeit extremely suggestive. When
the archaeological evidence is augmented by textual material to which
we now turn, the case becomes virtually certain. This archaeological
evidence, supported by the text that has the Hephthalites coming from
the Altai, indicates a North Altaic provenance of the Hunnic groups
who invaded Central Asia and Europe from 350 onward.
The Text of the Weishu
One other passage in the Weishu mentions that at the beginning of the
fifth century, “remains of the descendants of the Xiongnu” (Weishu,
103.2290) were to be found far Northwest of the Rouran, that is, in the
area of the Altai. The quality of this information is beyond question.
The Weishu is very parsimonious in its use of the term “Xiongnu,”
and these Xiongnu are the only ones in a list of neighbors of the
Rouran. There are about forty occurrences of the term “Xiongnu” in
the text, the greatest number of which are related to the Xiongnu of
the South who settled in China, or to rhetorical comparisons with the
Han Chinese. Mentions of contemporary Xiongnu still in the Altai as
opposed to those in China are extremely rare. In chapters 102 and 103,
which are dedicated to the countries of the West and North, that is the
whole of the Xiongnu Empire, there are only three mentions in all.
One is the text cited above; the second is found in the famous passage
on the conquest of Samarkand by the Xiongnu (Weishu, 102.2270); and
the third describes the struggles between a Kidarite king in Bactria and
the Xiongnu (Weishu, 102.2277).[32] The fact that the Weishu mentions
“remains of the descendants of the Xiongnu” is an extremely important
piece of information. It had been argued that the Xiongnu identity
totally disappeared in Inner Asia after their defeat of the second century,
so that the European Huns could not have come from these regions,
but this passage of the Weishu proves that this argument is false. The
Xiongnu did indeed survive to the far North, albeit beyond the range
of vision of the Chinese sources. That they did not form an empire,
and were no more than weakened descendants of the ancient Xiongnu
matters little; they had conserved their tribal identity.
[32] In this case, the Xiongnu here are probably the Warkhon mentioned in the Armenian
geographical treatise, that is the Rouran/Avars, who incorporated the Xiongnu into
their confederation.
We see, then, that three facts (the genetic connection between the
cauldrons, the texts on the Hephthalites, and the text on descendants
of the Xiongnu) all point to the Altai region as the starting point of the
Huns’ migration to Central Asia and to the West starting in the middle
of the fourth century. This conclusion is supported by some entirely
independent scientific data that shows that during this period the Altai
was the place of dramatic climatic change.
The Climate Hypothesis
Recently published findings regarding accumulations of pollen in the
lakes of the Altai Range tell of a sharp drop in temperatures combined
with a rise in humidity that lasted from the middle of the fourth century
through the sixth, causing significant change in the vegetation.
Likewise, from 340, glaciers advanced in the valleys.[33] The accumulated
snow destroyed herds of the high plateaux; although the Mongolian
horse is able to dig through the snow to feed, this capacity is strictly
limited by the depth of the snow cover, and contemporary
ethnography has shown the enormous impact that prolonged winters and their
blizzards can have on herds of horses – eight million horses, 20 percent
of the stock, died for this reason in Mongolia in the winter of 2010.
Chinese sources report Hun invasions from the Altai happening exactly
in the middle of the fourth century, without giving any reason for their
incursions. For a long time scholars specializing in nomad studies have
postulated a major climatic event as the explanation of the size of the
Hun migrations. We now see that such an event is well supported by
rigorous paleoclimatological studies conducted quite independently of
the work of historians. Quite plausibly, additional factors contributed
to the destabilization of Hun societies in the Altai region, but little is
known of them. The North slope of the Altai was beyond the reach
of knowledge for the Chinese observers, the only exception being the
Weishu text mentioned above.
[33] Frank Schlütz and Frank Lehmkuhl, “Climatic Change in the Russian Altai,
Southern Siberia, Based on Palynological and Geomorphological Results, with
Implications for Climatic Teleconnections and Human History since the Middle Holocene,”
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 16 (2007) 101–118.
We know, meanwhile, that the Rouran/Avar kaghanate became
active in the fourth century, even if its power only truly began to
develop at the end of that century. We may interpret the passage from
Priscus quoted above as a brief summary of the history of Inner Asia
in the fourth century: the Sabiri could be the Xianbei (from Chinese
characters pronounced *Sarbi at the time), chased out of Mongolia
by the developing power of the Rouran/Avars, and chasing in their
turn the tribes further West.[34] In this case, the Hunnic groups cited by
Priscus (Saraguri, Urogi, and Onoguri) paused in the Kazakh steppe
before moving further westward in the middle of the fifth century.
[34] An idea already put forward by Omelian Pritsak, “From the Säbirs to the
Hungarians,” in Hungaro-Turcica: Studies in Honour of Julius Németh, ed. Gyula Káldy-Nagy
(Budapest, 1976) 22 and 28–30. Many thanks to Peter Golden for this reference.
It is, thus, likely that we can recapitulate the historical trajectory
of the Huns in the same way. The Huns were a confederation of
peoples fleeing from their ancestral homeland, whose incursions into
the West would disrupt the old patterns of the distribution of the
nomadic tribes throughout the entire Kazakh steppe, creating a new
nomadic landscape under the leadership of the Hunnic tribes. They left
the North Altai in a context of major climatic change that caused distress
among local societies and which undoubtedly would have had political
consequences of which we have not even the most basic knowledge.
Absorbing other tribal groups that they encountered along the way,
the Huns bore down on the Kazakh steppe in the mid-fourth century.
While one part of them, Chionites, Kidarites, Oghlar, Hephthalites,
and Alkhon, established themselves in Sogdiana and Bactriana, other
groups followed a route to the West and reached the Volga. Still others
perhaps, remained in the steppe and did not reach the West until the
middle of the fifth century. The admittedly tenuous evidence permits
us to conclude that throughout this migration from the Altai to Europe
they carried the old name of the most prestigious empires of the eastern
steppe, the empire that the Chinese called Xiongnu.
The Huns and the Shattered Empire
The problem, then, has shifted from the relationship of the Huns and
the Xiongnu in the fourth century to the relationship of the
fourth-century Xiongnu to the second-century Xiongnu. We possess a
coherent set of independent textual and archaeological set of proofs for the
fact that the Huns came from Inner Asia and bore the name
transcribed by the Chinese as “Xiongnu.” Whether they were the direct
descendants of the Xiongnu of antiquity, as they claimed, is another
question that historians have barely touched upon. What was the
relationship between these fourth-century Xiongnu/Huns North of the
Altai to the Xiongnu/Hun empire of antiquity? They called themselves
Xiongnu/Huns, and that is how they were known by their neighbors
in the Altai; it must be stressed that the extreme paucity of
documentation does not allow us to go much beyond this. Very little information
is available on the tribal reorganizations of Inner Asia after the final
defeat of the Xiongnu/Huns in 155 by the Xianbei. The Xianbei, who
were for over a century the dominant group on the steppe, are known
to have incorporated Xiongnu/Huns into their ranks.[35] Likewise, the
dominant power from the fourth century onward, the Rouran,
justifiably bore a double name in the Byzantine sources as we have seen;
they were the Varkhon, that is, the Avar Huns. Apparently, the break-up
of the Xiongnu empire led to the inclusion of its tribal groups in
the multiple political entities that succeeded them in the region. The
Rouran khaganate was such an entity, associating Xiongnu/Hun tribes
with War/Avar tribes. The name Xiongnu had not become generic in
Inner Asia in the third or fourth century but in this case belongs to this
specific historical moment. It is not surprising that some groups refused
to be included in the larger groupings, but kept the name Xiongnu
for themselves. We do not yet know how these Xiongnu established
themselves and maintained their identity in a zone of settlement on the
North slopes of Altai and in the Minusinsk Basin, that is to say, quite far
to the Northwest of what had been the heart of their ancient empire.
These are understudied historical questions. Only careful research into
the archaeology of the two centuries of history on the Mongolian
steppe that separated the end of the Xiongnu Empire and the Hun
migration will be able to show how this happened.
[35] Peter Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (Wiesbaden, 1992)
69ff.
A Three-Stage History
Some clans or tribes of actual Xiongnu origin politically dominated
the Huns of Europe – Attila’s Huns – but they had long been chased
from the Xiongnu homeland in Mongolia and the Ordos region to
the Northwest, to the Altai region. It is only this point of separation in
time – these “missing” two centuries – that prevents us from identifying
them directly with the imperial Xiongnu of an earlier era. We must
conceptualize a history in three stages: first there were the imperial
Xiongnu, whose empire ended in the second century; next, we must
distinguish these imperial Xiongnu from their northern descendants,
who were based in the secondary core of the Altai Mountains and
the Minusinsk Basin in the fourth century; third, we must in turn
distinguish these northern Xiongnu from the groupings that resulted
from the migration from there and established themselves in Central
Asia and in the West. Despite all of the internal cultural developments
and recombination of tribes and peoples implicit in this movement, we
can be certain of political and to some extent cultural continuity among
the Xiongnu-Huns.
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