Articles

Where Huns' Blood Drew

Where Huns’ Blood Drew

By Katalin Csornai

Journal of Eurasian History, Vol.1:3 (2009)

Huns in battle with the Alans, 1870s engraving after a drawing by Johann Nepomuk Geiger (1805

Abstract: In the knowledge of the Han time sources we can conclude that the history of the Huns goes back in time as well as in territory much further than it has long been decided by mainstream scholars — their ancestors lived in Inner and Eastern Asia centuries before the Christian era, or regarding Sima Qian’s records on the Xia dynasty we might tentatively say millennia. Asian Huns are termed as Xiongnu in the Han chronicles. Undoubtedly the same sources do prove that parts of the Asian Huns, who had lived near the northern borders of the Han Empire in the centuries around the beginning of the Christian era, left their homeland in two directions — the Xiongnus of Zhizhi danhu moved west towards Europe, and other peoples who must have had Xiongnu blood in their veins went southwest towards the Indian subcontinent. The latter event occured in three waves: first by the Yuezhi in 204 B.C., after which the Kushan Emipre was founded; then in 176 B.C. by the Saka, whose relation to the Xiongnu is still debated; and finally by the Yuezhi and Wusun in 174 B.C.



Introduction: It is in fact a long time that our knowledge of the Huns has not been satisfactory due to the mainstream scholars using exclusively the Byzantine and European — occasionally the Arabic — sources for their researches. Accidentally one may at most find some references to Anonymus or Kézay. There have been some exceptions though, like De Groot or Béla Szász, who traced the history of the early Huns further back in time and in area, but they both have rather unduly been suppressed. They knew that substantial knowledge of the ancient Chinese chronicles was essential since the said chronicles gave thorough, detailed and genuine report on the Hun peoples. It is heartening news, however, that these conditions have begun to change. Borbála Obrusánszky or Éva Aradi, serious‐minded and conscientious scholars of the field, are creditably and accurately going to the furthest possible reaches of the sources essential for the study.

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