Indian Antiquary Vol 48

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 69

May, 1919 ]
THE HUN PROBLEM IN INDIAN HISTORY
THE HUN PROBLEM IN INDIAN HISTORY.
By Pror, 8. KRISHNASWAMI AY ANGAR, M.A.; MADRAS. The Huns were an Asiatic people who, according to accepted history, dominated the world during the 4th and 6th centuries of the Christian era. Gibbon says of them: "The Western world was oppressed by the Goths and Vandals who fled before the Huns; but the achievements of the Huns themselves were not adequate to their power and prosperity. Their victorious hordes had spread from the Volga to the Danube, but the public force was exhausted by the discord of independent chieftains; their valour was idly consumed inobscure and predatory exoursions; and they often degraded their national dignity by condescending, for the hope of spoil, to enlist under the banners of their fugitive enemies. In the reign of Attila, the Huns again became the terror of the world, and I shall now describe the character and actions of that formidable Barbarian, who alternately insulted and invaded the East and the West, and urged the rapid downfall of the Roman Empire.
"In the tide of emigration which impetuously rolled from the confines of China to those of Germany, the most powerful and populous tribes may commonly be found on the verge of the Roman provinces. Their accumulated weight was sustained for a while by artificial barriers; and the only condescension of the emperors invited, without satisfying, the insolent demands of the Barbarians who had acquired an eager appetite for the luxuries of civilized life.
"Attila, the son of Mundzuk, deduoed his noble, perhaps his regal, descent from the ancient Huns, who had formerly contended with the monarchs of China. His features, accord ing to the observation of a Gothic historian, bore the stamp of his national origin; and the portrait of Attila exhibits the genuine deformity of a modern Calmuck: a large head, a swarthy complexion, small, deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short square body, of nervous strength, though of a disproportioned form. The haughty step and demeanour of the king of the Huns expressed the consciousness of his superiority above the rest of mankind; and he had a custom of fiercely rolling his eyes, as if he wished to enjoy the terror which he inspired."
The Huns in the East. At the other extremity of their influence at about the same period, a more recent historian has the following: -"Reference has already been made to the Yueh-Chi as having in 163 B.C. dispossessed the Sakas from their habitat in the Tarim Basin. In 120 B.C. the Yush-Chi drove the Sakas put of Bactria, which they occupied and which remained their centre for many generations. In 30 B.O. one of their tribes, the Kwei-Shang. subdued the others, and the nation became known to the Romans as the Kushan. Antony sent ambassadors to this people and Kushan chiefs appeared in Rome during the reign of Augustus. Their power gradually waned, and they were finally supplanted by & race known to the Chinese as the Yetha, to the classical writers as the Ephthalites or White Huns, and to the Persians as the Haythal: the new-oomors, though of a similar stock, were entirely distinot from the Yueh-Chi whom they drove out. This powerful tribe crossed the Oxos about A.D. 425, and according to the Persian chroniclers the news of their invasion caused a widespread panic."
The Inaugural Leoture before the Madras Christian College Amociated Societies. + Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Mothua'Popular odition, Vol. III, pp. 416-19. • History of Persia, by Lieut.-Col. Sir P. M. Sykes, Vol. I, pp. 468-9.