Indian Antiquary Vol 48

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

Page 76

72
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[ MAY, 1919
the Huns, that has the best authority at present, and the proof of this rests upon a several facts other than geographical. In the Latin map of St. Hieronymus, preserved in the British Museum in London, there appears the name Huniscite in the neighbourhood of the Chinese Empire. This map was compiled between the years A.D. 376 and 420, when the Huns were already in Europe. The appearance of this name on this map is remarkable, though it is scored out on the map itself as it is at present, and "Seres Oppidum" inserted close to it. Scholars now hold that this correction was made by the geographer Orosius, (a pupil of St. Hieronymus) whose geography was translated into English by King Alfred. In this geography, the compound folk name Huni-Scythæ occurs. What is more remarkable is that this name occurs in the neighbourhood of Ottorokorra (Uttarakuru). It is generally believed now that this Orosius introduced the correction on the map of errors copied either from the Latin map, drawn on the Wall of Polla Hall in Rome, under the orders of the emperor Augustus in 7.8.c., or from the work Orbis Pictus of Agrippa, which was in general use. "The Latin writers therefore of the Hiung-Nu age had really heard of the Hun under the Chinese Great Wall, although they did not know their history." 11
Among Strabo's notices of India, we find the statement that "The Greeks who occasioned its (Bactria's) revolt became so powerful by means of its fertility and advantages of the country that they became masters of Ariana and India, according to Apollodoros of Artemita. Their chiefs, particularly Menander, (if he really crossed the Hypanis to the east and reached Isamus), conquered more nations than Alexander. These conquests were achieved partly by Menander, partly by Demetrius, son of Euthydemus,. king of the Bactrians. They got possession not unly of Patalene but of the kingdom of Saraostus, and Sigerdis, which constitute the remainder of the coast. Apollodoros, in short, says that Bactriana is the ornament of all Ariana. They extended their empire even as far as the Seres and Phryni." 12
The Huns the Fauni of Strabo.
In this extract where the boundary of Bactria in her best days is referred to as the Seres and Phryni, it is now clearly demonstrated that the second word Phryni is an error for Fauni, which in the sense of forest-folk, finds support in the Gothic tradition concerning the origin of the Hiung-Nu. The following extract from the Gothic historian Cassiodorus, as preserved in other works, shows clearly that the Huns were forest men born of Hun fathers and Maga mothers:
"In those days the Hun people, who for a long time had been living enclosed in inaccessible mountain fastnesses, made a violent attack upon the people, the Goths, whom they harassed to the utmost, and finally drove out of their old habitations, which they then took possession of for themselves. This warlike people originated, according to the traditions of boary antiquity, in the following manner:
"Filimer, King of the Goths, son of Gadaric the Great, who was the fifth in succession to hold the rule of the Gets after their migration from the island of Scandza, and who, as: we have said, entered the lands of Scythia with his tribe, got to know of the presence among his people of certain Maga women', who in Gothic language are called Alirumna. Suspecting these women he expelled them from the midst of his race, and compelled them to wander in solitary exile far from his army." 13
For this and various other points in this matter, I am indebted to the article "Hiung-Nu-Hun Identity" by Kalman Nemati in the Asiatic Quarterly Review for April 1910.
1 M'Crindle's Ancient India-Strabo, p. 100.
13 Asiatic Quarterly Review, April 1910, pp. 360-1.