Indian Antiquary Vol 48

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

Page 77

MAY, 1919]
THE HUN PROBLEM IN INDIA
73
Menander and the Huns.
This idea of forest-spirits is found supported by another designation given to these people, namely, Spiritus Immundis, which means demons, and can be equated with the expression Fauni Ficari on the authority of the Church Father, St. Hieronymus. This idea of the Huns being regarded as forest-spirits is in keeping with the notion Dava (Demon) of the Zend Avesta. That the Hiung-Nu on the Chinese borders, were the people known to the early Latin and Greek writers under the name Fauni, finds historical support from the dating of Strabo's reference to them. According to Strabo's geography Menander extended his borders up to the frontiers of the Chinese empire and the Fauni in the year 190 B.C. The period of Menander would correspond to the reign of Hwei-Ti of the Han dynasty. The Fauni kingdom, of which Apollodorus of Artemita gives an account in his Parthika, could be no other than the Hiung-Nu kingdom, which at the time happened to be ruled over by one of their most powerful Shan-Yuë, Mao-Tun, the Attila of the Hiung-Nu people. Beyond this mere synchronism, there is the startling testimony that these Hiung-Nu were also known to the Chinese by another name Kuy-Fang, where the first word means as much as a demon, and this designation for the Hiung-Nu occurs in the Chinese text, which says clearly that the Yin called the people Kwei-fang whom the Han designated Hiung-Nu. It is also noteworthy that it is the Second Dynasty that called them by this name. The second word 'fang' probably meant the district. This notion is confirmed in what the early Chinese historian See-ma-Chang has to say about it. "According to See-ma-Chang, the Hiun-Yu in the time of Yao-Shon were called the mountain Yong or Hiun-Yu; in the time of Hia, Shon-Wei; in the time of In dynasty, their and was Kuy-fang; in the time of the Chao they were called Hiun-Yun, and in the time of the Han, Hiung-Nu." 14
It thus becomes clear that the Hiung-Nu of the Chinese were considered by the Chinese themselves at a particular period of their history as something analogous to demons, and this notion got abroad in the folk-name Fauni of Strabo's geography, and in the Gothic tradition regarding the paternal stock of the Huns. Therefore, it may be taken as satisfactorily proved that the Hiung-Nu and the Huns were in the estimation of their neighbours the same people.
The maternal stock of the Huns--the Massagetæ.
In regard to the maternal stock of the Huns, the Maga women must have belonged to the Getæ, who were also in the neighbourhood of China. All the contemporary historians of the Huns knew them only either as originating from the Massagete that came later to be called the Huns, according to the concurrent testimony of the Greek, Roman and Latin historians, who all state "that the Huns lived among the most dreaded of people, the Massageta." There is besides the clear statement of Ammianus Marcellinus, who "records that the Huns in every respect were similar to the Alans, who lived in that stretch of country from the river Don to the Indus, formerly known by the name Massageta." The Chinese called these people before they were conquered by the Hiung-Nu, An-Ts'ai, or according to the present pronunciation Yen-Ts'ai. Therefore then the people, called Massagete by the Latins and Greeks, were known to the Chinese as AnTs'ai. The notion of Maga women as connected with the Huns seems to have had its
14 A. Q. R. quoted above, pp. 366-67. In this connection attention may usefully be drawn to the title Devaputra or Daivaputra on the coins of the Kushana rulers of the Punjab: Kanishka, Huvishka and Vasudeva. The Daivaputras are again under reference in the Allahabad Piller Inscription of Samudragupta. Is then the question established that the Ch. Kuy-fang Ind. Daivaputra Cl. Fauni or Spiritus Immundis? Ind., Ant. XV, p. 249.
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