The Age of the Imperial Guptas c4.139

c4.139

The Hūṇas are known to the western historians as the Huns and to the Chinese as the Hiung Nu. We hear of them for the first time in connection with the Yueh Chi or the Kuṣāṇas in the history of the First Han dynasty. The subsequent history and the migrations of these people have been very closely followed by French scholars. The researches of Messieurs Chavannnes and Berthoud have proved conclusively that the Huns spread over Southern Asia and Europe like swarms of locusts towards the close of the 5th century A.D. While Attila terrified the Roman emperors of the east and the west, Khiṅkhila and Toramāṇa devastated the fairest provinces of Persia and India. The Eastern branch of the Hūṇa tribes are known to European writers as the Epthalites while the Chinese call them Ye-tha. Two successive kings of Persia were killed in battle with the Hūṇas. Western writers describe them as a nomadic people with Mongolian features. The affinities between the Hungarian or the Magyar language and the Tibetan proves that some of the Western Tibetan tribes are the modern representatives of the Hūṇas. This is borne out by the fact that the country to the north of the Māna-sarovar lake and the Nīlam pass is still known to the people of the Garhwal State as the *Hūṇa-deśa*.