THE HUNS AND THE YUÉ-CHI
It is to Chinese sources that we must turn for an account of the tribes
which overthrew Græco-Bactrian rule, and were a constant thorn in the
side of the Parthian Empire. These sources, with faint sidelights
thrown on an obscure period by allusions to be found in classic
authors, enable us to bridge a gap of several centuries replete with
events which exercised a lasting influence on the history of Central
Asia.
The Chow dynasty ruled from B.C. 1122 to B.C. 250.[31] After its fall
China split up into a vast number of nearly independent principalities,
and the reigning sovereign enjoyed but little power. The Tsin succeeded
in gaining the foremost rank as feudatories, and finally restored the
authority of the central power. Their aim was not achieved without a
desperate struggle with their rivals. In the course of the resulting
civil war Tsin Chi Hwang-ti began his reign. He was the Louis XI. of
the Chinese monarchy, and brought force and stratagem by turns to bear
on the task of restoring the imperial prestige.[32]
When he found himself master at home, he turned his attention to
the task of protecting his frontier from aggressors. Of these, the
Hiung-nu, a Tartar tribe whose habitat was Eastern Mongolia, were
the most troublesome. He carried the war into the enemy’s camp by
despatching an army across the great Gobi Desert, with orders to
establish a strong place at Hami.[33] In B.C. 250 he commenced a work
which had a more lasting effect in repressing their invasion. This
was the Great Wall of China, which starts from the Shan-hi Pass and
ends at the Chin-Yü barriers, a distance of not less than 1500 miles.
The Hiung-nu, like their kinsmen the Mongols of Chingiz and of Tīmūr,
fought on horseback, and their plan of campaign was simply a succession
of raids followed by speedy retreats. This stupendous barrier
intimidated them, and turned westwards the tide of their migration.
Thus the Great Wall, which it is the fashion to decry as a monument of
misplaced labour, was a most important factor in the history of Central
Asia. At this epoch the Sakas were settled in Hexapolis, to the east
of the Pamirs; while the Usuns dwelt on the southern side of Lake Lob,
separated from the Sakas by the Uīghūrs. About B.C. 300 the empire
of the _Yué-Chi_,[34] who were a branch of the Tung-nu, or Eastern
Tartars, extended most probably from the Muztagh Mountains on the north
to the Kuen-lun Mountains on the south, and from the Upper Hoang-ho in
Shan-si on the east to Koché and Khotan on the west.[35]
About B.C. 200 a war broke out between the Tung-nu and the Hiung-nu
(the Western Tartars or Huns), their neighbours. Mothé, the chief
of these latter, falling on the Eastern Tartars unawares, utterly
defeated them and drove the Yué-Chi from their kingdom. The latter fled
to the banks of the Ili River, while Mothé pushed his conquests as far
as the Volga on the west and the border provinces of China eastwards.
The Emperor Kao-tsu (B.C. 202–194), founder of the famous Han dynasty,
who had achieved the subjugation of the whole of China, was alarmed
at the progress of Mothé, and marched against him. His troops were,
however, surrounded by Mothé’s colossal hordes in the north of the
province of Shan-si, and only escaped destruction by the employment
of a ruse.[36] On the departure of the Chinese army Mothé set out for
Tartary. For upwards of fifty years the power of Hiung-nu sustained
no check. They continued to press down on the Yué-Chi, who, after
suffering a further crushing defeat, broke into separate hordes. The
lesser division, or “Little Yué-Chi,” passed into Tibet. The “Great
Yué-Chi’s” first movement was westwards to the banks of the Ili, but
finding the Usun too strong for them, they wandered in a southerly
direction, and finally descended upon Kāshghar, Yarkand, and Khotan,
whence they displaced the Sakas (B.C. 163). The latter, on their
expulsion from Soghdiana, invaded Bactria, and from this period until
the fall of the Græco-Bactrian kingdom the Greeks had to deal with both
Sakas and Parthians. It would seem that the latter were alternately
friends and foes. This intercourse possibly accounts for the Parthian
characteristics found on the early Saka coins of India.[37]
The Sakas were driven towards the Pamirs and the Tien-shan. One branch
of them fled to Zungaria, while the majority remained in Hexapolis and
intermixed with the Uīghūrs, who had been for a long period masters
of that country. A third branch turned their steps towards the upper
valleys of the Yarkand Darya. Some of these fugitives established
themselves in the little Iranian States of Serikūl and Shugnān, where
appreciable traces of their language still survive.[38] Others crossed
the Karakorum, and invaded the north-east of India.
At this epoch the Chinese obtained a glimpse of the position of Western
Asia through the medium of prisoners taken from the Hiung-nu. From them
they learned that the Yué-Chi had suffered defeat at the hands of the
Huns, and been compelled to migrate far from their ancient abode. They
had, however, become very powerful in Bactria and Transoxiana, and had
conquered Ta-hia (Khorāsān), establishing themselves finally there in
spite of the Parthian resistance. The Emperor Wu-ti eagerly desired an
alliance with the Yué-Chi against their common enemy the Hiung-nu. With
this view he sent his general Chang-Kien on an embassy to the prince,
accompanied by a suite of a hundred attendants. The envoy, however,
had the misfortune to fall into the hands of the Huns while traversing
their territory, and escaped only after a ten years’ imprisonment.
On joining the Yué-Chi, he found them employed in driving the Sakas
out of Soghdiana. He accompanied them on a victorious expedition, and
then returned to China, with two followers, sole survivors of his
cortege. The emperor expressed his appreciation of the intelligence
brought by Chang-Kien regarding Central Asian events, by elevating him
to an important post. These events led to the establishment of direct
commercial intercourse between China and the West, which, however, the
Huns did their utmost to interrupt.
A collation of the Chinese annals, the classic authors, and the coins
which have come down to us, would render it tolerably certain that
the Greeks lost their hold on Soghdiana in B.C. 163; that a little
later they were deprived of Bactria by the Sakas, and of Margiana by
the Parthians. From this period their dominion was limited to the
southern slopes of the Indian Caucasus. That the Græco-Bactrian Empire
had attained a high degree of natural civilisation, and, indeed,
of artistic culture, is evidenced by the purity of design and the
excellence of workmanship displayed by the later coins.
The Bactrians displaced by the Sakas fled eastward, and settled in
the confines of Bokhārā, and the surrounding countries.[39] But the
dominion of their opponents in Bactria was not destined to be of long
duration, for in B.C. 120 the Yué-Chi, who had already overrun the
ancient territory of the Sakas, began to pour into Bactria.
After expelling the Sakas, and the remnant of the Græco-Bactrians,[40]
the Yué-Chi settled in that part of Central Asia which is named
Tokhāristān, after their tribal appellation, and which included Balkh,
Kunduz, Hisār, Bolor, Wakhān, and Badakhshān. Meanwhile the Sakas
retreated southwards, and occupied in turn Kiphin, Soghdiana, Arachosia
(Kandahār), and Drangiana (Sīstān).[41]
Their invasion of India was directly due to the usurpation of their
country by the Yué-Chi. The latter parcelled Bactria out among
their five clans.[42] Each had its own capital, but the only Yué-Chi
headquarters which has been identified is Bamian, at the foot of the
northern slope of the Hindu Kush.
The partition continued in force for nearly a century, during which
repeated collisions occurred between the Yué-Chi and the Parthians.
In B.C. 30 the chief of one of the clans, the Kwei-shuang, subdued
the rest, and assumed sovereignty over the whole race. They became
thenceforward known by the name of the conquering clan, which in
course of time was modified to Kushan, and appears so inscribed on
their coins. The recent overthrow of their most persistent enemies the
Hiung-nu rendered the more easy the task of consolidating their power,
for in the year B.C. 71 the reigning Chinese emperor had administered a
crushing defeat on the Huns, who were in B.C. 60 finally enrolled into
the Chinese Empire. They thus became masters of all those countries
which go to form Turkestan, Eastern Iran, and Afghanistan. The Yué-Chi,
or Kushans, relieved of this incubus, turned their arms towards the
south, crossed the Paropanisus, and overran Kabul, which belonged in
part to the Arsacidæ, and in part to the Sakas, driving the latter out
of their kingdom of Kiphin.[43]
At the dawn of the Christian era the Kushans were a foremost power in
Central Asia. The Romans deigned to treat with them as an established
empire. Mark Antony, for example, sent ambassadors to Bactria, whose
chiefs (all Kushans) were represented at Rome by an envoy under
Augustus; while later, in the reign of Trojan and Adrian, they sent
ambassadors to solicit an alliance against the Parthians.[44]
From Chinese sources we learn that in the year A.D. 98 their general
Panchao[45] was received during an expedition to the Caspian by the
Yué-Chi, and that they recognised the imperial sovereignty by annual
presents.
Their power was not destined to endure for long. By the end of the
third century A.D. they had lost most of their conquests in the south
of Paropamisus, including Kashmir. They were finally expelled from
Bactria itself by the Ephthalites, or White Huns, about the year A.D.
430.
The last Kushan king of whom we find a trace in history was named
Kitolo. He conquered Gāndhāra, or Kandahār; but was forced to return to
his own dominion by an irruption of White Huns. The son whom he left
in charge of the new province established his capital at Peshāwar.[46]
The name of the founder of the Little Yué-Chi, as they were afterwards
called, survives in the title of Shah Kator, chief of Chitral.
The Ephthalites, or White Huns, who, as we have seen, in the year A.D.
430 became possessed of Bactria, were in all probability of the same
stock as the Yué-Chi. They are known to history under a great variety
of names, such as Naphthalites, Hayāthila, and Yetha. This last is the
name by which they are known to the Chinese, who always most carefully
distinguish between the Yetha and the Yué-Chi.[47] The Yetha were of
Tartaric origin, and are described as having anciently lived to the
north of the Great Wall, and to have advanced southwards about the
first century of our era. They then came under the domination of the
Juen-Juen,[48] but emerging from this, they ultimately became masters
of an empire which extended to the borders of Persia, and comprised
Kiphin, Kharashar, Kāshghar, and Khotan. The arrival of the Yetha in
Transoxiana about the year 425 of our era was the result of those
migrations of Tartar peoples which took place in Central Asia at the
beginning of the fifth century. About 360 the Juen-Juen advancing
westwards became masters of all Tartary.[49] One of their kings, Tulun
by name, who reigned at the beginning of the fifth century, carried
his conquest from Corea to the confines of Europe. It was owing to
these conquests that the various Hunnish tribes, driven from their
ancient habitats by these new invaders, swept into Transoxiana in 425
(_i.e._ the Ephthalites), and into Europe, under Attila, in 430. On the
appearance of the White Huns in the Oxus districts that country had
been for five centuries in the possession of the Yué-Chi, or Kushans,
as we have seen above, and they occupied the land for upwards of 130
years (425 to 557), during which period they were in close contact with
the Sāsānides of Persia. The Kushans did not, however, immediately
disappear from Central Asia, for we find references after this date in
Chinese authors to small Kushan principalities in the Upper Oxus and
Farghāna.