Xionites,
Chionites, or
Chionitae (
Middle Persian:
Xiyon; Avestan:
Xiiaona;
Sogdian: Xwn;
Pahlavi:
Huna), or
Hunni,
Yun or
Xūn (獯), were an
Iranian-speaking people[1] who were prominent in
Transoxania and
Bactria.
The Xionites (Chionitae) are first mentioned with Kushans (Cuseni) by
Ammianus Marcellinus who spent the winter of 356-57 CE in their
Balkh territory. They arrived with the wave of immigration from
Central Asia into
Iran in late antiquity. They were influenced by the
Kushan and
Bactrian cultures, while patronizing the
Eastern Iranian languages, and became a threat on the northeastern frontier of the
Sassanid Empire.
[1][2]
In 1944
Carlile Aylmer Macartney wrote:
[5]
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[TD]We must consider briefly a third nation playing a role in our sources: the Kermichiones. Who were these people? They cannot have been the Turks-Toue-Kioue, since their embassy reached Constantinople while the Avars were still negotiating with Rome for settlement inside the frontier-probably, therefore, as early as AD 558, whereas the true Turks appeared there first in 568; further, their ruler's name was `Aσκήλτ or Scultor, while the Khagan of the Turks at that time was Silzabul, Dizabul, or Istämi. Neither can they have been the Juan Juan, as Marquart suggests; nor the Epthalites, who were well known to the Byzantines and would not have been described in this way. Moreover, the Epthalites were known as White Huns, and Mr. Bailey has pointed out that the word Karmir xyon, meaning Red Chyon, occurs in a Pahlavi text in juxtaposition with SpEt xyon, White Chyon. The name Chyon, originally that of some other race, was "transferred later to the Huns owing to the similarity of sound". The nation can hardly be other than that which appears in the 4th century, under the name of Chionits, in the steppes on the north-west frontier of Persia. These Chionites were probably a branch of the Huns, the other branch of which afterwards appeared in Europe, the latter appear to have attacked and conquered by the Alans, then living between the Urals and the Volga about AD 360, while the first mention of the Chionites is dated AD 356. In the 5th century the name is replaced by that of the Kushan or of the Kidarite Huns, who are clearly identical with the Kushan.
A more recent specialist,
Richard Nelson Frye[6] wrote in 1991:
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Just as later nomadic empires were confederations of many peoples, we may tentatively propose that the ruling groups of these invaders were, or at least included, Turkic-speaking tribesmen from the east and north, although most probably the bulk of the people in the confederation of Chionites and then Hephtalites spoke an Iranian language (...) This was the last time in the history of Central Asia that Iranian-speaking nomads played any role; hereafter all nomads would speak Turkic languages.[/TD]
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As written above. the Proto_Huns were an East Iranic people. With time passing the Huns turned into a confederation of Iranic-Turkic-Mongol elements with the final result that Turkic language took the overhand in Central Asia. The Huns themselves are described to have clothed and lived just like the Scythians.
Early Hun Period => Iranic
Later Hun Period => mixed confederation
