ILLUSTRATIONS (11). THE HUNS. 81 



brown complexion. The southern Huns, or Hajatehah, called 

 by the Byzantines Euthalites or Nephthalites, and inhabiting 

 the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, had fairer skins. These 

 pursued agriculture, and dwelt in towns. They are frequently 

 termed White Huns, and d'Herbelot even regards them as 

 Indo- Scythians. In Deguignes* an account will be found of 

 the Punu, the leader or Tanju of the Huns, and of the great 

 drought and famine which led to the migration of a portion 

 of the nation northwards about the year 46 a.d. All the 

 details, given in his celebrated work regarding the Hiongnu, 

 have been recently submitted by Klaproth to a rigid and 

 learned scrutiny. From the result of his investigations it 

 w r ould appear, that the Hiongnu belong to the widely dif- 

 fused Turkish races of the Altai and Tangnu mountain dis- 

 tricts. The name of Hiongnu was a general name for tile Ti, 

 Thu-kiu or Turks, in the north and north-west of China, even 

 in the third century before the Christian era. The southern 

 Hiongnu submitted themselves to the Chinese, and in con- 

 junction with the latter destroyed the empire of the northern 

 Hiongnu, who were in consequence compelled to flee to the 

 west, and thus appear to have given the first impulse to the 

 migration of nations in Central Asia. The Huns, who were 

 long confounded with the Hiongnu (as the Uigures were with 

 the Ugures and Hungarians) belonged, according to Klaproth,f 

 to the Finnish race of the Uralian mountains, which race 

 has been variously intermixed with Germans, Turks, and 

 Samoiedes. 



The Huns (Ovvvoi) are first mentioned by Dionysius Peri- 

 egetes, a writer who was able to obtain more accurate informa- 

 tion than others regarding the interior of Asia, because, as a 

 learned man and a native of Charax on the Arabian Gulf, he 

 was sent back to the East by Augustus, to accompany thither 

 his adopted son, Caius Agrippa. Ptolemy, a century later, 

 writes the word Xovvoi with a strong aspiration, which, as St. 

 Martin observes, is agan met with in the geographical name 

 of Chunigard. 



* Hist. gen. des Huns, des Turcs, etc., 1756, t. i. P. 1, p. 217, P. 

 2, pp. Ill, 125, 223, 447. 



f See Klaproth, Asia Polyglotta, pp. 183, 21 1 ; Tableaux Historiques 

 de VAsie, pp. 102, 109. 



G 



