Hunas or Huna was the name given by the ancient Indians to a group of Central Asian tribes who, via the Khyber Pass, entered India at the end of the 5th or early 6th century. Huna Kingdom occupied areas as far as Eran and Kausambi, greatly weakening the Gupta Empire. The Hunas were ultimately defeated by the Indian Gupta Empire and the Indian king Yasodharman. The Hunas are thought to have included the Xioniteand/orHephthalite, the Kidarites, the Alchon Huns and the Nezak Huns. Such names, along with that of the Harahunas mentioned in Hindu texts, have sometimes been used for the Hunas in general; while these groups appear to have been a component of the Hunas, such names were not necessarily synonymous. The relationship, if any, of the Hunas to the Huns, a Central Asian people who invaded Europe during the same period, is also unclear. The Kidarites, who invaded Bactria in the second half of the 4th century, are generally regarded as the first wave of Hunas to enter South Asia. Gujars are sometimes said to have been originally a sub-tribe of the Hunas. In its farthest geographical extent in India, the territories controlled by the Hunas covered the region up to Malwa in central India. Their repeated invasions and war losses were the main reason for the decline of the Gupta Empire.
History
The Mongolian-Tibetan historian :de:Sumpa Yeshe Peljor|Sumpa Yeshe Peljor lists the Hunas alongside other peoples found in Central Asia since antiquity, including the Yavanas, Kambojas, Tukharas, Khasas and Daradas. Chinese sources link the Central Asian tribes comprising the Hunas to both the Xiongnu of north east Asia and the Huns who later invaded and settled in Europe. Similarly, Gerald Larson suggests that the Hunas were a Turkic-Mongolian grouping from Central Asia. The works of Ptolemy are among the first European texts to mention the Huns, followed by the texts by Marcellinus and Priscus. They too suggest that the Huns were an inner Asian people. bowl, 460–479 CE. According to Procopius of Caesarea, they were of the same stock as European Huns "in fact as well as in name", but sedentary and white-skinned. The 6th-century Roman historian Procopius of Caesarea, related the Huns of Europe with the Hephthalites or "White Huns" who subjugated the Sassanids and invaded northwestern India, stating that they were of the same stock, "in fact as well as in name", although he contrasted the Huns with the Hephthalites, in that the Hephthalites were sedentary, white-skinned, and possessed "not ugly" features: The Kidarites, who invaded Bactria in the second half of the 4th century, are generally regarded as the first wave of Hunas to enter South Asia.
