The Hephthalites, also known as White Huns, were a nomadic people who lived across northern China, Central Asia, and northern India in the fourth through sixth centuries. The term Hephthalite derives from Greek, supposedly a rendering of Hayathelite (from the term Haital = "Big/Powerful" in the dialect of Bukhara), the name used by Persian writers to refer to a 6th century empire on the northern and eastern periphery of their land. As a group they appear to be distinct from the Huns who migrated to Europe in the F ...
Throughout the 5th century, it was the Huer who managed to succeed to the Central Eurasian Hun heritage in a campaign which spread from the Tian Shan to the Carpathians. After the failure of Xiong's Zhou County (352) the influence of the Huer Dragon Tribe started to expand. The influence of the northern deer-people (Elunchun) retreated north up the Yenisei River as the Huer chased a western portion of the Choni into Uzbekistan (Late 4thC Alchoni) while the eastern branch founded the Xiong's last eastern dynasty Tiefu Xia (407-431). By ...
In China they were known as Yanda (厌哒 or 嚈噠) also written Yedaiyiliduo/Yeda/Yeoptal, but are documented as having called themselves Hua or Huer (滑), chroniclers recognising that the Chinese Yoptal terms came actually from the name of the Hua leaders. Peoples with similar ethnicons had been present in Central Eurasia for centuries. The Chinese classic Liang Zhigongtu describes them as of the same origin as the Hua Country in China. Yanda has been given various latinised renderings such as "Y ...
Main article: Indo-Hephthalites
The Hephthalites, or Huna as they were known in India, established themselves in Afghanistan by the first half of the fifth century, with their capital at Bamiyan.
The Indian emperor Skandagupta repelled a Hūna invasion in 455, but the Hephthalites continued to pressure India's northwest frontier (present day Pakistan), and broke through into northern India by the end of the fifth centu ...
