Xiongnu

The Xiongnu (, ) were a tribal confederation of nomadic peoples who, according to ancient Chinese sources, inhabited the eastern Eurasian Steppe from the 3rd century BC to the late 1st century AD. Modu Chanyu, the supreme leader after 209 BC, founded the Xiongnu Empire.

After their previous rivals, the Yuezhi, migrated west into Central Asia during the 2nd century BC, the Xiongnu became a dominant power on the steppes of East Asia, centred on the Mongolian Plateau. The Xiongnu were also active in areas now part of Siberia, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and Xinjiang. Their relations with adjacent Chinese dynasties to the south-east were complex—alternating between various periods of peace, war, and subjugation. Ultimately, the Xiongnu were defeated by the Han dynasty in a centuries-long conflict, which led to the confederation splitting in two, and forcible resettlement of large numbers of Xiongnu within Han borders. During the Sixteen Kingdoms era, as one of the "Five Barbarians", they founded several dynastic states in northern China, such as the Former Zhao and Hu Xia.

Attempts to identify the Xiongnu with later groups of the western Eurasian Steppe were controversial for a period of time, as Scythians and Sarmatians were concurrently to the west, archaeogenetics confirmed that interaction and connection with the Huns. The identity of the ethnic core of Xiongnu has been a subject of varied hypotheses, because only a few words, mainly titles and personal names, were preserved in the Chinese sources. The name ''Xiongnu'' may be cognate with that of the Huns and/or the '' Huna'', although this is disputed. Other linguistic links—all of them also controversial—proposed by scholars include Iranian,: "Their royal tribes and kings (''shan-yü'') bore Iranian names and all the Hsiung-nu words noted by the Chinese can be explained from an Iranian language of Saka type. It is therefore clear that the majority of Hsiung-nu tribes spoke an Eastern Iranian language." Mongolic, Turkic, Uralic, Yeniseian, or multi-ethnic.

Name

The Chinese name for the Xiongnu was a pejorative term in itself, as the characters (匈奴) have the meaning of "fierce slave". The pronunciation of 匈奴 as Xiōngnú is the modern Mandarin Chinese pronunciation, from the Mandarin dialect spoken now in Beijing, which came into existence less than 1000 years ago. The Old Chinese pronunciation has been reconstructed as *''xiuoŋ-na'' or *''qhoŋna''. Sinologist Axel Schuessler (2014) reconstructs the pronunciations of 匈奴 as *''hoŋ-nâ'' in Late Old Chinese (c. 318 BCE) and as *''hɨoŋ-nɑ'' in Eastern Han Chinese; citing other Chinese transcriptions wherein the velar nasal medial ''-ŋ-'', after a short vowel, seemingly played the role of a general nasal - sometimes equivalent to ''n'' & ''m'' -, Schuessler proposes that 匈奴 Xiongnu < *''hɨoŋ-nɑ'' < *''hoŋ-nâ'' might be a Chinese rendition, Han or even pre-Han, of foreign *''Hŏna'' or *''Hŭna'', which Schuessler compares to Huns and Sanskrit '' Hūṇā''. However, the same medial ''-ŋ-'' prompts Christopher P. Atwood (2015) to reconstruct *''Xoŋai'', which he derives from the Ongi River ( mn, Онги гол) in Mongolia and suggests that it was originally a dynastic name rather than an ethnic name.

History

Nomadic predecessors

The territories associated with the Xiongnu in historical sources were previously occupied by other nomadic cultures such as the Afanasevo culture (3500-2500 BC), based in the northwest of the Altai Mountains, which resulted from the eastward migration of the Yamnaya culture, originally based in the Pontic steppe north of the Caucasus Mountains. Their probable descendants, the Yuezhi, were displaced by the Xiongnu expansion in the 2nd century BC, and had to migrate to Central and Southern Asia. In the southern part of that territory -i.e. the Tarim basin's eastern edge- the Tarim mummies are discovered and dated to circa 2000 BC; recent studies (Li et al., 2010; Zhang et al.; 2021) indicate that the prehistoric inhabitants of the Tarim Basin arose from the admixture between locals of Ancient North Eurasian and Northeast Asians descent.

The Pazyryk culture (6th-3rd century BC) immediately preceded the arrival of the Xiongnus. A Scythian culture, it was identified by excavated artifacts and mummified humans, such as the Siberian Ice Princess, found in the Siberian permafrost, in the Altay Mountains, Kazakhstan and nearby Mongolia. To the south, the Ordos culture had developed in the Ordos Loop (modern Inner Mongolia, China) during the Bronze and early Iron Age from the 6th to 2nd centuries BC, and is of unknown ethno-linguistic origin, and is thought to represent the easternmost extension of Indo-European-speakers, while others argue for an autochthonous origin.: "From the first millennium b.c., we have abundant historical, archaeological and linguistic sources for the location of the territory inhabited by the Iranian peoples. In this period the territory of the northern Iranians, they being equestrian nomads, extended over the whole zone of the steppes and the wooded steppes and even the semi-deserts from the Great Hungarian Plain to the Ordos in northern China."

Early history

Western Han historian Sima Qian composed an early yet detailed exposition on the Xiongnu in one ''liezhuan'' (arrayed account) of his ''Records of the Grand Historian'' ( BC), wherein the Xiongnu were alleged to be descendants of a certain Chunwei, who in turn descended from the "lineage of Lord Xia", a.k.a. Yu the Great. Even so, Sima Qian also drew a distinct line between the settled Huaxia people (Han) to the pastoral nomads (Xiongnu), characterizing them as two polar groups in the sense of a civilization versus an uncivilized society: the Hua–Yi distinction. Sima Qian also mentioned Xiongnu's early appearance north of Wild Goose Gate and Dai commanderies before 265 BCE, just before the Zhao-Xiongnu War; however, sinologist Edwin Pulleyblank (1994) contends that pre-241-BCE references to the Xiongnu are anachronistic substitutions for the Hu people instead. Sometimes the Xiongnu were distinguished from other nomadic peoples; namely, the Hu people; yet on other occasions, Chinese sources often just classified the Xiongnu as a ''Hu'' people, which was a blanket term for nomadic people. Even Sima Qian is inconsistent in his Historical Records: occasionally, he considered the Donghu to be the Hu proper,''Shiji''
"Hereditary House of Zhao"
quote: "今中山在我腹心，北有燕，東有胡，西有林胡、樓煩、秦、韓之邊，而無彊兵之救，是亡社稷，柰何？" translation: "(King Wuling of Zhao t
Lou Huan
) Now Zhongshan is at our heart and belly ote: Zhao surrounded Zhongshan, except on Zhongshan's north-eastern side Yan to the north, Hu to the east, Forest Hu, Loufan, Qin, Han at our borders to the west. Yet we have no strong army to help us, surely we will lose our country. What is to be done?"Compare a parallel passage in ''Stratagems of the Warring States'', "King Wuling spends his day in idleness", quote: "自常山以至代、上黨，東有燕、東胡之境，西有樓煩、秦、韓之邊，而無騎射之備。
Jennifer Dodgson's translation
"From Mount Chang to Dai and Shangdang, our lands border Yan and the Donghu in the east, and to the west we have the Loufan and shared borders with Qin and Han. Nevertheless, we have no mounted archers ready for action." yet elsewhere he considered Xiongnu to be also Hu.''Shiji''
Vol. 110 "Account of the Xiongnu"
quote: "後秦滅六國，而始皇帝使蒙恬將十萬之眾北擊胡，悉收河南地。…… 匈奴單于曰頭曼，頭曼不勝秦，北徙。" translation: "Later on, Qin conquered the six other states, and the First Emperor dispatched general Meng Tian to lead a multitude of 100,000 north to attack the Hu; and he took all lands south the Yellow River. ..The Xiongnu chanyu was Touman; Touman could not win against Qin, so heyfled north."

Ancient China often came in contact with the Xianyun