history of Central Asia Early eastern peoples

From its earliest history China had to contend with barbarian pressures on its borders. The group of barbarians called the Hu played a considerable role in early Chinese history, leading to the introduction of cavalry and the adoption of foreign clothing, more suitable than its traditional Chinese counterpart for new types of warfare. About 200 bca new and powerful barbarian people emerged on China’s western borders, the Hsiung-nu. Little is known of T’ou-man, founder of this empire, beyond the fact that he was killed by his son Mao-tun, under whose long reign (c. 209–174 bc) the Hsiung-nu became a major power and a serious menace to China. In many respects the Hsiung-nu are the eastern counterparts of the Scythians. The Chinese historian Ssu-ma Ch’ien (145?–c. 85 bc) described Hsiung-nu nomadic tactics and strategy in terms almost identical with those applied by Herodotus to the Scythians: the Hsiung-nu

move about in search of water and pasture and have no walled cities or fixed dwellings, nor do they engage in any kind of agriculture.

The centre of the Hsiung-nu empire was Mongolia, but it is impossible even to approximate the western limits of the territory under its direct control. For more than two centuries the Hsiung-nu, more or less constantly warring with China, remained the major force in the eastern regions of Central Asia.

In ad 48 the Hsiung-nu empire, long plagued by internecine struggles, dissolved. Some of the tribes, known as the southern Hsiung-nu, recognized Chinese suzerainty and settled in the Ordos region. The other remaining tribes, the northern Hsiung-nu, maintained themselves in Mongolia until the middle of the 2nd century, when they finally succumbed to the Hsien-pei, their neighbours. Another group, led by Chih-chih, brother and rival of the northern Hsiung-nu ruler, moved westward. With the death of Chih-chih in ad 36, this group disappears from the records, but according to one theory the Huns, who first appeared on the southern Russian steppes about ad 370, were descendants of these fugitive tribes.

Meanwhile, in the second half of the 2nd century bc, the Hsiung-nu, at the height of their power, had expelled from their homeland in western Kansu (China) a people probably of Iranian stock, known to the Chinese as the Yüeh-chih and called Tokharians in Greek sources. While a part of the Yüeh-chih confederacy, known as the Asii, moved as far west as the Caucasus region, the remainder occupied the region between the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya before overrunning Bactria between 141 and 128 bc. After penetrating Sīstān and the Kābul River valley, they crossed the Indus and established the Kushān (Kuṣāṇa) empire in northwestern India. In its heyday, under Kujūla Kadphises during the 1st century ad, this empire extended from the vicinity of the Aral Sea to Vārānasi (Benares) in the Gangetic Plain and southward as far as Nāshik, near modern Bombay (Mumbai). The Kushāns were thus able to control the growing transcontinental caravan trade linking the Chinese empire with that of Rome.