hun and xiongnu draw hand

[Justin Ma]

Quick question: Did the Huns and Xiongnu use a finger draw or a thumb draw?

[Bede]

I have communicated with Professor Sergei Miniaev, who is a important researcher on the Xiongnu, and he wrote there was no evidence of thumb rings in Xiongnu tombs. However, there were bracers and bow parts. Bracers were rarely used by thumb ring users.

The Hun tombs excavated in Europe were likewise devoid of thumb rings.

[Stephen Selby]

I have just been looking at Xiongnu burials in Balikun and Jimsar in Xinjiang. No thumb rings there, either. Doesn't mean they didn't do a thumb draw, though.

Be careful to distinguish the Xiongnu from the Huns. There is only the most tenuous connection between them.

[Bede]

Please do not think I am equating the Xiongnu and the Huns. I am referring to different archaeological contexts.

In general in the serious historical and archaeological literature, the Xiongnu are seen both as a tribal group and the leaders of a tribal confederation or nomadic empire which took their name. This does not suggest that all members of the confederation were culturally Xiongnu.

There was a problematic identification with the Huns of Europe based originally on the French system for transliterating Chinese in which the name was spelled Hiung Nu. The Wade-Giles system transliteration still had the "h" in it where it was written Hsiung-Nu. However, HS in the Wade-Giles system is equivalent to X in pinyin and SH in English. Later certain cauldron types were used as evidence of a connection at the material level. Some modern authors notably Beckwith discussing de la Vaissi?re's theory on the pronunciation of the name at the time of its introduction into Chinese which has these possible variations:
"*Soγd?, *Soγl?, *Sak(a)d? or even *Skla(C)da"

The conventions in the text above are that reconstructed words are prefixed by an asterisk (*), "(a)" means the vowel "a" might be inserted, and "(C)" means an unknown consonant. The voiced consonant often written as "gh" in English is transcribed by "γ" which is an adaptation of the Greek letter Gamma.

Getting back to the original question, independent of any other relationship between the Xiongnu and Huns, they both probably used some form of finger release because there is no evidence that they used a thumb release directly from their tombs and indirectly from descriptions of them doing so by their contemporaries. As Stephen wrote, this is not definitive, but it is a good indicator.

[jack farrell]

"The two Chinese characters for Xiongnu (pronounced *hyung-no in the Han period), superficially mean 'breast slave', but are actually used here to transcribe the name that is rendered in the West as 'Hun'...., Victor H. Mair, professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, is the editor of THE PREHISTORY OF THE SILK ROAD by E. E. Kuzina"; from THE TARIM MUMMIES.

[Stephen Selby]

Please do not think I am equating the Xiongnu and the Huns. I am referring to different archaeological contexts.

My comment was directed more to Justin.

[Justin Ma]

Please do not think I am equating the Xiongnu and the Huns. I am referring to different archaeological contexts.

My comment was directed more to Justin.

I figured as much.

[Bede]

Jack,
I acknowledge that Mair has that comment in his book and he is an expert on early Chinese literature, but other experts disagree with his reconstruction of the name. I will have to clear this up if I am to write a follow up article on the Xinjiang bows.

[Orda Khan]

This is the trouble we get into when dealing with secondary source information.

[Chris]

Please do not think I am equating the Xiongnu and the Huns. I am referring to different archaeological contexts.

In general in the serious historical and archaeological literature, the Xiongnu are seen both as a tribal group and the leaders of a tribal confederation or nomadic empire which took their name. This does not suggest that all members of the confederation were culturally Xiongnu.

Hello Bede,
I've been rather absent for a long time, very very busy with work I'm afraid.
On this topic, I must rather represent the opposite view. If you follow the work of the Russian archaeologists, such as Botalov, who have reviewed the entire field, they speak of a Hun-Sarmatian era and also Hun-Hun tombs. They do make a distinction between "Gunnu" and "Hunnu", one being Xiongnu, the other Hun, but there is a very slow change and a strong Sarmatian admixture. So there seems to have been a strong link at least among the leadership, as Prof Golden has also said.
Of course, in neither Xiongnu nor Hun confederations were all the people the same. I mean, look at England and Australia. Sure, they both are "English" in many ways, but over time the Aussies have mixed with different people and are somewhat different from the "Pommies". But not to outsiders!
Even the Encyclopedia Iranica admits now that there are seriously close links between the two.
As to archery, I am very interested in whether it is true that the Xiongnu first added the bone siyahs to the bows, or was it the Parthians.
Miniaev speaks of Altai proto-Xiongnu as having a "big bow".
I'm curious!

[Stephen Selby]

Just supposing that the Xiongnu and the Huns of Attilla shared a language with common Turkic roots, it's possible that both used a word for themselves cognate with the old Mongolian 'kumun', which just means 'people'. (now pronounced 'khun' in modern Khalkha Mongolian.

Meanwhile:

'Human'
mid-13c., from M.Fr. humain "of or belonging to man," from L. humanus, probably related to homo (gen. hominis) "man," Cognate with O.Lith. zmuo (acc. zmuni) "man, male person." Displaced its O.E. cognate guma (from P.Gmc. *guman-).

Whether the Indo-Aryan or Turkic forms share any origins is moot; the point being that the word 'Hun' could just have been the word for 'people' in these ancient languages, both east and west.

[Chris]

Just supposing that the Xiongnu and the Huns of Attilla shared a language with common Turkic roots, it's possible that both used a word for themselves cognate with the old Mongolian 'kumun', which just means 'people'. (now pronounced 'khun' in modern Khalkha Mongolian.

Meanwhile:

'Human'
mid-13c., from M.Fr. humain "of or belonging to man," from L. humanus, probably related to homo (gen. hominis) "man," Cognate with O.Lith. zmuo (acc. zmuni) "man, male person." Displaced its O.E. cognate guma (from P.Gmc. *guman-).

Whether the Indo-Aryan or Turkic forms share any origins is moot; the point being that the word 'Hun' could just have been the word for 'people' in these ancient languages, both east and west.

Hello Stephen!
You seem to be omitting La Vaissiere's work on the Sogdian Letters in which the Southern Xiongnu and the Huns in the west are called [xun]. Also, a letter from a Buddhist monk has turned using the same term from around A.D. 300.
It would be interesting if the word is cognate with the Kipchak word for themselves, "kun", meaning "people."

[Stephen Selby]

One can, of course, go mad with this conjecture. Nikolai Marr, a favorite of Stalin, produced a treatise postulating a link between all the languages of Europe and Asia. Some words, such as the [*med] Indo-Aryan root of the word for 'Honey' (English 'mead') do seem to have travelled far (apparently having influenced both Chinese as far as Guangdong and Europe as far as Irish Gaelic).

My only point is that the original word 'Hun' might not necessarily have been used to denote a race or cultural group.

[jack farrell]

One thing i have learned from ATARN is that if one is standing in the West and looking East the view is quite different than if one is standing in the East and looking West.

[Ashbow]