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Xionites, Chionites, or Chionitae (Middle Persian: Xiyōn or Hiyōn; Avestan: X́iiaona-; Sogdian language xwn; Pahlavi Xyōn) were a nomadic people in the Central Asian regions of Transoxiana and Bactria.
The Xionites appear to be synonymous with the of the South Asian regions of classical/medieval India,Hyun Jin Kim, 2013, The Huns, Rome and the Birth of Europe, Cambridge UK/New York, Cambridge University Press, pp. 5, 36–38. and possibly also the Huns of late antiquity, who were in turn connected Onomastics to the Xiongnu in Chinese history.Schuessler, Axel (2014). "Phonological Notes on Hàn Period Transcriptions of Foreign Names and Words" (PDF). Studies in Chinese and Sino-Tibetan Linguistics: Dialect, Phonology, Transcription and Text. Language and Linguistics Monograph Series. Taipei, Taiwan: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica (53). p. 257, 264. quote: "‘Xiōngnú’ (1-6 匈奴 hɨoŋ-nɑ < *hoŋ-nâ) may well be a regular Hàn period (or even pre-Hàn) rendering of ‘Huns’, i.e. foreign Hŏna or Hŭna, cf. Skt. Hūṇa (but with a long vowel). ... 1-7 匈奴 Xiōngnú hɨoŋ-nɑ < *hoŋ-nâ 318 B.C.E. SJ Skt. Hūṇa ‘Huns’."
They were first described by the Roman historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, who was in Bactria during 356–357 CE; he described the Chionitæ as living with the Kushans.Original reports on the "Chionitae" by Ammianus Marcellinus:
Mention with the Euseni/ Kushans : 16.9.4.
Mention with the Gelani: 17.5.1.
Mention with Shapur II: 18.7.21
Mention at the siege of Amida: 19.2.3 and 19.1.7-19.2.1 Ammianus indicates that the Xionites had previously lived in Transoxiana and, after entering Bactria, became of the Kushans, were influenced culturally by them and had adopted the Bactrian language. They had attacked the Sassanid Empire, but later (led by a chief named Grumbates), served as mercenaries in the Sasanian Empire Sassanian army.
Within the Xionites, there seem to have been two main subgroups, which were known in the Iranian languages by names such as Karmir Xyon and Spet Xyon. The prefixes karmir ("red") and speta ("white") likely refer to Central Asian traditions in which particular colours symbolised the cardinal points. The Karmir Xyon were known in European sources as the Kermichiones or "Red Huns", and some scholars have identified them with the Kidarites and/or Alchon. The Spet Xyon or "White Huns" appear to have been the known in South Asia by the cognate name Sveta-huna, and are often identified, controversially, with the Hephthalites.
Differences between the Xionites, the Huns who invaded Europe in the 4th century, and the Turks were emphasised by Carlile Aylmer Macartney (1944), who suggested that the name "Chyon", originally that of an unrelated people, was "transferred later to the Huns owing to the similarity of sound". The Chyon who appeared in the 4th century, in the steppes on the northeastern frontier of Persia were probably a branch of the Huns that appeared shortly afterwards in Europe. The Huns appear to have attacked and conquered the Alans, then living between the Urals and the Volga about 360 AD, and the first mention of the Mount Chyon was in 356 AD.
At least some Turkic tribes were involved in the formation of the Xionites, despite their later character as an Eastern Iranian people, according to Richard Nelson Frye (1991): "Just as later nomadic empires were confederations of many peoples, we may tentatively propose that the ruling groups of these invaders were, or at least included, Turkic-speaking tribesmen from the east and north, although most probably the bulk of the people in the confederation of Chionites... spoke an Iranian language.... This was the last time in the history of Central Asia that Iranian-speaking nomads played any role; hereafter all nomads would speak Turkic languages".Richard Nelson Frye, " Pre-Islamic and early Islamic cultures in Central Asia" in " Turko-Persia in historical perspective", edited by Robert L. Canfield, Cambridge University Press, 1991. pg 49.
The proposition that the Xionites probably originated as an Iranian tribe was put forward by Wolfgang Felix in Encyclopedia Iranica (1992).
In 2005, As-Shahbazi suggested that they were originally a Huns who had mixed with Iranian tribes in Transoxiana and Bactria, where they adopted the Kushan-Bactrian language. Likewise, Peter B. Golden wrote that the Chionite confederation included earlier Iranian nomads as well as Proto-Mongols and Turkic peoples elements.
Xionite tribes reportedly organised themselves into four main hordes: "Black" or northern (beyond the Jaxartes), "Blue" or eastern (in Tianshan), "White" or western (possibly the Hephthalites), around Khiva, and the "Red" or southern (Kidarites and/or Alchon), south of the Oxus. Artefacts found from the area they inhabited dating from their period indicate their totem animal seems to have been the (rein)deer. The Xionites are best documented in southern Central Asia from the late 4th century AD until the mid-5th century AD.
At the end of the 4th century AD, the Kidarites were pushed into Gandhara, after a new wave of invaders from the north, the Alchon, entered Bactria. Nomads of the Steppe
Shapur made a treaty of alliance with the Chionites and the Gelani in 358 CE.Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History. London: Bohn (1862) XVII-V
At the end of the 5th century the Alchon invaded North India where they were known as the Huna people. In India the Alchon were not distinguished from their immediate Hephthalite predecessors, and both are known as Sveta-Hunas there. Perhaps complimenting this term, Procopius (527–565) wrote that they were white skinned, had an organized kingship, and that their life was not wild/nomadic and they lived in cities.
The Alchon were noted for their distinctive coins, minted in Bactria in the 5th and 6th centuries. The name Khigi, inscribed in Bactrian script on one of the coins, and Narendra on another, have led some scholars to believe that the Hephthalite kings Khingila and Narana were of the AlChoNo tribe. They imitated the earlier style of their Hephthalite predecessors, the Kidarite Hun successors to the Kushans. In particular the Alchon style imitates the coins of Kidarite Varhran I (syn. Kushan Varhran IV).
The earliest coins of the Alchon have several distinctive features: 1) the king's head is presented in an elongated form to reflect the Alchon practice of head binding; 2) The characteristic bull/lunar tamgha of the Alchon is represented on the obverse of the coins.Notes on the Evolution of Alchon Coins, Pankaj Tandon, http://coinindia.com/Alchon.pdf
In the later Pahlavi tradition, the Karmir Xyon ("Red Xyon") and Spet Xyon ("White Xyon") are mentioned. The Red Xyon of the Pahlavi tradition (7th century) "BAHMAN YAŠT" in Encyclopædia Iranica by W. Sundermann have been identified by Bailey as the Kermichiones or Ermechiones.
According to Bailey, the Hara Huna of Indian sources are to be identified with the Karmir Xyon of the Avesta.(Bailey, 1954, pp.12-16; 1932, p. 945), Similarly he identifies the Sveta Huna of Indian sources with the Spet Xyon of the Avesta. While the Hephthalite are not mentioned in Indian sources, they are sometimes also linked to the Spet Xyon (and therefore possibly to the Sveta Huna).
More controversially, the names Karmir Xyon and Spet Xyon are often rendered as "Red Huns" and "White Huns", reflecting speculation that the Xyon were linked to Huns recorded simultaneously in Europe.
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