page_title: Xionites
section_title: Alchon
hierarchical_section_title: Xionites / History / Alchon
caption_attribution_description: English: Khingila portrait
context_page_description: Xionites, Chionites, or Chionitae are Romanisations of the ethnonym of a nomadic people who were prominent in Transoxania and Bactria.
  The Xionites appear to be synonymous with the Huna peoples of classical/medieval India, and possibly also the Huns of European late antiquity. It is unclear whether the Xionites were connected to a people named in Ancient China as the Xunyu, Xianyun 猃狁 and Xiongnu.
  They were first described by the Roman historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, who was in Bactria during 356-57 CE; he described the Chionitæ as living with the Kushans. Ammianus indicates that the Xionites had previously lived in Transoxiana and, after entering Bactria, became vassals of the Kushans, were influenced culturally by them and had adopted the Bactrian language. They had attacked the Sassanid Empire, but later, served as mercenaries in the 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 and speta likely refer to Central Asian traditions in which particular colours symbolised the cardinal points.
context_section_description: In 460, Khingila I reportedly united a Hephthalite ruling élite with elements of the Uar and Xionites as Alchon (or Alχon). when.
  At the end of the 5th century the Alchon invaded North India where they were known as the Huna. 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.
caption: Artificial cranial deformation is suggested by a portrait of  Khingila, king of the Alchon c. 430 - 490 AD.[15]
exif: {}