Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎505v] (135/238)

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China, the Avars, and the Franks.
completely by the great T‘ang dynasty. It was between,
and within about fifty years of these two dynastic periods,
a.d. 200 and a.d. 600, that the power of the Geougen first
grew and finally disappeared. It began in this way :
About a.d. 275, when the Toba Tartars were just beginning
to dream of empire, one of their captains in the course of
desert fighting took a prisoner, of bald-headed appearance
and unknown tribe, who was totally ignorant of his own
name and origin. In a few years this captive’s activity in
the field as a trooper gained for him emancipation from
slavery and promotion to sub-command ; but, having failed
on one occasion to be present with his “ powers ” at the
appointed trysting-place, the ex-slave fled from punishment
to a certain tribe of the Kao-ch‘e, or “ High Cart ” nation,
which was the name then given to what became the Ouigour
1 urks of the Selinga region in the seventh century, also
called in Turkish the Tolos tribes. Here the refugee
gathered round him a band of desperadoes and adventurers.
His son succeeded to the command, styling his band of
ambitious marauders the “ Jou-jan.” What this Chinesified
word may have originally meant it is impossible now to say.
Not improbably it may be the old Turkish word j'iraja of
the inscriptions (recently discovered on the Orkhon),
meaning “ left-hand or “ northern ” ; but, however that
may be, it is also met with in the Chinese forms ju-ju and
jwe-jwe, and it is the word which the French Jesuits two
centuries ago transliterated for us as “Geougen.” The
tribal succession passed from father to son during three or
four more generations, when two royal brothers at last agreed
to split up the rising nation into the east and west divisions.
The end of the fourth century shows us this people
constantly engaged in war with the Toba Tartars, who
were now firmly established, with capital in the north of
modern Shan Si, as Emperors of North China. The
Geougen were next reunited under Shelun, a powerful
descendant of the original “ bald-head ” family (who had
finally adopted the word Bald as a clan name) ; and now,