Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎505r] (134/238)

China, the Avars, and the Franks. 347
The chief, if not the only, existing authorities from which
it is possible to ascertain who the Geougen, the Ogors, and
the Avars were, and what was the link which bound Europe
with Asia in those days, are the Chinese national histories,
and Greek authors like Menander and Theophylact. I leave
these latter to be dealt with critically by competent Greek
scholars, who may possibly be able to fit in such definite
facts as they can gather with those offered to us by the
Chinese; the utmost I can do is to study those excerpts
and translations from the Greek which are to be found in
English authors. Of Chinese I can speak more authori
tatively, and I proceed accordingly.
The origin of the Geougen Empire was as follows : From
about b.c. 200 to a.d. 200 the Chinese had been engaged
in an unceasing struggle with the horse-riding Tartars
known collectively to their historians as the Hiung-nu.
At last the independent power of these nomads was
permanently broken ; one half of them disappeared in the
direction of Lake Balkash and the River Irtish, working
through Sogd towards the Volga, and the other half
remained on the northern frontiers of China. Meanwhile
a Tungusic race (not Manchu, and not Hiung-nu) had,
under the generic name of Sien-pi, gained, and for a time
held sway over, the whole of Tartary, even contesting with
Tibetan adventurers, and with the remains of the Hiung-nu,
the right to rule, as Chinese Emperors, the northern parts
of China proper. This promiscuous struggle continued
from a.d. 300 until a.d. 400, when the Toba family
of the above-mentioned Tungusic race firmly established
itself in the modern Shan Si as Emperors of North China,
such of the pure Chinese as objected to Tartar rule being
gradually driven over the Yangtsze River to the modern
Nanking, where a number of ephemeral dynasties reigned
as Emperors of South China. The Tobas were, of course, in
more or less hostile competition with the Tartar nomads
of the north, until, about a.d. 600, both halves of China
were firmly reunited, first by the Sui, and then more