Note 18 — Chapter XII · THE MIHIRAS OR MERS. a.d. 470–900.

That the Multán sun-worship was introduced under Sassanian influence is supported by the fact (Wilson’s Ariana Antiqua, 357) that the figure of the sun on the fifth century Hindu sun coins is in the dress of a Persian king; that the priests who performed the Multán sun-worship were called Magas; and by the details of the dress and ritual in the account of the introduction of sun-worship given in the Bhavishya Purána.18 That the Meyds or Mands had some share in its introduction is supported by the fact that the Purána names the third or Sudra class of the sun-worshippers Mandagas.19 That the Meyds were associated with the Magas is shown by the mention of the Magas as Mihiragas.20 The third class whom the Bhavishya Purána associates with the introduction of sun-worship are the Mânas who Chapter XII. The Mers, a.d. 470–900. White Húṇas. are given a place between the Magas and the Mands. The association of the Mânas with the Mihiras or Maitrakas suggests that Mâna is Mauna a Puráṇic name for the White Húṇas.21 That the Multán sun idol of the sixth and seventh centuries was a Húṇa idol and Multán the capital of a Húṇa dynasty seems in agreement with the paramount position of the Rais of Alor or Rori in the sixth century. Though their defeat by Yesodharmman of Málwa about a.d. 540 at the battle of Karur, sixty miles east of Multán, may have ended Húṇa supremacy in north and north-west India it does not follow that authority at once forsook the Húṇas. Their widespread and unchallenged dominion in North India, the absence of record of any reverse later than the Karur defeat, the hopelessness of any attempt to pass out of India in the face of the combined Turk and Sassanian forces make it probable that the Húṇas and their associated tribes, adopting Hinduism and abandoning their claim to supremacy, settled in west and north-west India. This view finds support in the leading place which the Húṇas and Hára-Húṇas, the Maitrakas or Mers, and the Gurjjaras hold in the centuries that follow the overthrow of the White Húṇa empire. According to one rendering of Cosmas22 (a.d. 525) the chief of Orrhotha or Sorath in common with several other coast rulers owed allegiance to Gollas, apparently, as is suggested at page 75 of the text, to Gulla or Mihirgulla the Indian Emperor of the White Húṇas. These details support the view that the Maitrakas, Mihiras, or Mers who in Cosmas’ time were in power in Káthiáváḍa, and to whose ascendancy during the seventh and eighth centuries both the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsiang (a.d. 612–640) and the Arab historians of Sindh bear witness, were a portion of the great White Húṇa invasion (a.d. 480–530).23 In the many recorded swarmings south from Chapter XII. The Mers, a.d. 470–900. White Húṇas. Central Asia into Persia and India no feature is commoner than the leading of the conquered by certain families of the conquering tribe. Chinese authorities place it beyond doubt that when, towards the middle of the fifth century a.d., the White Húṇas crossed the Oxus they found in power a cognate tribe of northerners whose date of settlement on the Indian frontier was less than a century old. This preceding swarm was the Yuán-Yuán, Var-Var, or Avár, who, about the close of the fourth century (a.d. 380), had driven from Balkh southwards into the Kábul valley Kitolo the last ruler of the long established Yuetchi (b.c. 50–a.d. 380).24 It is known that in retreating before the Yuán-Yuán a division of the Baktrian Yuetchi, under the leadership of Kitolo’s son, under the name of the Kidáras or Little Yuetchi, established their power in Gandhára and Pesháwar.25 This Kidára invasion must have driven a certain share of the people of the Kábul valley to the east of the Indus. The invasion of the White Húṇas a century later, who were welcomed as allies by some of the Panjáb chiefs,26 would cause fresh movements among the frontier tribes. The welcome given to the Húṇas, and the show and dash which marked their century of ascendancy in India and Persia, make it probable that as leaders they conducted south as far as Káthiáváḍa and Málava large bodies of the earlier northern settlers. To which of the waves of earlier northerners the Medhs belonged is doubtful.27 The view held by Pandit Bhagvánlál that one branch of the Medhs entered India in the first century before Christ among the tribes of which the great Yuechi were the chief is on the whole in agreement with General Cunningham’s argument that Medus Hydaspes, Virgil’s phrase for the Jhelum, proves that the Medhs were then (b.c. 40) already settled on its banks.28