Yueban

The Yueban are the part of the northern Xiongnu that the Wei Shu says stayed behind when the rest went west. According to the text, the northern chanyu fled west to Kangju. Those too weak to follow remained north of Kucha.^[1] The Wei Shu places their country north-west of the Wusun and records their embassies to the Northern Wei in the fifth century.^[1] Their customs and their speech, it says, were the same as those of the Gaoche.^[1]^[2] Some scholars therefore conclude that the Yueban, the part of the northern Xiongnu that stayed behind, spoke the language of the Gaoche, who are counted among the Turkic-speaking tribes.^[2]

Origin

The Han side of the story ends before the Yueban begin. In AD 89 the generals Dou Xian and Geng Bing led eight thousand horse out of Shuofang against the northern Xiongnu. They were joined by the troops of the Liao-crossing army and thirty thousand riders of the Southern Chanyu. They beat the northern Xiongnu. The northern chanyu ran. Heads and captives came to more than two hundred thousand.^[3]^[4] These figures may come from the victory stone of a prince who was to be punished, and the success may not have been as great as it is said to be.^[5] In the third year of Yongyuan, AD 91, the Right Colonel Geng Kui beat him again. According to the Hou Han Shu, he fled to a place unknown.^[3] His younger brother, the Right Guli King Yuchujian, set himself up as chanyu. He halted at the Puleihai with several thousand people and sent envoys to the frontier. Dou Xian proposed that he be made Northern Chanyu, and the court agreed. In the fifth year Yuchujian turned on the Han and went back north. The Han officers Wang Fu and Ren Shang followed him with a thousand horse and lured him back. They killed him, and his people were broken up.^[3] The campaigns against the northern Xiongnu have their own article.

The account of the northern chanyu in the Hou Han Shu does not mention Kangju or the Jinwei mountain.^[3] The Wei Shu supplies both. It says that the Yueban were the people of the northern chanyu and that the Han general Dou Xian drove them out. It says that the chanyu crossed the Jinwei mountain and went west to Kangju.^[1] Those who were too weak to go lived north of Kucha, in a country of several thousand li with more than two hundred thousand people. The chapter adds that the people of Liangzhou still said Chanyu Wang, 單于王, of them.^[1]^[6] Some scholars regard the Wei Shu account of the Yueban as a legend, hold that the state existed earlier, and say that it was subjected by the Xiongnu only in AD 91.^[7] Another counts the Yueban as a mixture of the older Xiongnu of the Tianshan and the Xiongnu who came from the Orkhon in 91.^[7] The descent is the Wei Shu’s own statement. Whether it records a genealogy or the label the Wei court gave a people of the northern Xiongnu tradition is not decided.^[8]

Country and people

The chapter locates the country in two ways. It lies north-west of the Wusun, and it lies north of Kucha.^[1] One proposal reconciles the two. The country then lay in the mountain zone of the Yulduz basin north of Kucha. As a large state, it may have reached round to the north shore of Issyk Kul, which is north-west of the Wusun.^[9]

The Wei Shu says that the people were cleaner than the Hu. They cut their hair level with the brows.^[1] The same chapter says that their customs and speech were those of the Gaoche. Of the language itself nothing is recorded.

Relations with the Rouran

The Yueban were once on friendly terms with the Rouran. The Wei Shu tells that their king went into the Rouran country with several thousand men to meet the Rouran khan Datan. A hundred li inside the border he saw that the Rouran did not wash their clothes, did not bind their hair and did not wash their hands, and that the women licked their vessels clean. He told his followers that they had tricked him into a land of dogs, and he rode back. Datan sent riders after him but did not catch him. From then on the two peoples were enemies and often fought each other.^[8]^[10]

Embassies to the Northern Wei

The Wei Shu annals list the Yueban among nine states that sent envoys with tribute in the third month of the third year of Taiyan, AD 437: Kucha, Yueban, Yanqi, Cheshi, Sute, Shule, Wusun, Kepantuo and Shanshan.^[11] The Zizhi Tongjian has a tribute of the same nine states under 435.^[12] There it tells what the Wei court made of such embassies. The ruler observed that in Han times the western states came with humble words when they wanted something. When they wanted nothing, they were arrogant, because they knew themselves out of reach. As a result, he wished to send no more envoys. His officials insisted, and he sent Wang Ensheng with twenty parties. The Rouran seized them as they crossed the sands. They brought Ensheng before their khan, Chilian Khan, that is Wuti, where he held his Wei tally and would not bow. The Wei ruler rebuked the khan, who sent the party back. They never reached the west.^[12]

In the sixth month of the ninth year of Taiping Zhenjun, AD 448, the Yueban sent envoys to ask to attack the Rouran together with the royal army.^[13] The Wei emperor agreed.^[13] The Zizhi Tongjian has the same request under 448, writing the name in reverse, 般悅. It says that the country lay more than ten thousand li from Pingcheng, and that the proposal was an attack on the Rouran from east and west.^[14] The emperor ordered all the armies on alert in the eighth month. In the twelfth month the crown prince joined him at his field palace. The crown prince went north with the expedition as far as Shouxiang city. They saw no Rouran. They laid up grain in the city and went back, leaving a garrison.^[13]

In the first month of 449 the emperor went north himself.^[13] In the second month a Rouran chieftain came over with more than a thousand households. The Rouran khan Tuhezhen fled far.^[13] The emperor marched again in the ninth month. The Zizhi Tongjian says that after that the Rouran were weak and no longer dared to approach the Wei frontier.^[15] The annals and the Zizhi Tongjian do not report Yueban troops in the field.^[15] The Wei Shu chapter on the Yueban says that after this they came with tribute on every embassy.^[1]

The envoys of 448 included a conjurer, 幻人 huanren.^[16] He said that his country had great sorcerers, 術人. When the Rouran came to raid the Yueban, these men had brought unbroken rain, hard wind, heavy snow and great floods. As a result, two or three of every ten Rouran froze or were swept away.^[17] The Wei emperor Taiwu ordered that the rhythms of the Yueban’s drumming and dancing be taken into the Music Bureau.^[18] The conjurer also said that he could cut the vein of a man’s throat, or strike his head so that the skull gave way, and let the blood run, a few pints or a whole measure. Then, he said, he put healing herbs into the man’s mouth. The bleeding stopped, and the wounds closed within a month and left no scar.^[19] The emperor did not believe it. He had it tried on condemned men, and every trial succeeded.^[20] The conjurer said that the herbs grew on many famous mountains in China. The emperor had men learn the skill and treated the conjurer generously.^[20] The sorcerers who worked the weather have been identified as users of the rain stone, yada, known from later Turkic peoples. The report does not say that they used a stone.^[21] The kam article presents the view that the conjurer was a ritual specialist of that kind.

The Hephthalite question

The Yueban have been identified with the Hephthalites. The Hephthalites would then be the part of the Yueban that moved west.^[9] Five grounds have been set against this.^[9] First, the Wei Shu records the Hephthalites and the Yueban in two separate entries. The Wei court and the Yueban were allies, and its historians would hardly have kept material that mistook one for the other. Second, the Chinese sources make the Hephthalites a kind of Cheshi or of the Great Yuezhi. None of them makes the Hephthalites Xiongnu, whereas the Wei Shu states that the Yueban were of Xiongnu stock. Third, the Chinese write the Hephthalites with characters that carry a t sound, and the Yueban name has none. Fourth, the Tongdian says the Hephthalites were at first a small state subject to the Rouran, an event of the middle of the fifth century. By then the Yueban already ruled a country of several thousand li and more than two hundred thousand people and could attack the Rouran together with the Wei. Last, the Wei Shu says that the speech of the Hephthalites was not that of the Gaoche, while the speech of the Yueban was.^[9]

Everything recorded of the Yueban comes from Chinese court histories. None of it reports what they called themselves or their ruler.

References

^ a b c d e f g h Wei Shu, juan 102; 内田吟風 1971, p. 249
^ a b Litvinsky 1996, p. 315
^ a b c d Hou Han Shu, juan 89
^ Ögel 2015, p. 287–297
^ Ögel 2015, p. 291
^ Ögel 2015, p. 297–301
^ a b Ögel 2015, p. 299
^ a b Wei Shu, juan 102
^ a b c d 内田吟風 1971, p. 250
^ Ögel 2015, p. 298
^ Wei Shu, juan 4
^ a b Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 122
^ a b c d e Wei Shu, juan 4
^ Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 125
^ a b Wei Shu, juan 4; Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 125
^ Wei Shu, juan 102; Erkoç 2026, p. 247–249
^ Wei Shu, juan 102; Erkoç 2026, p. 247
^ Wei Shu, juan 102; Erkoç 2026, p. 247–248
^ Wei Shu, juan 102; Erkoç 2026, p. 248–249
^ a b Wei Shu, juan 102; Erkoç 2026, p. 249
^ Erkoç 2026, p. 248

Sources

Wei Shu, juan 4, 4, 102
Zizhi tongjian (Comprehensive Mirror in Aid of Governance), juan 122, 125 (after Wei Shu, Zhou Shu, Sui Shu and Bei Shi)
Hou Han Shu, juan 89

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Uchida Ginpū 内田吟風, 魏書西域傳原文考釋（中） (1971)
Hayrettin İhsan Erkoç, Asya Hunlarında Dinî İnançlar (Religious Beliefs of the Xiongnu) (2026)
Bahaeddin Ögel, Büyük Hun İmparatorluğu Tarihi II (2015)
B. A. Litvinsky; Zhang Guang-da; R. Shabani Samghabadi (ed.), History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Vol. III (1996)