Vokil
Uokil (Ukil, Vokil, Augal) is one of Yuezhi tribes, defeated and displaced by the Hun's expansion in the 2nd century BC. Uokil may have been one of the two Yuezhi dynastic tribes. Traces of ethnonym "Uokil" are found in the East Mongolia and Manchuria territories in the Syanbi (Ch. 鲜卑 Xianbei), ancient Turkic, and Mongolian time.
Before the end of the 4th century BCE, the Yuezhi country (Chinese ngiw.at-tie) extended west from the northern bend of the Huang He river [1]. At the very end of the 3rd century BCE, the Huns subjugated the northern states Hunüy, Tsüyshe, Dinlin, Gegun-Yenisei Kyrgyzes and Sinli-Sirs [2]. Later, they conquered the Utsze/Augal state. The ancient Chinese transcription Hutsze (Utsze) reflect the original ethnonym Uokil. The first and initial point of Uokil migration to the west was the territory of E. Baikal and Big Khingan slopes. Later, Uokils united with a Nan Shan branch of Yuezhi in their movement, initially to the Aral area, and then on to Bactria and Sogdiana. Probably, Uokils (Augals) participated in the storm of Bactria and Sogdiana, together with Asians, Tochars and Sakaraukas [3].
The Chinese dynastic chronicle Hanshu, describing the events of 49 BCE, tells that the Hun chanyu Chjichji, in his western campaign, defeated a "small Hunnish state Hutsze in the north". In the 1st century BC Hanshu recorded that the Uokils lived in the Baikal area, next to Dinlins. That was Uokil's refuge after evacuating from the area west from the northern bend of Huanhe river, where they had an independent kingdom prior to their defeat by the Huns in the middle of the 2nd century BCE. In the Baikal area, Uokils reorganized and temporarily again gained independence from the Huns, until the campaign of the Chjichji chanyu [4].
The defeat of Yuezhi by the Huns in the 172-164 BCE forced a migration of a significant part of the eastern Yuezhi from the Central Asia to the Middle Asia. The Yuezhi migration was not limited to the "storm" of Greco-Bactria, a main part of Yuezhi remained in the newly found lands, including the basin of the Syr-Darya and the Aral Sea area. In the second century CE, at least three hundred years after the beginning of their migration, Ptolemy (VI, 12, 4) wrote about the Lower Syr-Darya:" ...near a section of Yaksart in the north live Yati and Tagors, belower which live Augals". The Greek called Uokils "Augals" [5].
In the Early Middle Ages, a Uokil (Ukil) clan was known as a dynastic clan of the Danube Bulgaria that gave Danube Bulgaria four monarchs listed in the Namelist of Bulgarian Rulers (Nominalia). The Uokil clan was one of the dynastic clans whose ancestors "ruled on that side of Danube for 515 years with shaven heads" [6]. The first Bulgarian supreme Khan of the Uokil lineage listed in Nominalia is Kormisosh (r. 737–754), the last Umor (r. 766). The other dynastic clans of the Bulgarians were Dulo clan of Atilla, and Ermi clan of Kubrat (Kurbat) maternal uncle Organa. In the Middle Asia, the ethnonym Uokil left its trace in a name of a hero Vekil in the Oguz epos "Kitab-i dedem Korkut" [7].
At the same time during the Early Middle Ages, the Uokil tribal division of Oguzes, known at that time as Tokuz Oguzes (Nine Oguzes, of Tribes), was another part of the "Utsze"-"Augals" Tocharian successors. In the Chinese sources the Uokil were known in rendition sitsze (γiei-kiet < Igil), in the middle of the 7th century they were located on the northern bank of the river Kheglench, i.e. Cloud Wagon of Keglen River [8]. The text of the Uigur Eletmish-Kagan (d. 759) funeral monument referred to the "Igil people", using determinative qara - "blackness" (qara igil bodun, in the Mogoin Shine Usu monument, line 14). The identification qara bodun - "black folk" is pointing that the Middle Asian Uokil tribesmen of that time adopted the Manichaean creed [9]. A century later, the Middle Asian Uokil tribe is mentioned in the 9th century Uiguro-Tibetan road guide as a tribe led by a strong leader Hi-kil-rkor-hir-kin (Igil kül-irkin), located next to another Yuezhi successor "Hi-dog-kas" tribe of Iduq-qash, a "sacred white jasper" of the Yuezhi "Jasper clan" Uti [10].
References
- ^ G.Haloun, "Zur Üe-tsï-Frage. In: Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft", 91, NF 16, 1937, p. 301, in Yu. Zuev, "Early Türks: Sketches of history and ideology", p. 42
- ^ Tszyan Botszan, et al. "Combined edition of accounts about foreign peoples from texts of dynastic histories", vol. 1, Ch. 1, Peking, 1958, p. 18, 27, (In Chinese), in Yu. Zuev, "Early Türks: Sketches of history and ideology", p. 42
- ^ Yu. Zuev, "Early Türks: Sketches of history and ideology", Almaty, Daik-Press, 2002, p. 42, ISBN 9985-441-52-9
- ^ Yu. Zuev, "Early Türks: Sketches of history and ideology", p. 56
- ^ Yu. Zuev, "Early Türks: Sketches of history and ideology", p. 55
- ^ Namelist of Bulgarian Rulers
- ^ Yu. Zuev, "Early Türks: Sketches of history and ideology", p. 57
- ^ Wang Pu, "Summary review of Tang dynasty, 618-907", Shanghai, 1958, ch. 72, p. 1307, in Yu. Zuev, "Early Türks: Sketches of history and ideology", p. 45
- ^ Yu. Zuev, "Early Türks: Sketches of history and ideology", p. 45
- ^ J. Bacot, "Reconnaissance en haute asie septentrionale par cinq envoyé ouigours au VIIIE siècle.", JA, 2, 1956, p. 147, in Yu. Zuev, "Early Türks: Sketches of history and ideology", p. 45