- Yuezhi migration across Central Asia from 176 BC to 30 AD.
Yuezhi — an Eastern Iranian people in Central Asia (from the 1st millennium AD), who spoke Eastern Iranian dialects of the northern subgroup. They are sometimes also called Eastern Sarmatians due to the close similarity of their cultures. Originally, they occupied pastures in the Tarim Basin, where the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region, Gansu, and possibly Qilian in China are now located; later (2nd century BC), part of them (Kushans, Hephthalites, and others) migrated to Fararud and Bactria, and then to northern India, where they founded the Kushan Empire. The Yuezhi were a Caucasoid people, to whom the discovered Tarim mummies belong, the oldest of which are 4,000 years old. There is an assumption that the first character in the word Yuezhi was not moon 月 (yue), but flesh 肉 (rou), then the name "Rouzhi" takes on the meaning "tribe that eats meat." Modern historians have identified the Yuezhi with the "true" Tocharians (Τοχάριοι) of ancient Greek sources, but this has caused confusion with the pseudo-Tocharians — speakers of the independent Tocharian languages.
The first mention of the Yuezhi people dates to 645 BC. The Chinese author Guan Zhong in the treatise Guanzi (Chinese: 管子) describes the tribe of Yuzhi (Chinese: 禺氏) or Nuzhi (Chinese: 牛氏) from the northwest, which supplies China with jade from the nearby Yuezhi mountains in Gansu. Jade supplies from the Tarim Basin to China have been well studied by archaeologists. The Yuezhi are discussed in detail in Chinese historical documents, especially in the 2nd century BC in Sima Qian's "Records of the Grand Historian." Chapter 123 states that "the Yuezhi originally lived between Qilian, the Tianshan Mountains, and Dunhuang," which corresponds to the east of the Tarim Basin and the north of Gansu. Portraits of their kings on coins show that the Yuezhi were Caucasoids, but no direct records of the names of their rulers have survived, and there is no certainty about the accuracy of the facial features conveyed in the portraits. Only the names of their descendants, the Kushans and Hephthalites, who invaded the southern borders of Asia, have survived. According to Chinese sources, the Yuezhi are described as "white people with long hair."
In 124 BC, the Yuezhi (Kushans) joined the war against Parthia, in which the Parthian king Artabanus I was wounded and later died from his wounds. Later, presumably under pressure from Artabanus's son, the Parthian king Mithridates II, the Yuezhi (Kushans) moved south into Bactria. After Alexander the Great's campaign in 330 BC, Hellenistic civilization (the Seleucids, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom) ruled in this area for another two hundred years. This is written by Strabo — the Greek historian who mentions that the Scythians and Tocharians (true Tocharians), together with the Asiani, Passiani, and Sakarauli, destroyed the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom in the 2nd century BC.
Part of the Yuezhi — the Kushans, who continued to speak dialects of the Yuezhi languages related to Khwarezmian and Sogdian, invaded Bactria and, under the leadership of their king Heraios, founded the Kushan Empire. Under King Kanishka, they adopted Buddhism as the state religion, which later became the basis for the unity of their state. But subsequently, the Hephthalites defeated the Kushans, while continuing the customs of the Kushans, and this state was finally destroyed as a result of the Arab campaigns.
VARIANT NAMES: Russian. Yuechzhi, Greek. Yatii, Indian. Yadu.
Sources:
Ethnogenesis of the Abkhazians. D.A. Arshba, 2015