''Akhshunwar'' ( Sogdian: əxšōnδār,

Middle Persian Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg () in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle ...

: ''Xašnawāz'') was a ruling title used by the Hephthalite kings in the 5th and 6th-centuries. The title is of

Eastern Iranian The Eastern Iranian languages are a subgroup of the Iranian languages emerging in Middle Iranian times (from c. the 4th century BC). The Avestan language is often classified as early Eastern Iranian. As opposed to the Middle Western Iranian dial ...

origin; according W.B. Henning, its original form was ʾxšʾwndʾr (''axšōndār''), meaning "king", "ruler." G. Widengren, however, suggests that the original form was the Sogdian ʾxšʾwnwʾr, "power bearer." In the

New Persian New Persian ( fa, فارسی نو), also known as Modern Persian () and Dari (), is the current stage of the Persian language spoken since the 8th to 9th centuries until now in Greater Iran and surroundings. It is conventionally divided into thr ...

epic ''

Shahnameh The ''Shahnameh'' or ''Shahnama'' ( fa, شاهنامه, Šāhnāme, lit=The Book of Kings, ) is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50 ...

'' ("The Book of Kings") of the medieval Persian poet Ferdowsi, it was transformed into ''Khushnawaz'' (meaning "the beautiful player, musician"), and was used as a name instead. Some scholars support the theory that the name of the

Kidarite The Kidarites, or Kidara Huns, were a dynasty that ruled Bactria and adjoining parts of Central Asia and South Asia in the 4th and 5th centuries. The Kidarites belonged to a complex of peoples known collectively in India as the Huna, and in Euro ...

king Kunkhas shared the same origin as ''Akhshunwar'', which has in turn led to the suggestion that ''Akhshunwar'' was initially a title used by Kidarites, later to be adopted by Hephthalites when they supplanted them.

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