''Akhshunwar'' ( Sogdian: əxšōnδār,

Middle Persian Middle Persian, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg ( Inscriptional Pahlavi script: , Manichaean script: , Avestan script: ) in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasania ...

: ''Xašnawāz'') was a ruling title used by the

Hephthalite The Hephthalites (), sometimes called the White Huns (also known as the White Hunas, in Iranian as the ''Spet Xyon'' and in Sanskrit and Prakrit as the ''Sveta-huna''), were a people who lived in Central Asia during the 5th to 8th centuries CE, ...

kings in the 5th and 6th-centuries. The title is of Eastern Iranian 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 (), also known as Modern Persian () 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 three stages: Early New Persian (8th ...

epic ''

Shahnameh The ''Shahnameh'' (, ), also transliterated ''Shahnama'', is a long epic poem written by the Persian literature, Persian poet Ferdowsi between and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 distichs or couple ...

'' ("The Book of Kings") of the medieval Persian poet

Ferdowsi Abu'l-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi (also Firdawsi, ; 940 – 1019/1025) was a Persians, Persian poet and the author of ''Shahnameh'' ("Book of Kings"), which is one of the world's longest epic poetry, epic poems created by a single poet, and the gre ...

, 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 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.

References

Sources

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Akhshunwar Hephthalites History of Khorasan Sogdian words and phrases Royal titles