Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/327

INVASION OF THE HUNS 285 wards from the steppes of Asia to seek subsistence for their growing multitudes in other climes, divided into two main streams, one directed toward the valley of the Oxus, and the other to that of the Volga. The latter poured into Eastern Europe in 375 A. D., forcing the Goths to the south of the Danube, and thus indirectly causing the sanguinary Gothic war, which cost the Emperor Valens his life in 378 A. D. The Huns quickly spread over the lands between the Volga and the Danube, but, owing to chronic disunion and the lack of a great leader, failed to make full use of their advantageous position, until Attila appeared and for a few years welded the savage mass into an instrument of such power that he was " able to send equal defiance to the courts of Ravenna and Constantinople." His death in 453 A. D. severed the only bond which held together the jealous factions of the horde, and within a space of twenty years after that event the Hunnic empire in Europe was extinguished by a fresh torrent of barbarians from Northern Asia. The Asiatic domination of the Huns lasted longer. The section of the horde which settled in the Oxus valley became known as the Ephthalites, or White Huns, and gradually overcame the resistance of Persia, which ceased when King Firoz was killed in 484 A. D. Swarms of these White Huns also assailed the Kushan kingdom of Kabul, and thence poured into India. The attack repelled by Skandagupta in 455 A. D. must have been delivered by a comparatively weak body, which arrived early and failed to effect a lodgment in the interior.