Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/329

 MIHIEAGULA THE HUN 287 the frontier of Persia on the west, to Khotan on the borders of China in the east. This king was either Mihiragula himself, or his contemporary overlord, most probably the latter. The local Hun king of Gandhara, to whom Song-Yun paid his respects in the following year, 520 A. D., must be identified with Mihiragula. He was then engaged in a war with the King of Kash- mir (Ki-pin), which had already lasted for three years. All Indian traditions agree in representing Mihi- ragula as a bloodthirsty tyrant, stained to a more than ordinary degree with the " implacable cruelty " noted by historians as characteristic of the Hun temperament. Indian authors having omitted to give any detailed description of the savage invaders who ruthlessly op- pressed their country for three-quarters of a century, recourse must be had to European writers to obtain a picture of the devastation wrought and the terror caused to settled communities by the fierce barbarians. The original accounts are well summarized by Gib- bon: " The numbers, the strength, the rapid motions, and the implacable cruelty of the Huns were felt and dreaded and magnified by the astonished Goths, who beheld their fields and villages consumed with flames and deluged with indiscriminate slaughter. To these real terrors they added the surprise and abhorrence which were excited by the shrill voice, the uncouth gestures, and the strange deformity of the Huns. . . . They were distinguished from the rest of the human species by their broad shoulders, flat noses, and small