The Hunas (Huns)
In the mid fifth century AD, the Hephthalites or Hunas (the Huns), a fierce and warlike people from Central Asia who ruleda vast empire with their capital at Balkh invaded Northwest India. They occupied the Kabul valley and Gandhara, and invaded the then weakening Gupta Empire. In about 445 AD Skanda Gupta stemmed the tide of the Hun eruption and around 460 AD he repulsed them The Huns then waited till after the death of Skanda Gupta to re-enter India from the Kabul valley after the conquest of Kushan. They alsoestablished themselves in Gandhara. Their conquest was accomplished with extreme ferocity and the Gupta regime was
completely extinguisheel.18 The tide of Hun invasions receded by the end of the sixth century, when the Turks and the Persians attacked them in Bactria, but as elsewhere the Huns had acted as a catalyst in the affairs of northwestern India.
The last pan-Indian Hindu Kingdom was that of Emperor Harsha Vardhana who successfully defeated the Huns and established a large kingdom over most of North India. But he was unable to bring the entire country under his rule. Northern India suffered a sharp decline after the seventh century. As a result, Islam came to a disunited India not only with the Arab conquest of Sindh but also through the same passes that Indo-Aryans, A
Kushans, and others had entered.
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