Ancient peoples of Afghanistan

The Yuezhi were an ancient people first described in Chinese histories as nomadic pastoralists living in an arid grassland area in the western part of the modern Chinese province of Gansu, during the 1st millennium BC. After a major defeat at the hands of the Xiongnu in 176 BC, the Yuezhi split into two groups migrating in different directions: the Greater Yuezhi and Lesser Yuezhi. This started a complex domino effect that radiated in all directions and, in the process, set the course of history for much of Asia for centuries to come.

former country

thumb|The Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription of Ashoka, in which the Kambojas are mentioned. The Kambojas were a southeastern Iranian people who inhabited the northeastern most part of the territory populated by Iranian tribes, which bordered the Indian lands. They only appear in Indo-Aryan inscriptions and literature, being first attested during the later part of the Vedic period.

The Kidarites, or Kidara Huns, were a dynasty that ruled Bactria and adjoining parts of Central Asia and India in the 4th and 5th centuries. The Kidarites belonged to a complex group of peoples known collectively in India as the Huna, and in Europe as the Chionites (from the Iranian names Xwn/Xyon), and may even be considered as identical to the Chionites. The 5th century Byzantine historian Priscus called them Kidarite Huns, or "Huns who are Kidarites". Chinese annals referred to them as the Ta Yüeh-chih, or Lesser Yüeh-chih. The Huna/Xionite tribes are often linked, albeit controversially, t

thumb|300px|Asia in 400 AD, showing the Xionites ("Chionites") and their neighbors. Xionites, Chionites, or Chionitae (Middle Persian: Xiyōn or Hiyōn; Avestan: X́iiaona-; Sogdian xwn; Pahlavi Xyōn) were a nomadic people in the Central Asian regions of Transoxiana and Bactria.

Huns in South Asia in the 5-6th century CE

thumb|200px|The "Yona" Greek king of India Menander I|Menander (160–135 BCE). Inscription in Greek: , lit. "of Saviour King Menander". thumb|right|350px|Yavana kingdom alongside other locations of kingdoms and republics mentioned in the Indian epics or Bharata Khanda.

7th to 19th-century Muslim conquests in present-day Afghanistan

484–665 Huna state in the Hindu Kush region

Term roughly equivalent to Huna people