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Huaguo Wikipedia

H?ag?o(py) or 滑国; is the name of a country mentioned in the Zhigongtu|Liang chih-kung-t'u (梁职贡图) from Henan
or Shanxi province which was destroyed by the First Emperor of China in the late 3rd century BC.

The Chinese character 滑 (pinyin: hua) has a few meanings (e.g. slippery/cunning/confusing), but it is apparently used this time with no meaning simply as another transliteration of the native name of the tribe. According to Liu Qiyu this would have been pronounced as Huer/Hwer in Yangtze River Delta|Yangtze Delta dialects. Reconstruction of early Chinese pronunciations is aided by reference to archaic fossilizations preserved in languages like Japanese and Korean where it was pronunced as 'Huar'(Hangul|활).

After their country was destroyed, the Huer are supposed to have become a nomadic nation under the yoke of the Xiong (see Huns). After the Xiongnu|Nu tribes threw off the Xiong, they, like their other ex-Nu counterparts, started to extend their own influence. According to the Liang chih-kung-t'u they later re-emerged under the leadership of the Hephthal (see Hephthalites) (which some sources indicate were originally one of the 5 Yuezhi or 月氏 families from Kushan) who called themselves Hua and are described as the same in origin.

It seems that they also have been referred to as Uar and were one element of the Mongolian Bar-guni

Last Modified:   2005-04-13