Khingila

First Alkhan king of kings · reigning c. 430/40 – 490 CE · Bactria, Gandhara, Kashmir

Khingila is the dynastic founder of the Alkhan and the first Alkhan ruler whose name appears on coinage. His silver drachms — struck at Bactrian and Gandharan mints on Sassanian models — bear the legend “Khingila, of the Alkhan” in Bactrian script, with a portrait of the king facing right, often beardless or with a short beard, wearing a winged crown. Étienne de la Vaissière has argued that the name Khingila derives from the Xiongnu sacred sword Kenglu / Ching-lu — a steppe inheritance carried west through the Altai centuries earlier.

The Gardez Ganesha inscription

The most important inscriptional evidence for Khingila is the Gardez Ganesha, a marble statue from Gardez (modern Afghanistan) bearing a Sanskrit dedication: “Parama-bhattaraka-maharajadhiraja, illustrious Sri Khingala, consecrated this Maha-Vinayaka.” The inscription was edited by D. C. Sircar in Epigraphia Indica 35 (1966), pp. 44–60. The full title-formula — Parama-bhattaraka-maharajadhiraja — is the same one used five centuries later by the Hindu Shahi dynasty, and is one of the textual continuities that ties the Hindu Shahi to the Alkhan line. See the dedicated Gardez Ganesha post.

The Schøyen Copper Scroll

Khingila is named alongside Toramana, Mehama, Javukha, Sasa, and Sadavıkha on the Schøyen Copper Scroll of 492/93 CE — a coalition document recording the consecration of a stupa relic. The scroll is the single most important piece of evidence for the dynastic geography of the late fifth century Alkhan empire.

Bamiyan

A. D. H. Bivar‘s 2003 essay The Alkhan Huns and their Indian Coins argued that the donor figure beside the 53-metre Bamiyan Buddha is Khingila himself, identifiable from coin-portraiture. The painted boar on the niche ceiling — Verethragna’s animal — supports the reading.

Sources

• Sircar, “Gardez Ganesha Inscription”, Epigraphia Indica 35 (1966)
• Bakker (ed.), Hunnic Peoples in Central and South Asia (Barkhuis, 2020) — Schøyen Copper Scroll
• Vondrovec, Coinage of the Iranian Huns (2014)
• Bivar, “The Alkhan Huns and their Indian Coins” in After Alexander (2003)
• Alram, “From the Sasanians to the Huns” (2014)