Vokil


Uokil is one of Yuezhi tribes, defeated and displaced by the Hun's expansion in the 2nd century BC. Uokil may have been one of the two Yuezhi dynastic tribes. Traces of ethnonym "Uokil" are found in the East Mongolia and Manchuria territories in the Syanbi, ancient Turkic, and Mongolian time.

Theories regarding origins

Kazakh Turkologist Yury Zuev had drawn attention to circumstantial evidence suggesting links between the Vokil and various Central Asian peoples, during antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The peoples concerned include:
However, such theories are controversial and cannot be all true. Conclusive evidence proving or disproving them has never been presented and there is no consensus amongst scholars on whether or not such links exist.

Yuezhi and Wusun

and Wusun are Chinese exonyms for two separate Indo-European peoples, who lived in western China and Central Asia, during ancient times. Before the end of the 4th Century BCE, the Yuezhi and Wusun were located in areas that were later part of the Chinese provinces of Gansu and Xinjiang. There was substantial interaction between the Yuezhi, the Wusun and a neighbouring people, the Xiongnu, whom many scholars have suggested were precursors of the Huns.
In about 200 BCE, the Xiongnu leader Modu Chanyu – a vassal of the Yuezhi – rebelled, attacked the Yuezhi, and subjugated several other peoples. The Yuezhi subsequently attacked the Wusun, in about 173 BC, and killing their king, Nandoumi. According to a Wusun legend, Nandoumi's infant son Liejiaomi was left in the wild, but was miraculously saved by a she-wolf, which allowed him to suckle, and ravens, which fed him meat. This pivotal myth shared similarities with the founding myths of many other peoples in Central Asia. It has been, in particular, the basis of theories that the Ashina – the royal clan of the Göktürk Turks – originated amongst the Wusun. In 162 BC, the Yuezhi suffered a further, more decisive defeat at the hands of the Xiongnu and retreated from Gansu. According to Zhang Qian, the Yuezhi fragmented and most fled westward into the Ili river valley. The Wusun and Xiongnu later drove the main body of the Yuezhi southward, through Sogdia, into Bactria. The Wusun settled afterwards in Gansu, in the Wushui-he valley, as vassals of the Xiongnu.
According to the Chinese chronicle Hanshu, in 49 BCE the Xiongnu ruler, Zhizhi defeated three small states. Zuev reads the names of these states as the Hujie or Wūjiē, Jiankun and Dingling. While other scholars have regarded the Hujie ~ Wujie as most likely an offshoot of the Wusun, Zuev considers it possible that they were a remnant of the Yuezhi. The Hanshu recorded that the 'Hujie retreated to the Lake Baikal area and the Great Khingan slopes. According to Zuev, the Hujie emigrated further westward, initially to the Aral Sea area, and may have joined the Yuezhi in their migration to Sogdia and Bactria.

Augaloi

In the 2nd century CE, Ptolemy wrote of the Lower Syr-Darya that near a northern section of the Amu Darya were the Iatioi and Tokharoi, and south of them were a people known as the Augaloi.
Yury Zuev postulated that the Augaloi mentioned by Ptolemy with the Ukil. However, a majority of scholars regard Augaloi as a misrendering of Sacaraucae.

Sijie

During the Early Middle Ages, the Toquz Oghuz, included a people known in Chinese sources as Sijie, who have been identified with Sīkari in the Saka Stäel-Holstein Miscellany. This name may be a sinicisation of igil, a Turkic root meaning "many". In the middle of the 7th century, they were reported to be located on the northern bank of the Kherlen River.
The text of a Uighur funeral monument for Eletmish-Kagan, referred to the Qara Igil bodun: a combination of the determinative qara and igil.
In a 9th-century Yugur text, the Sijie were mentioned as having a strong leader named Igil kül-irkin, and were located next to the Iduq-kas, Iduq-qash, or Iduk-Az , who may have been offshoot or successor of the Yuezhi or Alans. or Turkicized Yeniseian speakers.

Bulgar connection

Vokil was a name of Bulgars' dynastic clan listed in the Nominalia of the Bulgarian khans. The first listed in Nominalia was Kormisosh and the last was Umor. Another circumstantial link between the Oghuz and the Bulgar Vokil is the naming of Verkil, a hero of the epic Kitab-i dedem Korkut.