, the King of the
Alchon Huns. Knowledge of Song Yun's bibliography is known primarily from sources derived from the accounts of the journey written by Song and his companion
Huisheng or analysis of those sources. He was originally from
Dunhuang. Surviving accounts of his journey to India vary in various details. According to the reconstruction of the trip by
Édouard Chavannes, :Huisheng [and the others] were sent in the 11th day of the second month of the second Zhengui year (518); he and his companions arrived in
Karghalik on the 29th day of the 7th month of the 2nd Zhengui year (519); in the second ten days of the ninth month, they met the king of the
Hephthalites; at the beginning of the 11th month, they arrived in Bosi or Boji (southwest of
Wakhan); in the second ten days of this same month, they entered
Chitral and at the beginning of the 12th month they entered
Udyana. Then, during the second ten days of the fourth month of the first Chengkuang year (520), they arrived in
Gandhara. They stayed two years in Udyana and Gandhara until returning at the beginning of the third Chengkuang year (522), (and not the second year as one reads in the Account)." According to legend, they returned through the
Congling (or "Onion") Mountains where Song Yun met the celebrated Damo or
Bodhidharma who had died recently at
Luoyang. Song Yun took the
Qinghai Route via
Xining, past
Qinghai Lake and through the
Qaidam depression, probably joining the main Southern Silk Route near
Shanshan/
Loulan. The route at the time was under the control of the
Tuyuhun (Tibetan: '
Azha) people. They seem to have travelled to India along the difficult southern branch of the
Silk Routes from Dunhuang to
Yutian (Khotan) along the edge of the
Taklamakan Desert, to the north of the
Congling Mountains, and then crossed the mountains as
Faxian had done before them. After passing through Wakhan, they met with the king of the
Hephthalites, who had taken over the lands previously controlled by the
Yuezhi and had recently conquered Gandhara. He was apparently on tour at the time near the entrance to the
Wakhan Corridor and not at his capital city Badiyan (Bâdhaghìs) which was near modern
Herat in western Afghanistan. The king, who had control over more than forty kingdoms, prostrated twice and received an Imperial edict from the Northern Wei Dynasty on his knees. Song Yun and his companions then travelled through
Chitral and met the kings of the
Swat Valley or Udyana. ==Works==