Global InformationTocharians information
 Tocharian royal family of the oasis city-state of Kucha (King, Queen and fair-haired young Princes), Cave 17, Kizil Caves. Circa 500 AD, Hermitage Museum.[1][2][3][4] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
| Tarim Basin in 1st millennium AD (modern-day Xinjiang, China) | |
| Languages | |
| Tocharian languages | |
| Religion | |
| Buddhism and others | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Afanasievo culture |
| Part of a series on |
| Indo-European topics |
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The Tocharians, or Tokharians (US: /toʊˈkɛəriən/ or /toʊˈkɑːriən/;[5] UK: /tɒˈkɑːriən/),[6] were speakers of Tocharian languages, Indo-European languages known from around 7,600 documents from around 400 to 1200 AD, found on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin (modern-day Xinjiang, China).[7] The name "Tocharian" was given to these languages in the early 20th century by scholars who identified their speakers with a people known in ancient Greek sources as the Tókharoi (Latin Tochari), who inhabited Bactria from the 2nd century BC. This identification is generally considered erroneous, but the name "Tocharian" remains the most common term for the languages and their speakers. Their actual ethnic name is unknown, although they may have referred to themselves as Agni, Kuči, and Krorän, or Agniya, Kuchiya as known from Sanskrit texts.[8][clarification needed]
Agricultural communities first appeared in the oases of the northern Tarim circa 2,000 BC. Some scholars have linked these communities to the Afanasievo culture found earlier (c. 3,500–2,500 BC) in Siberia, north of the Tarim or Central Asian BMAC culture. The earliest Tarim mummies date from c. 1,800 BC, but it is unclear whether they are connected to the Tocharians of two millennia later.
By the 2nd century BC, these settlements had developed into city-states, overshadowed by nomadic peoples to the north and Chinese empires to the east. These cities, the largest of which was Kucha, also served as way stations on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the northern edge of the Taklamakan desert.
For several centuries, the Tarim basin was ruled by the Xiongnu, the Han dynasty, the Tibetan Empire, and the Tang dynasty. From the 8th century AD, the Uyghurs – speakers of a Turkic language – settled in the region and founded the Kingdom of Qocho that ruled the Tarim Basin. The peoples of the Tarim city-states intermixed with the Uyghurs, whose Old Uyghur language spread through the region. The Tocharian languages are believed to have become extinct during the 9th century.
- ^ References BDce-888、889, MIK III 8875, now in the Hermitage Museum."俄立艾爾米塔什博物館藏克孜爾石窟壁畫". www.sohu.com (in Chinese).
- ^ Image 16 in Yaldiz, Marianne (1987). Archèaologie unFd Kunstgeschichte Chinesisch-Zentralasiens (Xinjiang) (in German). BRILL. p. xv. ISBN 978-90-04-07877-2.
- ^ "The images of donors in Cave 17 are seen in two fragments with numbers MIK 8875 and MIK 8876. One of them with halo may be identified as king of Kucha." in Ghose, Rajeshwari (2008). Kizil on the Silk Road: Crossroads of Commerce & Meeting of Minds. Marg Publications. p. 127, note 22. ISBN 978-81-85026-85-5. "The panel of Tocharian donors and Buddhist monks, which was at the MIK (MIK 8875) disappeared during World War II and was discovered by Yaldiz in 2002 in the Hermitage Museum" page 65,note 30
- ^ Le Coq, Albert von; Waldschmidt, Ernst (1922). Die buddhistische spätantike in Mittelasien, VI. Berlin, D. Reimer [etc.] pp. 68–70.
- ^ "Definition of TOCHARIAN". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 18 October 2019.
- ^ "Tocharian definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary". www.collinsdictionary.com. Retrieved 18 October 2019.
- ^ Mallory (2015), p. 4. "Our knowledge of the Tocharian languages derives essentially from c. 7600 documents found across about thirty sites in the eastern half of the greater Tarim Basin (Fig. 1). The documents date from c. 400 to 1200 CE"
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
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