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Saka, or Sakan, was a variety of Eastern Iranian languages, attested from the ancient Buddhism kingdoms of Khotan, Kashgar and Tumxuk in the Tarim Basin, in what is now southern Xinjiang, China. It is a Middle Iranian language. The two kingdoms differed in dialect, their speech known as Khotanese and Tumshuqese.
The Saka rulers of the western regions of the Indian subcontinent, such as the Indo-Scythians and Western Satraps, are traditionally assumed to have spoken practically the same language. This has however been questioned by more recent research.
Documents on wood and paper were written in modified Brahmi script with the addition of extra characters over time and unusual conjuncts such as ys for z. The documents date from the fourth to the eleventh century. Tumshuqese was more archaic than Khotanese, (1992). 9789231032110, UNESCO. ISBN 9789231032110 but it is much less understood because it appears in fewer manuscripts compared to Khotanese. The Khotanese dialect is believed to share features with the modern Wakhi language and Pashto. Saka was known as "Hvatanai" (from which the name Khotan) in contemporary documents. Many Prakrit terms were borrowed from Khotanese into the Tocharian languages.
The unusual phonological development of Proto-Iranian *ćw to Khotanese śś sets the latter apart from most other Iranian languages (which usually have sp or a product thereof). Similarities with Sogdian language exist but could be due to parallel developments or areal features.
Michaël Peyrot (2018) rejects a direct connection with the "Saka" (塞) of the Chinese Hanshu, who are recorded as having immigrated in the 2nd century BC to areas further west in Xinjiang, and instead connects Khotanese and Tumshuqese to the long-established Aqtala culture culture (also Aketala, in pinyin) which developed since ca. 1000 BC in the region.
The Khotanese dialect is attested in texts between the 7th and 10th centuries, though some fragments are dated to the 5th and 6th centuries. The far more limited material in the Tumshuqese dialect cannot be dated with precision, but most of it is thought to date to the late 7th or the 8th century.
The Saka language became extinct after invading Turkic Muslims conquered the Kingdom of Khotan in the Islamicisation and Turkicisation of Xinjiang.
In the 11th century, it was remarked by Mahmud al-Kashgari that the people of Khotan still had their own language and script and did not know Turkic well. According to Kashgari some non-Turkic languages like the Kanchaki and Sogdian language were still used in some areas. It is believed that the Saka language group was what Kanchaki belonged to. It is believed that the Tarim Basin became linguistically Turkified by the end of the 11th century.
| + ! colspan="3" | !Labial consonant !Dental consonant/Alveolar !Retroflex !Palatal/ postalveolar !Velar consonant !Glottal |
| a | ||
| ā | ||
| i | ||
| ī | ||
| u | ||
| ū | ||
| ä | ||
| e | ||
| o | ||
| ai | ||
| au | ||
| ei |
| *ky | c, ky |
| *gy | j, gy |
| *khy | ch |
| *tcy | c |
| *jsy | j |
| *tsy | ch |
| *ny | ñ, ny |
| *sy | śś |
| *ysy | ś |
| *st, *ṣṭ | śt, śc |
|
|
