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The Tocharians or Tokharians ( ; ) were speakers of the Tocharian languages, a group of Indo-European languages known from around 7,600 documents from the 6th and 7th centuries, found on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin (modern-day Xinjiang, China). 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 Tokharistan (), who inhabited Bactria from the 2nd century BC. This identification is now generally considered erroneous, but the name "Tocharian" remains the most common term for the languages and their speakers. Their endonym is unknown, although they may have referred to themselves as the Karasahr, Kucha, and Krorän or as the Agniya and Kuchiya known from Sanskrit texts.
Agricultural communities first appeared in the oases of the northern Tarim circa 2000 BC. Some scholars have linked these communities to the Afanasievo culture found earlier () in Siberia, north of the Tarim or Central Asian BMAC culture. The earliest Tarim mummies date from , but it is unclear whether they are connected to the Tocharians of two millennia later. This once theorized ancestry between Tocharians and these mummies is however now largely considered to be discredited by the absence of a genetic connection with Indo-European-speaking migrants, particularly the Afanasievo or BMAC cultures.: "Our results do not support previous hypotheses for the origin of the Tarim mummies, who were argued to be Proto-Tocharian-speaking pastoralists descended from the Afanasievo, or to have originated among the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex or Inner Asian Mountain Corridor cultures. Instead, although Tocharian may have been plausibly introduced to the Dzungarian Basin by Afanasievo migrants during the Early Bronze Age, we find that the earliest Tarim Basin cultures appear to have arisen from a genetically isolated local population that adopted neighbouring pastoralist and agriculturalist practices, which allowed them to settle and thrive along the shifting riverine oases of the Taklamakan Desert."
By the 2nd century BC, these settlements had developed into , 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 Uyghur Khaganate – speakers of a Turkic language – settled in the region and founded the 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.
Friedrich W. K. Müller was the first to propose a characterization for the newly discovered languages. Müller called the languages "Tocharian" (German Tocharisch), linking this toxrï (Tωγry, "Togari") with the ethnonym Tókharoi () applied by Strabo to one of the "Saka" tribes "from the country on the other side of the Jaxartes" that overran the Greco-Bactrian kingdom (present day Afghanistan) in the second half of the 2nd century BC.Also Ptolemy VI, 11, 6, 2nd century AD This term also appears in Indo-Iranian languages (Sanskrit Tushara/ Tukhāra, Old Persian tuxāri-, Saka language ttahvāra), and became the source of the term "Tokharistan" usually referring to 1st millennium Bactria, as well as the Takhar province of Afghanistan. The Tókharoi are often identified by modern scholars with the Yuezhi of Chinese historical accounts, who founded the Kushan Empire.
Müller's identification became a minority position among scholars when it turned out that the people of Tokharistan (Bactria) spoke Bactrian, an Eastern Iranian language, which is quite distinct from the Tocharian languages. Nevertheless, "Tocharian" remained the standard term for the languages of the Tarim Basin manuscripts and for the people who produced them. A few scholars argue that the Yuezhi were originally speakers of Tocharian who later adopted the Bactrian language.
The name of Kucha in Tocharian B was Kuśi, with adjectival form kuśiññe. The word may be derived from Proto-Indo-European *keuk "shining, white". The Tocharian B word akeññe may have referred to people of Agni, with a derivation meaning "borderers, marchers". One of the Tocharian A texts has ārśi-käntwā as a name for their own language, so that ārśi might have meant "Agnean", though "monk" is also possible.
Tocharian kings apparently gave themselves the title Ñäktemts soy (in Tocharian B), an equivalent of the title Devaputra ("Son of God") of the Kushans."According to linguists, the kings of Kucha called themselves "ñäktemts soy" (in Tocharian B), which is equivalent to Devaputra (an epithet commonly used by the Kuşāņa kings) meaning "Son of deva or God" in
Tocharian A (Agnean or East Tocharian) was found in the northeastern oases known to the Tocharians as Karasahr, later Agni (i.e. Chinese Yanqi; modern Karasahr) and Turpan (including Gaochang or Qočo; known in Chinese as Gaochang). Some 500 manuscripts have been studied in detail, mostly coming from Buddhist monasteries. Many authors take this to imply that Tocharian A had become a purely literary and liturgical language by the time of the manuscripts, but it may be that the surviving documents are unrepresentative.
Tocharian B (Kuchean or West Tocharian) was found at all the Tocharian A sites and also in several sites further west, including Kucha (later Kucha). It appears to have still been in use in daily life at that time. Over 3200 manuscripts have been studied in detail.
The languages had significant differences in phonology, morphology and vocabulary, making them mutually unintelligible "at least as much as modern Germanic or Romance languages". Tocharian A shows innovations in the vowels and nominal inflection, whereas Tocharian B has changes in the consonants and verbal inflection. Many of the differences in vocabulary between the languages concern Buddhist concepts, which may suggest that they were associated with different Buddhist traditions.
The differences indicate that they diverged from a common ancestor between 500 and 1000 years before the earliest documents, that is, sometime in the 1st millennium BC. Common Indo-European vocabulary retained in Tocharian includes words for herding, cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs, horses, textiles, farming, wheat, gold, silver, and wheeled vehicles.
Prakrit documents from 3rd century Krorän, Andir and Niya on the southeast edge of the Tarim Basin contain around 100 loanwords and 1000 proper names that cannot be traced to an Indic or Iranian source. Thomas Burrow suggested that they come from a variety of Tocharian, dubbed Tocharian C or Kroränian, which may have been spoken by at least some of the local populace. Burrow's theory is widely accepted, but the evidence is meagre and inconclusive, and some scholars favour alternative explanations.
The murals found in the Tarim Basin, especially those of the Kizil Caves, mostly depict Jataka stories, , and legends of the Buddha, and are an artistic representation in the tradition of the Nikaya Buddhism school of the . When the Chinese Monk Xuanzang visited Kucha in 630 AD, he received the favours of the Tocharian king Suvarnadeva, the son and successor of Suvarnapushpa, whom he described as a believer of Hinayana Buddhism. In the account of his travel to Kucha (屈支国) he stated that "There are about one hundred convents (saṅghārāmas) in this country, with five thousand and more disciples. These belong to the Hinayana of the school of the Sarvāstivādas (zhuyiqieyoubu). Their doctrine (teaching of Sūtras) and their rules of discipline (principles of the Vinaya) are like those of India, and those who read them use the same (originals).", also available in:
J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair argued that the Tarim Basin was first settled by Proto-Tocharian-speakers from an eastern offshoot of the Afanasievo culture, who migrated to the south and occupied the northern and eastern edges of the basin. The early eastward expansion of the Yamnaya culture circa 3300 BC is enough to account for the isolation of the Tocharian languages from Indo-Iranian linguistic innovations like satemization. Michaël Peyrot argues that several of the most striking typological peculiarities of Tocharian are rooted in a prolonged contact of Proto-Tocharian-speaking Afanasievans with speakers of an early stage of Proto-Samoyedic in South Siberia. Among others, this might explain the merger of all three-stop series (e.g., *t, *d, *dʰ > *t), which must have led to a huge amount of
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Chao Ning et al. (2019) found in burials from around 200 BC at the Shirenzigou site on the eastern edge of Dzungaria 20–80% Yamnaya-like ancestry, lending support to the hypothesis of a migration from Afanasievo into Dzungaria, which is just north of the Tarim Basin.
The necessary irrigation technology was first developed during the 3rd millennium BC in the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) to the west of the Pamir mountains, but it is unclear how it reached the Tarim. The staple crops, wheat and barley, also originated in the west.
The mummies were found with plaid-woven tapestries that are notably similar to the weaving pattern of the "tartan" style of the Hallstatt culture of central Europe, associated with Celts; the wool used in the tapestries was found to come from sheep with European ancestry.Fortson, Benjamin W. 2004. Indo-European Language and Culture. Blackwell Publishing. Page 352: "Adding to the various mysteries surrounding the Tocharians is the existence of extremely well-preserved mummies in the Takla Makan desert that have striking Europoid features and often red hair; some are nearly 4,000 years old. The mummies were found with tapestries woven in plaids that are similar in weaving style and pattern to tartans from the Hallstatt culture of central Europe, which was ancestral to the Celts... the wool used in weaving the tapestries comes from sheep of European ancestry..."
A 2021 genetic study demonstrated that the Tarim mummies were unrelated to Afanasievo populations and instead were a genetic isolate descending mainly from Ancient North Eurasians.
During the 1st millennium BC, a further wave of immigrants, the Saka speaking Iranian languages, arrived from the west and settled along the southern rim of the Tarim. They are believed to be the source of Iranian loanwords in Tocharian languages, particularly related to commerce and warfare. The Subeshi culture is a candidate for the Iron Age predecessors of the Tocharians.
The largest were Kucha with 81,000 inhabitants and Karasahr (Yanqi or Karashar) with 32,000. Next was the Loulan Kingdom (Krorän), first mentioned in 126 BC. Chinese histories give no evidence of ethnic changes in these cities between that time and the period of the Tocharian manuscripts from these sites. Situated on the northern and southern edges of the Tarim, these small urban societies were overshadowed by Eurasian nomads to the north and Chinese empires to the east. They became the object of rivalry between the Chinese and the Xiongnu. They conceded tributary relations with the larger powers when required, and acted independently when they could.
During the Eastern Han (25–220 AD), the whole Tarim Basin again became a focus of rivalry between the Xiong-nu to the north and the Chinese to the east. In 74 AD, Chinese troops started to take control of the Tarim Basin with the conquest of Turfan. During the 1st century AD, Kucha resisted the Chinese invasion, and allied itself with the Xiong-nu and the Yuezhi against the Chinese general Ban Chao. Even the Kushan Empire of Kujula Kadphises sent an army to the Tarim Basin to support Kucha, but they retreated after minor encounters.
In 124, Kucha formally submitted to the Chinese court, and by 127 China had conquered the whole of the Tarim Basin. China's control of the Silk Road facilitated the exchange of art and the progation of Buddhism from Central Asia. The Roman Maes Titianus is known to have visited the area in the 2nd century AD, as did numerous great Buddhist missionaries such as the Parthian Empire An Shigao, the Lokaksema and Zhi Qian, or the Indian Chu Sho-fu (竺朔佛). The Han controlled the Tarim states until their final withdrawal in 150 AD.
From the 3rd century, Kucha became a center of Buddhist studies. Buddhist texts were translated into Chinese by Kuchean monks, the most famous of whom was Kumārajīva (344–412/5). Captured by Lü Guang of the Later Liang in an attack on Kucha in 384, Kumārajīva learned Chinese during his years of captivity in Gansu. In 401, he was brought to the Later Qin capital of Chang'an, where he remained as head of a translation bureau until his death in 413.
The Kizil Caves lie 65 km west of Kucha, and contain over 236 Buddhist temples. Their murals date from the 3rd to the 8th century. Many of these murals were removed by Albert von Le Coq and other European archaeologists in the early 20th century, and are now held in European museums, but others remain in their original locations.
An increasingly dry climate in the 4th and 5th centuries led to the abandonment of several of the southern cities, including Niya and Krorän, with a consequent shift of trade from the southern route to the northern one. Confederations of nomadic tribes also began to jostle for supremacy. The northern oasis states were conquered by Rouran Khaganate in the late 5th century, leaving the local leaders in place. The nearby area of Gaochang and the Jushi Kingdom were alternatively ruled as a Chinese Prefecture, taken over by the Northern Liang in 442 CE, conquered by the Rouran Khaganate in 460, and conquered by the Tiele people in 488.
The inhabitants grew red millet, wheat, rice, legumes, hemp, grapes and pomegranates, and reared horses, cattle, sheep and camels.
They also extracted a wide range of metals and minerals from the surrounding mountains. Handicrafts included leather goods, fine felts and rugs.
In the Kizil Caves appear portraits of Royal families, composed of the King, Queen and young Prince. They are accompanied by monks, and men in caftan.References BDce-888、889, MIK III 8875, now in the Hermitage Museum. According to Historian of Art Benjamin Rowland, these portraits show "that the Tocharians were European rather than Mongol in appearance, with light complexions, blue eyes, and blond or reddish hair, and the costumes of the knights and their ladies have haunting suggestions of the chivalric age of the West".
Kucha ambassador are known to have visited the Chinese court of Emperor Yuan of Liang in his capital Jingzhou in 516–520 AD, at or around the same time as the Hepthalite embassies there. An ambassador from Kucha is illustrated in Portraits of Periodical Offering of Liang, painted in 526–539 AD, an 11th-century Song copy of which as remained.
As the territories ruled by the Hephthalites expanded into Central Asia and the Tarim Basin, the art of the Hephthalites, with characteristic clothing and hairstyles, also came to be used in the areas they ruled, such as Sogdiana, Bamiyan or Kucha in the Tarim Basin (Kizil Caves, Kumtura Caves, Subashi Temple). In these areas appear dignitaries with caftans with a triangular collar on the right side, crowns with three crescents, some crowns with wings, and a unique hairstyle. Another marker is the two-point suspension system for swords, which seems to have been an Hephthalite innovation, and was introduced by them in the territories they controlled. The paintings from the Kucha region, particularly the swordmen in the Kizil Caves, appear to have been made during Hephthalite rule in the region, circa 480–550 AD. The influence of the art of Gandhara in some of the earliest paintings at the Kizil Caves, dated to circa 500 AD, is considered as a consequence of the political unification of the area between Bactria and Kucha under the Hephthalites.Kageyama quoting the research of S. Hiyama, "Study on the first-style murals of Kucha: analysis of some motifs related to the Hephthalite's period", in
The Turks then split into Western and Eastern Khaganates by 580 AD. Tocharian royal families continued to rule Kucha, as vassals of the Western Turks, to whom they provided tribute and troops. Many surviving texts in Tocharian date from this period, and deal with a wide variety of administrative, religious and everyday topics. They also include travel passes, small slips of poplar wood giving the size of the permitted caravans for officials at the next station along the road.
In 618, king Suvarnapushpa of Kucha sent an embassy to the court of the Tang dynasty acknowledging vassalship."On the lunette of the front wall is painted a scene of the preaching of the Buddha in the Deer Park. On the left of the Buddha are painted the king and his wife; on the halo of the king is inscribed the dedication, which was interpreted by Pinault in his paper of 1994, 'Temple Constructed for the Benefit of Suvarnapousa by His Son' (this material is referred to in Kezier shiku neirong zonglu p. 2). From Chinese historical records it is known that this king reigned between the years 600 and 625, and his three sons died before 647: to date, this is the most accurate dating for the cave" in "618年，汉名为苏伐勃駃（梵文Suvarna pushpa，意为金色的花朵）的库车王向隋场帝表示归顺。" in
In 630, the Han Chinese Chinese Buddhism Buddhist monk Xuanzang visited the cities of the Tarim Basin on his pilgrimage to India. He later described the characteristics of Kucha (屈支国) in great detail in his Records of the Western Regions:
1) "The style of writing is Indian, with some differences"
2) "They clothe themselves with ornamental garments of silk and embroidery. They cut their hair and wear a flowing covering (over their heads)"
3) "The king is of Kuchean race""王屈支种也" in
4) "There are about one hundred convents (saṅghārāmas) in this country, with five thousand and more disciples. These belong to the Hinayana of the school of the Sarvāstivādas (Shwo-yih-tsai-yu-po). Their doctrine (teaching of Sūtras) and their rules of discipline (principles of the Vinaya) are like those of India, and those who read them use the same (originals)."
5) "About 40 li to the north of this desert city there are two convents close together on the slope of a mountain".
Next to the west lay the city of Agni, which had been a tributary of the Tang since 632. Alarmed by the nearby Chinese armies, Agni stopped sending Tribute to China and formed an alliance with the Western Turks. They were aided by Kucha, who also stopped sending tribute. The Tang captured Agni in 644, defeating a Western Turk relief force, and made the king of Kucha Suvarnadeva (Chinese: 蘇伐疊 Sufadie) resume tribute. When that king was deposed by a relative named Haripushpa (Chinese: 訶黎布失畢 Helibushibi) in 648, the Tang sent an army under the Turk general Ashina She'er to install a compliant member of the local royal family, a younger brother of Haripushpa. Ashina She'er continued to capture Kucha, and made it the headquarters of the Tang Protectorate General to Pacify the West. Kuchean forces recaptured the city and killed protector-general, Guo Xiaoke, but it fell again to Ashina She'er, who had 11,000 of the inhabitants executed in reprisal for the killing of Guo. It was also recorded about other cities that "he destroyed five great towns and with them many myriads of men and women... the lands of the west were seized with terror."The Tocharian cities never recovered from the Tang conquest.
The Tang lost the Tarim basin to the Tibetan Empire in 670, but regained it in 692, and continued to rule there until it was recaptured by the Tibetans in 792. The ruling Bai family of Kucha are last mentioned in Chinese sources in 787. There is little mention of the region in Chinese sources for the 9th and 10th centuries.
The Uyghur Khaganate took control of the northern Tarim in 803. After their capital in Mongolia was sacked by the Yenisei Kyrgyz in 840, they established a new state, the Kingdom of Qocho with its capital at Gaochang (near Turfan) in 866. Over centuries of contact and intermarriage, the cultures and populations of the pastoralist rulers and their agriculturalist subjects blended together. Modern Uyghurs are the result of admixture between the Tocharians and the Orkhon Uyghurs from the 8th century CE. Many Uyghurs converted to the Tocharian Buddhism or Nestorian Christianity, and adopted the agricultural lifestyle and many of the customs of the oasis-dwellers. p.284: "The Uyghurs mixed with the Tocharian people and adopted their religion and their culture of oasis agriculture (Scharlipp 1992; Soucek 2000)." The Tocharian language gradually disappeared as the urban population switched to the Old Uyghur language.
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Overall, the Tocharians seem to have mainly derived from the Afanasievo culture, but with contributions from other peripheral cultures, such as the BMAC, the Baikal Hunter-Gatherers and Yellow River farmers.
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