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93-468: Modern scholars have attempted to identify the Asii with other peoples known from European and Chinese sources including the: Yuezhi , Tocharians , Issedones / Wusun and/or Alans . The classical European sources relating to the Asii are brief. They sometimes survive only as quotations in other ancient sources, with textual variations that have led to widely varying translations and interpretations. During

186-624: A Central Asian Buddhist manuscript from the late 8th century states that it was translated into Old Turkic from Sanskrit, via a twγry language. In 1907, Emil Sieg and Friedrich W. K. Müller proposed that twγry was a name for the newly-discovered language of the Turpan area. Sieg and Müller, reading this name as toxrï , connected it with the ethnonym Tócharoi ( Ancient Greek : Τόχαροι , Ptolemy VI, 11, 6, 2nd century AD), itself taken from Indo-Iranian (cf. Old Persian tuxāri- , Khotanese ttahvāra , and Sanskrit tukhāra ), and proposed

279-570: A drinking cup out of his skull." ( Shiji 123. ) The wife of the murdered king became the new monarch of Greater Yuezhi. Nevertheless, in about 173 BC, the Wusun were apparently defeated by the Yuezhi, who killed a Wusun king known as Nandoumi. After their defeat by the Xiongnu, the Yuezhi split into two groups. The Lesser or Little Yuezhi moved to the "southern mountains", believed to be

372-462: A crushing victory. Modu boasted in a letter (174 BC) to the Han emperor that due to "the excellence of his fighting men, and the strength of his horses, he has succeeded in wiping out the Yuezhi, slaughtering or forcing to submission every number of the tribe." The son of Modu, Laoshang Chanyu (ruled 174–166 BC), subsequently killed the king of the Yuezhi and, in accordance with nomadic traditions, "made

465-581: A fraction of a cent. Women are held in great respect, and the men make decisions on the advice of their women. Zhang Qian also described the remnants of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom on the other side of the Oxus River (Chinese Gui ) as a number of autonomous city-states under Yuezhi suzerainty: Daxia is located over 2,000 li southwest of Dayuan, south of the Gui river. Its people cultivate

558-467: A hitherto unknown branch of Indo-European, now known as Tocharian: Prakrit documents from 3rd-century Krorän and Niya on the southeast edge of the Tarim Basin contain loanwords and names that appear to come from a closely related language, referred to as Tocharian C . The discovery of Tocharian upset some theories about the relations of Indo-European languages and revitalized their study. In

651-560: A language of late antiquity contemporary with Gothic , Classical Armenian , and Primitive Irish . The existence of the Tocharian languages and alphabet was not even suspected until archaeological exploration of the Tarim Basin by Aurel Stein in the early 20th century brought to light fragments of manuscripts in an unknown language, dating from the 6th to 8th centuries AD. It soon became clear that these fragments were actually written in two distinct but related languages belonging to

744-526: A mountain in the Tian Shan , and that Qilian should be interpreted as a name for the Tian Shan. They have thus placed the original homeland of the Yuezhi 1,000 km further northwest in the grasslands to the north of the Tian Shan (in the northern part of modern Xinjiang ). Other authors suggest that the area identified by Sima Qian was merely the core area of an empire encompassing the western part of

837-439: A result, it has been suggested that Tocharian A was a liturgical language , no longer spoken natively, while Tocharian B was the spoken language of the entire area. The hypothesized relationship of Tocharian A and B as liturgical and spoken forms, respectively, is sometimes compared with the relationship between Latin and the modern Romance languages , or Classical Chinese and Mandarin . However, in both of these latter cases,

930-601: A revolt by the king of Kashgar . In around AD 85, the Kushanas also assisted the Chinese in an attack on Turpan , east of the Tarim Basin. Following the military support provided to the Han, the Kushan emperor requested a marriage alliance with a Han princess and sent gifts to the Chinese court in expectation that this would occur. After the Han court refused, a Kushan army 70,000 strong marched on Ban Chao in 86 AD. The army

1023-521: A scholar of Tocharian, presented a decipherment of 10 texts written in the Kharoṣṭhī script . Schmidt claimed that these texts were written in a third Tocharian language he called Lolanisch . He also suggested that the language was closer to Tocharian B than to Tocharian A. In 2019 a group of linguists led by Georges Pinault and Michaël Peyrot convened in Leiden to examine Schmidt's translations against

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1116-548: A time when the Yuezhis had not yet encountered Buddhism. The area of the Hindu Kush ( Paropamisadae ) was ruled by the western Indo-Greek king until the reign of Hermaeus (reigned c.  90 BC –70 BC). After that date, no Indo-Greek kings are known in the area. According to Bopearachchi , no trace of Indo-Scythian occupation (nor coins of major Indo-Scythian rulers such as Maues or Azes I ) have been found in

1209-705: A war against the Tochari in 124 BC. Several relationships between these tribes and those named in Chinese sources have been proposed, but remain contentious. After they settled in Bactria, the Yuezhi became Hellenized to some degree – as shown by their adoption of the Greek alphabet and by some remaining coins, minted in the style of the Greco-Bactrian kings, with the text in Greek. According to Sergey Yatsenko,

1302-717: A year in Transoxiana and Bactria , wrote a detailed account in the Shiji , which gives considerable insight into the situation in Central Asia at the time. Zhang Qian also reported: the Great Yuezhi live 2,000 or 3,000 li [832–1,247 kilometers] west of Dayuan , north of the Gui [ Oxus ] river. They are bordered on the south by Daxia [ Bactria ], on the west by Anxi [ Parthia ], and on

1395-533: Is Justin's Prologue to Pompeius Trogus (prologue to book XLII), which states that 'the Asiani are kings of the Tochari and destroyed the Sacaraucae' (Reges Tocharorum Asiani interiusque Sakaraucarum). It is possible to conclude from this extract that the Asiani and the Tochari were closely related tribes. What is more, it indicates that the 'Asiani' dominated the 'Tochari' (Reges Tocharorum Asiani). We can identify

1488-744: Is attested only in Kucha. There are also the middle ("classical") and the late stage. A third Tocharian language was first suggested by Thomas Burrow in the 1930s, while discussing 3rd-century documents from Krorän (Loulan) and Niya . The texts were written in Gandhari Prakrit , but contained loanwords of evidently Tocharian origin, such as kilme ("district"), ṣoṣthaṃga ("tax collector"), and ṣilpoga ("document"). This hypothetical language later became generally known as Tocharian C; it has also sometimes been called Kroränian or Krorainic. In papers published posthumously in 2018, Klaus T. Schmidt,

1581-462: Is believed by Chinese scholars to be connected to the Kushan Empire (endonym: Kushano ; Chinese: Guishuang 貴霜). Other scholars have proposed, more controversially, that the Asii, Yuezhi and/or Tocharians were closely related. Alfred von Gutschmid believed that Asii, Pasiani and other names mentioned by Strabo are an attempt to render Yuezhi in Greek. W. W. Tarn first thought that

1674-527: Is called the city of Lanshi and has a market where all sorts of goods are bought and sold. The next mention of the Yuezhi in Chinese sources is found in chapter 96A of the Book of Han (completed in AD 111), relating to the early 1st century BC. At this time, the Yuezhi are described as occupying the whole of Bactria, organized into five major tribes or xīhóu . These tribes were known to the Chinese as: The Book of

1767-458: Is generally accepted that the Asiani mentioned by Trogus were probably identical to the Asii of Strabo. There is no agreement over whether another tribe mentioned by Strabo, the " Pasiani " were likewise related. Scholars such as W. W. Tarn, Moti Chandra believe that "as Asiani is the (Iranian) adjectival form of Asii, so Pasiani would be the similar adjectival form of, and would imply, a name such as *Pasii or *Pasi ". This may suggest that Strabo

1860-404: Is now believed to be mistaken, "Tocharian" remains the usual term for these languages. The discovered manuscripts record two closely related languages, called Tocharian A (also East Tocharian or Turfanian ) and Tocharian B ( West Tocharian or Kuchean ). The subject matter of the texts suggests that Tocharian A was more archaic and used as a Buddhist liturgical language, while Tocharian B

1953-751: Is the recovery of the Roman standards captured by the Parthians in 20 BCE, although Trogus' original history may have dealt with events into the first decade of the 1st-century CE.) Strabo completed his Geography in 23 CE. He mentions four tribes: the Asioi, Pasianoi, Sakaraulai, and Tokharoi. Pliny the Elder , in about 77–79 CE, makes a brief mention of a people called the Asini in his Naturalis Historia . According to P. H. L. Eggermont: Pliny mentions ...

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2046-803: The Arśi-Kuči , Agnean-Kuchean or Kuchean-Agnean languages, are an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family spoken by inhabitants of the Tarim Basin , the Tocharians . The languages are known from manuscripts dating from the 5th to the 8th century AD, which were found in oasis cities on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin (now part of Xinjiang in Northwest China) and the Lop Desert . The discovery of these languages in

2139-589: The Tókharoi and Asii . During the 1st century BC, one of the five major Greater Yuezhi tribes in Bactria, the Kushanas , began to subsume the other tribes and neighbouring peoples. The subsequent Kushan Empire , at its peak in the 3rd century AD, stretched from Turfan in the Tarim Basin in the north to Pataliputra on the Gangetic plain of India in the south. The Kushanas played an important role in

2232-602: The Alans , an Iranian tribe who migrated from the Eurasian Steppe into Europe during the early Middle Ages. There is circumstantial evidence for such a link in: The Alans were first documented by European scholars during the 1st century CE, on the Pontic-Caspian Steppe . Onomastic evidence for the identification of the Asii and Alans is provided by later medieval European scholars and travellers. In

2325-777: The Han call them by their original name, Da Yuezhi. A later Chinese annotation in Zhang Shoujie's Shiji (quoting Wan Zhen 萬震 in Nánzhōuzhì 南州志 ["Strange Things from the Southern Region"], a now-lost 3rd-century text from the Wu kingdom ), describes the Kushans as living in the same general area north of India, in cities of Greco-Roman style, and with sophisticated handicraft. The quotes are dubious, as Wan Zhen probably never visited

2418-679: The Ili Valley (on the modern borders of China and Kazakhstan), where they reportedly displaced elements of the Sakas . They were driven from the Ili Valley by the Wusun and migrated southward to Sogdia and later settled in Bactria . The Greater Yuezhi have consequently often been identified with peoples mentioned in classical European sources as having overrun the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom , like

2511-684: The Mahayana sutras into Chinese. They went to China and established translation bureaus, thereby being at the center of the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism . In the Records of the Three Kingdoms (chap. 3), it was recorded that in 229 AD, "The king of the Da Yuezhi [Kushanas], Bodiao 波調 ( Vasudeva I ), sent his envoy to present tribute, and His Majesty (Emperor Cao Rui ) granted him

2604-534: The Oxus , in the region of northern Bactria , or Transoxiana (modern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan ). The Yuezhi were visited in Transoxiana by a Chinese mission, led by Zhang Qian in 126 BC, which sought an offensive alliance with the Yuezhi against the Xiongnu. His request for an alliance was denied by the Yuezhi, who now had a peaceful life in Transoxiana and had no interest in revenge. Zhang Qian, who spent

2697-548: The Paropamisade and western Gandhara . The Hindu Kush may have been subsumed by the Yuezhi, who by then had been dominated by Greco-Bactria for almost two centuries. As they had done in Bactria with their copying of Greco-Bactrian coinage, the Yuezhi copied the coinage of Hermeaus on a vast scale, up to around 40 AD, when the design blends into the coinage of the Kushan king Kujula Kadphises . Such coins may provide

2790-778: The Qilian Mountains on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau , to live with the Qiang . The so-called Greater or Great Yuezhi began migrating north-west in about 165 BC, first settling in the Ili valley , immediately north of the Tian Shan mountains, where they defeated the Sai (Sakas): "The Yuezhi attacked the king of the Sai who moved a considerable distance to the south and the Yuezhi then occupied his lands" ( Book of Han 61 4B). This

2883-693: The Tarim Basin . There they introduced the Brahmi script, the Indian Prakrit language for administration, and Greco-Buddhist art , which developed into Serindian art . Following this territorial expansion, the Kushanas introduced Buddhism to northern and northeastern Asia, by both direct missionary efforts and the translation of Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. Major Kushan missionaries and translators included Lokaksema (born c.  147 CE ) and Dharmaraksa ( c.  233  – c.  311 ), both of whom were influential translators of

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2976-507: The Tocharian languages , there is no evidence for any such link. Three pre-Han texts mention peoples who appear to be the Yuezhi, albeit under slightly different names. In the 1st century BC, Sima Qian – widely regarded as the founder of Chinese historiography – describes how the Qin dynasty (221–206 BC) bought jade and highly valued military horses from a people that Sima Qian called

3069-645: The Uyghurs , expelled from Mongolia by the Kyrgyz , moved into the Tarim Basin. The theory is supported by the discovery of translations of Tocharian texts into Uyghur. Some modern Chinese words may ultimately derive from a Tocharian or related source, e.g. Old Chinese * mjit ( 蜜 ; mì ) "honey", from Proto-Tocharian * ḿət(ə) (where * ḿ is palatalized ; cf. Tocharian B mit ), cognate with Old Church Slavonic медъ (transliterated: medŭ ) (meaning "honey"), and English mead . A colophon to

3162-571: The Wūzhī , led by a man named Luo. The Wūzhī traded these goods for Chinese silk , which they then sold on to other neighbours. This is probably the first reference to the Yuezhi as a lynchpin in trade on the Silk Road , which in the 3rd century BC began to link Chinese states to Central Asia and, eventually, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Europe. The earliest detailed account of

3255-618: The wave model of Johannes Schmidt , suggesting that the satem isogloss represents a linguistic innovation in the central part of the Proto-Indo-European home range, and the centum languages along the eastern and the western peripheries did not undergo that change. Several scholars identify the ancestors of the Tocharians with the Afanasievo culture of South Siberia ( c. 3300–2500 BC), an early eastern offshoot of

3348-667: The "Prologues" have survived intact) – three tribes involved in the conquest of Bactria: the Asiani, Sacaraucae and Tochari (i.e. the Tukhara of Bactria rather than the so-called Tocharians of the Tarim Basin). The Tochari are reported to have, at some point, become subject to the ruling elite of the Asiani. According to Trogus, the Sacaraucae had since been destroyed. (In about 200 CE, the Roman historian, Justin (Marcus Junianus Justinus), wrote an epitome or condensation of Trogus's history. The last datable event recorded by Justin

3441-688: The 13th century, Giovanni da Pian del Carpine ( Johannes de Plano Carpini ) referred to Alani sive Assi ("Alans or Assi") and William of Rubrouck used the name Alani sive Aas ("Alans or Aas"). In the 15th century, Josephus Barbarus reported that the Alans referred to themselves by the name As . The name of the Ossetians , who are descended from the Alans, also has its root in the alternate ethnonym Osi . However, names similar to Alan (e.g. Aryan and Iron ) were clearly used by distantly-related Iranian tribes in very different historical contexts and

3534-414: The 19th century, it was thought that the division between centum and satem languages was a simple west–east division, with centum languages in the west. The theory was undermined in the early 20th century by the discovery of Hittite , a centum language in a relatively eastern location, and Tocharian, which was a centum language despite being the easternmost branch. The result was a new hypothesis, following

3627-604: The 1st and 2nd centuries, the Kushan Empire expanded militarily to the north and occupied parts of the Tarim Basin , putting them at the center of the lucrative Central Asian commerce with the Roman Empire . The Kushanas collaborated militarily with the Chinese against their mutual enemies. This included a campaign with the Chinese general Ban Chao against the Sogdians in 84 CE, when the latter were trying to support

3720-744: The 3rd century BC, Bactria had been conquered by the Greeks under Alexander the Great and since settled by the Hellenistic civilization of the Seleucids . The resulting Greco-Bactrian Kingdom lasted until the 2nd century BC. The area came under pressure from various nomadic peoples and the Greek city of Alexandria on the Oxus was apparently burnt to the ground in about 145 BC. The last Greco-Bactrian king, Heliocles I , retreated and moved his capital to

3813-421: The 4th and 3rd Centuries BCE, Megasthenes , who lived in Arachosia and was an ambassador to the Mauryan court in Pataliputra , refers in his work Indika to three tribes with similar and possibly related names, in separate parts of South Asia: These references by Megasthenes have survived only as citations in other texts. In the 1st century BCE, Trogus names – in the Historiae Philppicae (of which only

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3906-418: The 7th year of the Modu era (203 BC). In this war, a large area of the territory originally belonging to the Yuezhi was seized by the Xiongnu and the hegemony of the Yuezhi started to shake. The third war probably was in 176 BC (or shortly before), and the Yuezhi were badly defeated. Shortly before 176 BC, led by one of Modu's tribal chiefs, the Xiongnu invaded Yuezhi territory in the Gansu region and achieved

3999-401: The Asiani with the Kushans (von Gutschmidt 1888; Haloun 1937; Bachhofer 1941; Daffina 1967), one of the leading tribes, which subsequently came to power and created a great empire. It is noteworthy that Justin says that the Tochari were ruled by the Asiani, while the Chinese sources identify them as the largest of the five Yuezhi principalities. By the middle of the 1st Millennium CE, speakers of

4092-445: The Asii were probably one part of the Yuezhi, the other being the Tocharians. However, he later expressed doubts as to this position. The Asii were identical with the Pasiani (Gasiani) and were, therefore, also the Yuezhi. The Asii were probably one of three Scythian tribes, whereas the Tochari were probably not, and should be identified with the Yuezhi. One of the most important sources of information on nomad migration in Central Asia

4185-441: The Asini, who are reigning in the city of Bucephela. From these three data, 1) the Tacoraei are neighbours of the Besadae/Sosaeadae ; 2) the Asini are the neighbours of the Sosaeadae [possibly the Kirata ]; [and] 3) The Asiani [ sic ] are kings of the Thocari, [ sic ] it follows that the Asini of Pliny's text are identical with the Asiani, who are the kings of the Tocharians. This implies that—at least in

4278-423: The Ili and Chu valleys, "at the latest towards the end of the 7th century B.C." It has been suggested that the Wusun may also be identified in Western sources as their name, pronounced then * o-sən or * uo-suən , is not far removed from that of a people known as the Asiani who the writer Pompeius Trogus (1st century BC) informs us were a Scythian tribe. A rival theory instead identifies the Asii/Asiani/Asioi with

4371-406: The Kabul Valley. In about 140–130 BC, the Greco-Bactrian state was conquered by the nomads and dissolved. The Greek geographer Strabo mentions this event in his account of the central Asian tribes he called " Scythians ": All, or the greatest part of them, are nomads. The best known tribes are those who deprived the Greeks of Bactriana : the Asii, Pasiani, Tochari, and Sacarauli, who came from

4464-440: The Kushanas as the Yuezhi. The Kushanas expanded to the east during the 1st century AD. The first Kushan emperor, Kujula Kadphises , ostensibly associated himself with King Hermaeus on his coins. The Kushanas integrated Buddhism into a pantheon of many deities and became great promoters of Mahayana Buddhism , and their interactions with Greek civilization helped the Gandharan culture and Greco-Buddhism flourish. During

4557-407: The Later Han (5th century CE) also records the visit of Yuezhi envoys to the Chinese capital in 2 BC, who gave oral teachings on Buddhist sutras to a student, suggesting that some Yuezhi already followed the Buddhist faith during the 1st century BC (Baldev Kumar 1973). Chapter 88 of the Book of the Later Han relies on a report of Ban Yong , based on the campaigns of his father Ban Chao in

4650-450: The Mongolian plain, the upper reaches of the Yellow River , the Tarim Basin and possibly much of central Asia, including the Altai Mountains , the site of the Pazyryk burials of the Ukok Plateau . By the late 3rd century the Xiongnu monarch Touman even sent his eldest son Modu as a hostage to the Yuezhi. The Yuezhi often attacked their neighbour the Wusun to acquire slaves and pasture lands. Wusun originally lived together with

4743-449: The Xiongnu. As their soldiers numbered more than a hundred thousand, they were strong and despised the Xiongnu. In the past, they lived in the region between Dunhuang and Qilian . The area between the Qilian Mountains and Dunhuang lies in the western part of the modern Chinese province of Gansu , but no archaeological remains of the Yuezhi have yet been found in this area. Some scholars have argued that "Dunhuang" should be Dunhong ,

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4836-408: The Yuezhi in the region between Dunhuang and Qilian Mountain. The Yuezhi attacked the Wusuns, killed their monarch Nandoumi and took his territory. The son of Nandoumi, Kunmo fled to the Xiongnu and was brought up by the Xiongnu monarch. Gradually the Xiongnu grew stronger, and war broke out with the Yuezhi. There were at least four wars according to the Chinese accounts. The first war broke out during

4929-593: The Yuezhi is found in chapter 123 of the Records of the Great Historian by Sima Qian , describing a mission of Zhang Qian in the late 2nd century BC. Essentially the same text appears in chapter 61 of the Book of Han , though Sima Qian has added occasional words and phrases to clarify the meaning. Both texts use the name Yuèzhī , composed of characters meaning "moon" and "clan" respectively. Several different romanizations of this Chinese-language name have appeared in print. The Iranologist H. W. Bailey preferred Üe-ṭşi . Another modern Chinese pronunciation of

5022-419: The Yuezhi kingdom through the Silk Road , though he might have gathered his information from the trading ports in the coastal south. Chinese sources continued to use the name Yuezhi and seldom used the Kushan (or Guishuang ) as a generic term: The Great Yuezhi are located about seven thousand li [2,910 km] north of India. Their land is at a high altitude; the climate is dry; the region is remote. The king of

5115-428: The carpets with vivid embroidered scenes discovered in Noin-Ula were made by the Yuezhi in Bactria , and were obtained by the Xiongnu through commercial exchange or tributary payment, as the Yuezhi may have remained tributaries of the Xiongnu for a long time following their defeat. Embroidered carpets were among the highest-prized luxury items for the Xiongnu. The figures depicted in the carpets are believed to reflect

5208-400: The clothing and customs of the Yuezhi while they were in Bactria in the 1st century BCE-1st century CE. The graves of Tillya Tepe , complete with numerous artifacts, dated to the period between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE, probably belonged to the Yuezhis/early Kushans after the fall of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and before the rise of the Kushan Empire . They correspond to

5301-456: The conquerors of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom during the 2nd century BC, and are widely believed to have originated as a dynastic clan or tribe of the Yuezhi. The area of Bactria they settled came to be known as Tokharistan . Because some inhabitants of Bactria became known as Tukhāra (Sanskrit) or Tókharoi (Τοχάριοι; Greek), these names later became associated with the Yuezhi. The Kushana spoke Bactrian , an Eastern Iranian language . In

5394-411: The country on the other side of the Jaxartes [Syr Darya], opposite the Sacae and Sogdiani . Writing in the 1st century BC, the Roman historian Pompeius Trogus attributed the destruction of the Greco-Bactrian state to the Sacaraucae and the Asiani "kings of the Tochari". Both Pompeius and the Roman historian Justin (2nd century AD) record that the Parthian king Artabanus II was mortally wounded in

5487-460: The development of trade on the Silk Road and the introduction of Buddhism to China . The Lesser Yuezhi migrated southward to the edge of the Tibetan Plateau . Some are reported to have settled among the Qiang people in Qinghai , and to have been involved in the Liang Province Rebellion (184–221 AD) against the Eastern Han dynasty . Another group of Yuezhi is said to have founded the city state of Cumuḍa (now known as Kumul and Hami ) in

5580-415: The dominant tribe of a confederacy of four Issedonean tribes "from the time that they had settled in the valleys of the Ili and Chu " who later invaded Sogdiana and Bactria. "This would account for their being called collectively "Issedones" by Herodotus." He also states that the "Issedon Scythia and the Issedon Serica took their names from the Issedones." Yu believes that the Issedones must have migrated to

5673-421: The earliest known names of Yuezhi yabgu (a minor royal title, similar to prince), namely Sapadbizes and/or Agesiles , who both lived in or about 20 BC. After that point, they extended their control over the northwestern area of the Indian subcontinent, founding the Kushan Empire , which was to rule the region for several centuries. Despite their change of name, most Chinese authors continued to refer to

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5766-429: The early 20th century contradicted the formerly prevalent idea of an east–west division of the Indo-European language family as centum and satem languages , and prompted reinvigorated study of the Indo-European family. Scholars studying these manuscripts in the early 20th century identified their authors with the Tokharoi , a name used in ancient sources for people of Bactria ( Tokharistan ). Although this identification

5859-425: The eastern Tarim. A fourth group of Lesser Yuezhi may have become part of the Jie people of Shanxi , who established the Later Zhao state of the 4th century AD (although this remains controversial). Many scholars believe that the Yuezhi were an Indo-European people. Although some scholars have associated them with artifacts of extinct cultures in the Tarim Basin, such as the Tarim mummies and texts recording

5952-474: The family, recently revised to Agni-Kuči , but this name has not achieved widespread usage. Tocharian is documented in manuscript fragments, mostly from the 8th century (with a few earlier ones) that were written on palm leaves, wooden tablets, and Chinese paper , preserved by the extremely dry climate of the Tarim Basin. Samples of the language have been discovered at sites in Kucha and Karasahr , including many mural inscriptions. Most of attested Tocharian

6045-438: The identification of the Alans with the Asii requires them to have migrated more than 2,800 kilometres (1,750 miles) in the space of several decades. According to archaeologist Claude Rapin , it is unlikely that the Asii of Bactria migrated further west than Kangju / Sogdia . Yuezhi The Yuezhi were an ancient people first described in Chinese histories as nomadic pastoralists living in an arid grassland area in

6138-448: The land and have cities and houses. Their customs are like those of Ta-Yuan. It has no great ruler but only a number of petty chiefs ruling the various cities. The people are poor in the use of arms and afraid of battle, but they are clever at commerce. After the Great Yuezhi moved west and attacked the lands, the entire country came under their sway. The population of the country is large, numbering some 1,000,000 or more persons. The capital

6231-421: The late 1st century AD. It reports that one of the five tribes of the Yuezhi, the Guishuang , had managed to take control of the tribal confederation: More than a hundred years later, the xihou of Guishuang, named Qiujiu Que attacked and exterminated the four other xihou . He set himself up as king of a kingdom called Guishuang (Kushan). He invaded Anxi ( Parthia ) and took the Gaofu region. He also defeated

6324-463: The liturgical language is the linguistic ancestor of the spoken language, whereas no such relationship holds between Tocharian A and B. In fact, from a phonological perspective Tocharian B is significantly more conservative than Tocharian A, and serves as the primary source for reconstructing Proto-Tocharian. Only Tocharian B preserves the following Proto-Tocharian features: stress distinctions, final vowels, diphthongs, and o vs. e distinction. In turn,

6417-415: The loss of final vowels in Tocharian A has led to the loss of certain Proto-Tocharian categories still found in Tocharian B, e.g. the vocative case and some of the noun, verb, and adjective declensional classes. In their declensional and conjugational endings, the two languages innovated in divergent ways, with neither clearly simpler than the other. For example, both languages show significant innovations in

6510-410: The name "Tocharian" (German Tocharisch ). Ptolemy's Tócharoi are often associated by modern scholars with the Yuezhi of Chinese historical accounts, who founded the Kushan Empire . It is now clear that these people actually spoke Bactrian , an Eastern Iranian language , rather than the language of the Tarim manuscripts, so the term "Tocharian" is considered a misnomer. Nevertheless, it remains

6603-409: The name is Ròuzhī , based on the thesis that the character 月 in the name is a scribal error for 肉 ; however Thierry considers this thesis "thoroughly wrong". The account begins with the Yuezhi occupying the grasslands to the northwest of China at the beginning of the 2nd century BC: The Great Yuezhi was a nomadic horde. They moved about following their cattle, and had the same customs as those of

6696-541: The new language. Besides the Buddhist and Manichaean religious texts, there were also monastery correspondence and accounts, commercial documents, caravan permits, medical and magical texts, and one love poem. In 1998, the Chinese linguist Ji Xianlin published a translation and analysis of fragments of a Tocharian Maitreyasamiti-Nataka discovered in 1974 in Yanqi . Tocharian A and B are significantly different, to

6789-618: The north by Kangju [beyond the middle Jaxartes /Syr Darya]. They are a nation of nomads , moving from place to place with their herds, and their customs are like those of the Xiongnu. They have some 100,000 or 200,000 archer warriors. In a sweeping analysis of the physical types and cultures of Central Asia, Zhang Qian reports: Although the states from Dayuan west to Anxi (Parthia), speak rather different languages, their customs are generally similar and their languages mutually intelligible. The men have deep-set eyes and profuse beards and whiskers. They are skilful at commerce and will haggle over

6882-409: The original texts. They concluded that Schmidt's decipherment was fundamentally flawed, that there was no reason to associate the texts with Krörän, and that the language they recorded was neither Tocharian nor Indic, but Iranian. Phonetically, Tocharian languages are " centum " Indo-European languages, meaning that they merge the palatovelar consonants (*ḱ, *ǵ, *ǵʰ) of Proto-Indo-European with

6975-617: The plain velars (*k, *g, *gʰ) rather than palatalizing them to affricates or sibilants. Centum languages are mostly found in western and southern Europe ( Greek , Italic , Celtic , Germanic ). In that sense Tocharian (to some extent like the Greek and the Anatolian languages ) seems to have been an isolate in the " satem " (i.e. palatovelar to sibilant ) phonetic regions of Indo-European-speaking populations. The discovery of Tocharian contributed to doubts that Proto-Indo-European had originally split into western and eastern branches; today,

7068-478: The point of being mutually unintelligible . A common Proto-Tocharian language must precede the attested languages by several centuries, probably dating to the late 1st millennium BC. Tocharian A is found only in the eastern part of the Tocharian-speaking area, and all extant texts are of a religious nature. Tocharian B, however, is found throughout the range and in both religious and secular texts. As

7161-407: The present active indicative endings but in radically different ways, so that only the second-person singular ending is directly cognate between the two languages, and in most cases neither variant is directly cognate with the corresponding Proto-Indo-European (PIE) form. The agglutinative secondary case endings in the two languages likewise stem from different sources, showing parallel development of

7254-434: The reign of the Xiongnu monarch Touman (who died in 209 BC) who suddenly attacked the Yuezhi. The Yuezhi wanted to kill Modu, the son of the Xiongnu king Touman kept as a hostage to them, but Modu stole a good horse from them and managed to escape to his country. He subsequently killed his father and became ruler of the Xiongnu. It appears that the Xiongnu did not defeat the Yuezhi in this first war. The second war took place in

7347-584: The secondary case system after the Proto-Tocharian period. Likewise, some of the verb classes show independent origins, e.g. the class II preterite, which uses reduplication in Tocharian A (possibly from the reduplicated aorist ) but long PIE ē in Tocharian B (possibly related to the long-vowel perfect found in Latin lēgī , fēcī , etc.). Tocharian B shows an internal chronological development; three linguistic stages have been detected. The oldest stage

7440-486: The so-called Tocharian A language in the Tarim Basin, apparently referred to themselves as Ārśi (pronounced "arshi"; apparently meaning "shining" or "brilliant"). Asii or Asiani may simply be a corruption of the name of the Issedones – an Iranian people mentioned by Herodotus – who are frequently identified with the Wusun mentioned in contemporaneous Chinese sources. Taishan Yu proposes that Asii were "probably"

7533-575: The standard term for the language of the Tarim Basin manuscripts. In 1938, Walter Bruno Henning found the term "four twγry " used in early 9th-century manuscripts in Sogdian, Middle Iranian, and Uighur. He argued that it referred to the region on the northeast edge of the Tarim, including Agni and Karakhoja , but not Kucha. He thus inferred that the colophon referred to the Agnean language. Although

7626-558: The state calls himself "son of heaven". There are so many riding horses in that country that the number often reaches several hundred thousand. City layouts and palaces are quite similar to those of Daqin [the Roman Empire]. The skin of the people there is reddish white. People are skilful at horse archery. Local products, rarities, treasures, clothing, and upholstery are very good, and even India cannot compare with it. The Central Asian people who called themselves Kushana , were among

7719-588: The steppe cultures of the Don-Volga area that later became the Yamnayans . Under this scenario, Tocharian-speakers would have immigrated to the Tarim Basin from the north at some later point. Most scholars reject Walter Bruno Henning 's proposed link to Gutian , a language spoken on the Iranian plateau in the 22nd century BC and known only from personal names. Tocharian probably died out after 840 when

7812-475: The term twγry or toxrï appears to be the Old Turkic name for the Tocharians, it is not found in Tocharian texts. The apparent self-designation ārśi appears in Tocharian A texts. Tocharian B texts use the adjective kuśiññe , derived from kuśi or kuči , a name also known from Chinese and Turkic documents. The historian Bernard Sergent compounded these names to coin an alternative term Arśi-Kuči for

7905-464: The time of Pliny—the Kushāṇas were kings of the region between Jhelam and Indus and that Bucephala was one of their cities. It seems that Pliny availed himself of a recent description of this territory and that Ptolemy knew these data too. Many theories have been proposed by historians and other scholars as to their origins, relationships, language, culture, etc., but so far no consensus has emerged. It

7998-894: The title of King of the Da Yuezhi Intimate with the Wei (Ch: 親魏大月氏王, Qīn Wèi Dà Yuèzhī Wáng )." Tocharian languages Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The Tocharian (sometimes Tokharian ) languages ( US : / t oʊ ˈ k ɛər i ə n ˌ - ˈ k ɑːr -/ toh- KAIR -ee-ən, -⁠ KAR - ; UK : / t ɒ ˈ k ɑːr i ə n / to- KAR -ee-ən ), also known as

8091-592: The western part of the modern Chinese province of Gansu , during the 1st millennium BC. After a major defeat at the hands of the Xiongnu in 176 BC, the Yuezhi split into two groups migrating in different directions: the Greater Yuezhi and Lesser Yuezhi . This started a complex domino effect that radiated in all directions and, in the process, set the course of history for much of Asia for centuries to come. The Greater Yuezhi initially migrated northwest into

8184-457: The whole of the kingdoms of Puda and Jibin. Qiujiu Que (Kujula Kadphises) was more than eighty years old when he died. His son, Yan Gaozhen ( Vima Takto ), became king in his place. He returned and defeated Tianzhu (Northwestern India) and installed a General to supervise and lead it. The Yuezhi then became extremely rich. All the kingdoms call [their king] the Guishuang (Kushan) king, but

8277-472: Was "the first historically recorded movement of peoples originating in the high plateaus of Asia." In 132 BC the Wusun , in alliance with the Xiongnu and out of revenge from an earlier conflict, again managed to dislodge the Yuezhi from the Ili Valley, forcing them to move south-west. The Yuezhi passed through the neighbouring urban civilization of Dayuan (in Ferghana ) and settled on the northern bank of

8370-467: Was apparently exhausted by the time it reached its objective and was defeated by the Chinese force. The Kushanas retreated and later paid tribute to the Chinese emperor Han He (89–106). In about 120 AD, Kushan troops installed Chenpan—a prince who had been sent as a hostage to them and had become a favorite of the Kushan Emperor—on the throne of Kashgar , thus expanding their power and influence in

8463-589: Was more actively spoken in the entire area from Turfan in the east to Tumshuq in the west. A body of loanwords and names found in Prakrit documents from the Lop Nur basin have been dubbed Tocharian C ( Kroränian ). A claimed find of ten Tocharian C texts written in Kharosthi has been discredited. The oldest extant manuscripts in Tocharian B are now dated to the fifth or even late fourth century AD, making it

8556-522: Was referring to a group of Persians ( Old Persian Pārsa ) or Parsis who had settled in Central Asia. However, scholars such as J. Marquart believe that they were synonymous with the Asiani. In other words, the Asii and the Pasiani were one and the same, and "Pasiani" was a misspelling of Asiani or a variant of the same name. Others suggest that the name is a misspelling of Gasiani , a name which

8649-579: Was written in the Tocharian alphabet , a derivative of the Brahmi alphabetic syllabary ( abugida ) also referred to as North Turkestan Brahmi or slanting Brahmi. However a smaller amount was written in the Manichaean script in which Manichaean texts were recorded. It soon became apparent that a large proportion of the manuscripts were translations of known Buddhist works in Sanskrit and some of them were even bilingual, facilitating decipherment of

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