Saka, or Sakan, was a variety of
Eastern Iranian languages, attested from the ancient
Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
kingdoms of
Khotan
Hotan (also known as Gosthana, Gaustana, Godana, Godaniya, Khotan, Hetian, Hotien) is a major oasis town in southwestern Xinjiang, an autonomous region in Western China. The city proper of Hotan broke off from the larger Hotan County to become ...
,
Kashgar and
Tumshuq
TumxukThe official spelling according to , (Beijing, ''SinoMaps Press'' 1997); is a sub-prefecture-level city in the western part of Xinjiang, China. The eastern part of Tumxuk is surrounded by Maralbexi County, Kashgar Prefecture. The smaller ...
in the
Tarim Basin
The Tarim Basin is an endorheic basin in Northwest China occupying an area of about and one of the largest basins in Northwest China.Chen, Yaning, et al. "Regional climate change and its effects on river runoff in the Tarim Basin, China." Hydr ...
, in what is now southern
Xinjiang
Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...
, China. It is a
Middle Iranian language. The two kingdoms differed in
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...
, their speech known as Khotanese and Tumshuqese.
The Saka rulers of the western regions of the
Indian subcontinent
The Indian subcontinent is a list of the physiographic regions of the world, physiographical region in United Nations geoscheme for Asia#Southern Asia, Southern Asia. It is situated on the Indian Plate, projecting southwards into the Indian O ...
, such as the
Indo-Scythians and
Western Satraps, spoke practically the same language.
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, 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 and
Pashto
Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani ().
Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official langua ...
. Saka was known as "Hvatanai" in contemporary documents. Many
Prakrit
The Prakrits (; sa, prākṛta; psu, 𑀧𑀸𑀉𑀤, ; pka, ) are a group of vernacular Middle Indo-Aryan languages that were used in the Indian subcontinent from around the 3rd century BCE to the 8th century CE. The term Prakrit is usu ...
terms were borrowed from Khotanese into the
Tocharian languages.
History
The two known dialects of Saka are associated with a movement of the
Scythians
The Scythians or Scyths, and sometimes also referred to as the Classical Scythians and the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern
* : "In modern scholarship the name 'Sakas' is reserved for the ancient tribes of northern and eastern Centra ...
. No invasion of the region is recorded in Chinese records and one theory is that two tribes of the
Saka, speaking the two dialects, settled in the region in about 200 BC before the Chinese accounts commence.
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
The Kingdom of Khotan was an ancient Buddhist Saka kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin (modern Xinjiang, China). The ancient capital was originally sited to ...
in the
Islamicisation and Turkicisation of Xinjiang
The Turkic peoples were descended from a Transeurasian agricultural community based in northeast China, and they were not recognized as native to the Xinjiang until the area was settled in by Tang-allied Türk (Tujue) tribes in the 7th cent ...
.
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 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.
Classification
Khotanese and Tumshuqese are closely related
Eastern Iranian languages.
Texts
Other than an
inscription
Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the w ...
from
Issyk kurgan
The Issyk kurgan, in south-eastern Kazakhstan, less than 20 km east from the Talgar alluvial fan, near Issyk, is a burial mound discovered in 1969. It has a height of six meters and a circumference of sixty meters. It is dated to the 4th ...
that it is tentatively identified as Khotanese (although written in
Kharosthi), all of the surviving documents originate from Khotan or Tumshuq. Khotanese is attested from over 2,300 texts preserved among the
Dunhuang manuscripts, as opposed to just 15 texts in Tumshuqese. These were deciphered by
Harold Walter Bailey. The earliest texts, from the fourth century, are mostly religious documents. There were several
viharas in the
Kingdom of Khotan
The Kingdom of Khotan was an ancient Buddhist Saka kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin (modern Xinjiang, China). The ancient capital was originally sited to ...
and Buddhist translations are common at all periods of the documents. There are many reports to the royal court (called ''haṣḍa aurāsa'') which are of historical importance, as well as private documents. An example of a document is .
Old Khotanese Phonology
Consonants
Vowels
Notes
See also
*
Harold Walter Bailey
*
Duan Qing
Citations
Sources
*
*
Further reading
*
*
*
* (On connections between Chinese and Khotanese, such as loan words and pronunciations)
*
{{Languages of China
Extinct languages of Asia
Eastern Iranian languages
Languages extinct in the 11th century