A Kuchean shift in terminology from Indo-Iranian to Tocharian
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Sino-Platonic Papers is pleased to announce the publication of its three-hundred-and-forty-eighth issue:
"A Historical Perspective on the Central Asian Kingdom of Kucha," by Angela F. Howard.
http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp348_kucha.pdf
ABSTRACT
The article reexamines the dating of the earliest Buddhist cave paintings in the ancient Kingdom of Kucha, which was located in what is now Xinjiang, paying particular attention to the site of Kizil. Based on multiple Carbon-14 results spanning thirty years, historical and religious documents, and the author’s in situ research, the dating proposed is earlier than the traditional one, considered to be circa 500 AD. The latter was formulated, close to a century ago, by the scholar-explorer Ernst Waldschmidt on the basis of the “Indo-Iranian” style and is still used in art historical literature. Relying especially on Kucha’s comprehensive history, this paper suggests that the earliest cave paintings might have been coeval with the flourishing of Buddhism in Kucha during the fourth century. Given the centrality of the Tocharian language to the Sarvāstivādin Buddhist school associated with Kucha’s monasteries and the relative stylistic independence of Kucha from India, the author recommends adopting the term “Tocharian style” rather than “Indo-Iranian style” to describe artistic production in Kucha prior to the Tang.
Keywords: Tocharian, Central Asia, Caves
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Showing that art history and linguistics cannot be divorced from each other.
Selected readings
- "The origins and affinities of Tocharian" (8/20/23)
- "The geographical, archeological, genetic, and linguistic origins of Tocharian" (7/14/20)
The language, the people, and their history
- "Tocharian love poem" (4/1/20)
- "The sound and sense of Tocharian" (5/4/20)
- "The Tocharian A word for 'rug' and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (1/3/20)
- "The Tocharian A word for 'rug' and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 2" (1/26/20)
- "Tocharian C: its discovery and implications" (4/2/19)
- "'Tocharian C' Again: The Plot Thickens and the Mystery Deepens"
- "Tocharian, Turkic, and Old Sinitic 'ten thousand'" (4/23/19)
- "Tocharians" (Wikipedia)
- "Tocharian languages" (Wikipedia)
- J. P. Mallory, The Problem of Tocharian Origins: An Archaeological Perspective (Sino-Platonic Papers, 259 [Nov. 2015]; free pdf, 63 pp.)
- "James Mallory, The problem of Tocharian origins: A doorway to insanity" (12/13/12; 1:11:39) — pay particular attention to what happens at 10:42
- "Hannes A. Fellner (Vienna): Linguistic Contact between Indo-European and Old Chinese" (2015; 29:03)
- "Genetic evidence for the spread of Indo-Aryan languages" (6/22/17)
Archeology and language
- "The importance of archeology for historical linguistics" (5/1/20)
- "University of Texas Linguistics Research Center" (4/24/20)
- "Archeological and linguistic evidence for the wheel in East Asia" (3/11/20)
- "Horses, soma, riddles, magi, and animal style art in southern China" (11/11/19)
- "Of armaments and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 6" (12/23/17) — particularly pertinent, and also draws on art history as well as archeology
- "Of felt hats, feathers, macaroni, and weasels" (3/13/16)
- Walter, Mariko Namba. "Tocharian Buddhism in Kucha: Buddhism of Indo-European Centum Speakers in Chinese Turkestan before the 10th Century C.E." Sino-Platonic Papers, 85 (1998).
- Xu, Wenkan. "The Discovery of the Xinjiang Mummies and Studies of the Origin of the Tocharians". The Journal of Indo-European Studies, 23.3-4 (Fall/Winter, 1995), 357–369.
- Xu, Wenkan. "The Tokharians and Buddhism". In Studies in Central and East Asian Religions, 9 (1996), 1–17.
- Xu, Wenkan. "Beyond Deciphering: An Overview of Tocharian Studies over the Past Thirty Years". In Great Journeys across the Pamir Mountains. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Pp. 128–139.
- Wei, Lanhai, Hui Li, and Wenkan Xu. "The separate origins of the Tocharians and the Yuezhi: Results from recent advances in archaeology and genetics". In: M. Malzahn, Michaël Peyrot, Hannes Fellner, and Theresa-Susanna Illés, eds. Tocharian Texts in Context: International Conference on Tocharian Manuscripts and Silk Road Culture, June 25-29th, 2013. Bremen: Hempen Verlag, 2015. Pp. 277-300.
The origin of the Tocharians and their relationship to the Yuezhi (月氏) have been debated for more than a century, since the discovery of the Tocharian language. This debate has led to progress on both the scope and depth of our knowledge about the origin of the Indo-European language family and of the Indo-Europeans. Archaeological evidence supporting these theories, however, has until now sadly been lacking
Two by Hamp
- Eric P. Hamp, with annotations and comments by Douglas Q. Adams. "The Expansion of the Indo-European Languages: An Indo-Europeanist’s Evolving View". Sino-Platonic Papers, 239 (August, 2013), 1-14.
- Hamp, E. P. (1998). “Whose were the Tocharians?: Linguistic subgrouping and diagnostic idiosyncrasy,” in The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia, ed. V. H. Mair, 1: 307–346. Washington and Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Man and the University of Pennsylvania Museum.