What language is Kucha?
What language is Kucha?
The language of Kucha, as evidenced by surviving manuscripts and inscriptions, was Kuśiññe (Kushine) also known as Tocharian B or West Tocharian, an Indo-European language.
What happened to the tocharians?
The Tocharians were an fascinating ancient Indo-European-speaking people living in westernmost China and parts of Central Asia. They were part of the distinct Tocharian branch, an own branch of the Indo-European family. They later got replaced and assimilated by Mongoloid Turkic people, later known as the Uyghurs.
Where is Kucha?
Xinjiang
Kucha, Chinese (Pinyin) Kuqa or (Wade-Giles romanization) K’u-ch’e, oasis town, northwestern Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, China. It lies at the foot of the southern slope of the Tien Shan (“Celestial Mountains”) on the northern rim of the Tarim Basin.
Where is the Tarim Basin?
The Tarim Basin is China’s largest inland basin located in south of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region between the Tianshan Mountains, Kunlun Mountains and Arjin Mountain. Stretching 1,500 kilometers from east to west and 600 kilometers from south to north, it covers an area of 530,000 square kilometers.
Are tocharians Iranians?
They were the ancestors of peoples later known to Chinese authors as the Wusun and Yuezhi. They are believed to be the source of Iranian loanwords in Tocharian languages, particularly related to commerce and warfare.
What does Kucha mean?
Kucha or Kuche was an ancient Buddhist kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin and south of the Muzat River..
Do Tocharians still exist?
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.
Are Uyghurs descendants of Tocharians?
The modern Uyghur language is not descended from Old Uyghur; rather, it is a descendant of the Karluk languages spoken by the Kara-Khanid Khanate. The modern descendants of the Uyghur Khanate are the Yugur. Some Uyghur nationalists claim that they are descended from the Tocharians.
Where is tocharian spoken?
China
Tocharian languages, Tocharian also spelled Tokharian, small group of extinct Indo-European languages that were spoken in the Tarim River Basin (in the centre of the modern Uighur Autonomous Region of Sinkiang, China) during the latter half of the 1st millennium ad.
Where does the Tarim river flow?
Takla Makan Desert
The river gives its name to the great basin between the Tien Shan and Kunlun mountain systems of Central Asia. It flows for most of its length through the Takla Makan Desert. The word tarim is used to designate the bank of a river that flows into a lake or that is undifferentiable from the sands of a desert.
Which desert is located in the Tarim Basin?
In the centre of the basin is the Takla Makan Desert, which covers an area of 132,000 square miles (342,000 square km). Several water conservation projects have been built in the Tarim Basin, including a canal that irrigates some 50 square miles (130 square km) of farmland.