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History

The Tocharian script is derived from the Brahmi alphabetic syllabary (abugida) and is referred to as slanting Brahmi. 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 the new language. Besides the Buddhist and Manichaean religious texts, there were also monastery correspondence and accounts, commercial documents, caravan permits, and medical and magical texts, and one love poem. Many Tocharians embraced Manichaean duality or Buddhism.

In 1998, Chinese linguist Ji Xianlin published a translation and analysis of fragments of a Tocharian Maitreyasamiti-Nataka discovered in 1974 in Yanqi.⁶⁷⁸

The Tocharian script probably died out after 840, when the Uyghurs were expelled from Mongolia by the Kyrgyz, retreating to the Tarim Basin. This theory is supported by the discovery of translations of Tocharian texts into Uyghur. During Uyghur rule, the peoples assimilated by the Turkic speaking Uyghurs now in Xinjiang.

Script

The Tocharian script is based on Brahmi, with each consonant having an inherent vowel, which can be altered by adding a vowel mark or removed by a special nullifying mark, the virama. Like Brahmi, Tocharian uses stacking for conjunct consonants and has irregular conjunct forms of , ra.⁹ Unlike other Brahmi scripts, Tocharian has a second set of characters called Fremdzeichen that double up several of the standard consonants, but with an inherent "Ä" vowel.¹⁰ The eleven Fremdzeichen are most often found as substitutes for the standard consonant+virama in conjuncts, but they can be found in any context other than with the explicit "Ä" vowel mark. Fremdzeichen as consonant+virama is not found in later Tocharian texts.

Table of Tocharian letters

Evolution from Brahmi to Tocharian

Manuscripts in Sanskrit, using Middle Brahmi script and the Kushan period, and carbon dated to the 2nd century CE, have been discovered in the Tarim Basin, and particularly at Kizil. Some of the fragments, quite possibly the oldest Sanskrit manuscript of any type related to Buddhism and Hinduism discovered so far, were discovered in 1906 in the form of a pile of more than 1,000 palm leaf fragments in the Ming-oi, Kizil Caves, during the third Turfan expedition headed by Albert Grünwedel. The calibrated age of the manuscript by Carbon-14 technique is 130 CE (80–230 CE), corresponding to the rule of the Kushan king Kanishka.

The Tocharian script evolved from the Middle Brahmi script of the Kushan Empire:¹¹

Unicode

Tocharian script was proposed for inclusion in Unicode in 2015 but has not been approved.¹³

External links

• TITUS: Tocharian alphabets, conjugation tables, and manuscripts from the Berlin Turfan Collection
• A Tocharian-to-English dictionary with nearly 200 words with accompanying article
• Tocharian Online by Todd B. Krause and Jonathan Slocum, University of Texas at Austin
• Tocharian alphabet at Omniglot.com
• Online: "A dictionary of Tocharian B". www.win.tue.nl., also in print: Adams, Douglas Q. (2013). A Dictionary of Tocharian B. Rodopi. ISBN 978-90-420-3671-0.
• CEToM: A Comprehensive Edition of Tocharian Manuscripts

References

1. Diringer, David (1948). Alphabet A Key To The History Of Mankind. pp. 347–348. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.57042/page/n349/mode/2up ↩

2. "BRĀHMĪ – Encyclopaedia Iranica". www.iranicaonline.org. Retrieved 2019-03-28. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/brahmi-indian-script ↩

3. Earliest paintings from Kizil Caves with Tocharian inscriptions, now carbon dated to AD 245-340, see Waugh (Historian, University of Washington), Daniel C. "MIA Berlin: Turfan Collection: Kizil". depts.washington.edu. /wiki/Kizil_Caves ↩

4. Namba Walter, Mariko (October 1998). "Tokharian Buddhism in Kucha: Buddhism of Indo-European Centum Speakers in Chinese Turkestan before the 10th Century C.E." (PDF). Sino-Platonic Papers. 85: 2-4. http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp085_tokharian_buddhism_kucha.pdf ↩

5. Diringer, David (1948). Alphabet A Key To The History Of Mankind. pp. 347–348. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.57042/page/n349/mode/2up ↩

6. "Fragments of the Tocharian", Andrew Leonard, How the World Works, Salon.com, January 29, 2008 http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2008/01/29/fragments_of_the_tocharian/index.html ↩

7. "Review of 'Fragments of the Tocharian A Maitreyasamiti-Nataka of the Xinjiang Museum, China. In Collaboration with Werner Winter and Georges-Jean Pinault by Ji Xianlin'", J. C. Wright, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 62, No. 2 (1999), pp. 367–370 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3107526 ↩

8. "Fragments of the Tocharian a Maitreyasamiti-Nataka of the Zinjiang Museum, China", Ji Xianlin, Werner Winter, Georges-Jean Pinault, Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs https://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/3110149044 ↩

9. Gippert, Jost. "Tocharian Brahmi Script". TITUS Didactica. Retrieved 8 May 2013. http://titus.fkidg1.uni-frankfurt.de/didact/idg/toch/tochbr.htm ↩

10. Wilson, Lee. "Proposal to Encode the Tocharian Script (in the Unicode Standard / ISO 10646)" (PDF). Retrieved 2020-06-09. https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2015/15236-tocharian.pdf ↩

11. Joshi, R. Malatesha; McBride, Catherine (11 June 2019). Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography. Springer. p. 27. ISBN 978-3-030-05977-4. 978-3-030-05977-4 ↩

12. Diringer, David (1948). Alphabet A Key To The History Of Mankind. pp. 247–248. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.57042/page/n349/mode/2up ↩

13. "ScriptSource - Entry - Unicode Status (Tocharian)". https://scriptsource.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=entry_detail&uid=bedhbwsx6g ↩