The Tokhariens were Indo-European people of Central Asia, having lived the Bassin of Tarim, current province of the Xinjiang (Eastern Turkestan), which disappeared approximately a millenium ago. Their civilization was redécouverte by the Westerners there is nearly one century, but it remains relatively ignored. Starting from the Years 1980, the discovery of Mummy S of men of the type European in the west of the China, old women of two thousand to four thousand years and probably tokhariennes, threw a very interesting lighting on their deep past. However, because of some similarities with the culture of the Celtes (certain mummies carried Tartan S), distorts it idea spread itself that Tokhariens were resulting from Celtic tribes installed in China.

The Chinese preserved on Tokhariens of invaluable testimonys in their old writings. One however finds no indication there on the languages tokhariennes. It was necessary to await archaeological forwardings of the beginning of the 20th century to learn that they were Indo-European and that they presented particular affinities with the European languages: the tokharien division much of vocabulary with the Germanic and the old Greek . From the morphological point of view, they would approach theCeltic one. They are in addition antiquated.

Forwardings in question, carried out by the English Aurel Stein, the Germans Albert Grünwedel and Albert von the Cock, the French Paul Pelliot, like by Russians and of the Japanese, also allowed the discovery of ruins and caves which delivered a great number of information on Tokhariens of the Buddhist time (a. J. - C.).

The territory of Tokhariens

Tokhariens lived in the current Chinese province of the Xinjiang, more precisely in the southernmost part of this province, the Bassin of Tarim. It is a territory bordered in north by the Celestial Mounts (Tian Shan in Chinese), in the south by the solid masses of Kunlun and Altyn Tagh, in the west by the Pamir. It is occupied by the Désert of Taklamakan and it communicates to the east with the Gobi Desert . In its oriental party, is the Lop Nor, a salted marsh whose surface today was reduced much.

The population concentrated especially in the oases of the north of the basin of Tarim. One finds there today, of is in west, the towns of Hami, Tourfan, Karachahr, Koutcha, Aksu and Kachgar. All correspond to old kingdoms. There almost never was State unified in this area, because of its great extent and of the difficulty in travelling of an oasis to another. Kingdoms were present at the south of the basin, but during the first millenium, they have periclity, victims of advanced desert.

The Silk route passed by the basin of Tarim. It is certain that Tokhariens drew from the benefit of the trade which proceeded, but they also enjoyed the generosity of their ground. About the kingdom of Koutcha, celebrates it Chinese monk Xuanzang, left for India during the summer 629 to study Buddhism in the country of origin of this religion, wrote: “ the ground is favorable to the red Millet and the wheat. It produces, moreover, of the Riz of the species called gengtao , the Raisin S, the grenade S and a great quantity of Poire S, of plum S, fishings and Amande S. One finds there mines of Or, of Cuivre, Fer, Plomb and tin ”. In the south of Karachahr, there were mines of money which one was useful oneself for manufacture of the currencies.

Shortly after year 400, another Chinese traveller, Zhimeng, told that “ in the town of Koutcha, there are high towers and houses on several floors. They are decorated with gold and money ”. The Chinese were dazzled by the magnificence of the royal palace, whose rooms were “ large and imposing and enriched by langgan , of gold and Jade ”. The langgan would be a red variety of jade, that the populations of the basin of Tarim delivered to the Chinese as of the Antiquité. From all these resplendent cities, there remain absolutely nothing any more. Much more than the decline of the road of the Silk, it is the exhaustion of the natural resources which involved the decline of the basin of Tarim.

The languages tokhariennes

On the brought back manuscripts of the basin of Tarim by European and Japanese forwardings, there was an unknown language which was initially called “language I”. The German turcologist F.W.K. Müller gave him in 1907 the name of tokharien. In 1908, the indianists Emile Sieg and Wilhelm Siegling proved its Indo-European character . A little later, the French orientalist Sylvain Lévi published the first translations of texts. The deciphering had hardly posed problem, because the tokharien was noted with a writing of Indian origin, the Brāhmī. Moreover, one had bilingual documents tokharien- Sanskrit.

The oldest documents date from, but essentially, they go back to. If they are written on Papier, invention come from China at the beginning of our era, their presentation is of Indian type.

In fact, there is not only one language, but two, which was called the tokharien has and the Tokharien B. In the area of Koutcha, only of the manuscripts in tokharien B were found, this is why this language is also called the koutchéen. The main part of the manuscripts in tokharien has comes from the area of Karachahr, more precisely of the ruins of a great monastic complex which is to about thirty kilometers in the south-west of this city, on the site of Chortchouq. In this area, formerly a kingdom called was Agni in the texts Sanskrits. The term of agnéen can thus be used to indicate tokharien A. In Chortchouq, one also found manuscripts in koutchéen. Lastly, from the texts in koutchéen and agnéen come from various sites of the area of Tourfan.

The koutchéen and the agnéen are narrowly related languages, but they are too different to be mutually understandable by their speakers. There are as many differences between them than between the Italian and the Rumanian . It is instructive to put in parallel two sentences in agnéen and koutchéen which is of the same significance:

• Agnéen : wiki-wepiñcinäs shpät konsan āyäntwan mäśśunt tämnäshtr-än

• Koutchéen : ikañcen-wacen shuk kaunne mrestīwe kektsenne tänmastär-

They are extracted from a text which seems to describe the development of the fetus and they mean: “The twenty-second week appears its marrow”.

One of the major characteristics of the tokharien is the inexistence of the sound and aspired Occlusive S: three occlusive series G , D , B ; gh , dh , bh and KH , HT , pH of the common Indo-European (mother language of all the Indo-European languages) was reduced to the only series K , T , p . Tokhariens could not thus pronounce correctly the name of Bouddha : they said Poutta . They created a Voyelle, transcribed by the letter ä , which was rather close to the I . The words tokhariens were shortened: “Cheval” says * ekwos in common Indo-European, yakwe in koutchéen and yuk in agnéen. The phenomenon is pronounced more in agnéen than in koutchéen, because the second of these languages evolved/moved more slowly than the first. Here names of figures in common Indo-European, then in agnéen and koutchéen:

Were Tokhariens called really thus?

In other words, was the name given to these people justified? This problem is not solved yet with certainty.

At second century BC, people called Τόχαροι / Tókharoi (attested at Strabon, XI, 8,2, then at Ptolémée, VI, 11,6) by the Greeks settled in Bactriane, in the west of Pamir. It gave its name to this area: Bactriane of the thousand-year-old first of our era is often called “Tokharistan” (or sometimes “Tokharestan” in the French texts). However a text in Turkish language qualifies the language has twqry . The reading in is difficult, but F.W.K. Müller brought it closer to the name of the Tokhares of Bactriane. He thus thought that these Tokhares spoke the language has, from where the name which it received.

The term of tokharien should not be applied to the koutchéen. It however is done, since it is convenient to call the speakers of the languages has and B by a single term. Thanks to the texts koutchéens, one knows that the former inhabitants of the area of Koutcha were called them-even them Koutchéens ( kuśiññe in their language, in the singular). The current name of this city is thus one of the rare vestiges of the languages tokhariennes. In this area, was the most important kingdom of the basin of Tarim, by far more populated, that one can call the Koutchi . The tokharologist Douglas Q. Adams estimated that at the 7th century, with the vassal States, it was of a surface equal to the Nepal and that it included/understood in the 450  000 inhabitants, is as much as the England at the same time. In the Chinese texts, its capital was called Yiluolu. The circumference of this city was of a little less than 10 kilometers.

Were the speakers of the language has really of Tokhares? Was this the same people which lived in the area of Karachahr and in Bactriane?

Certain arguments, which was not known when the tokharien was in the course of deciphering, came to support this thesis. One in particular discovered a Chinese text coming from Dunhuang, at the Eastern end of the basin of Tarim, where it is written that the kingdom which is between Koutcha and Tourfan, i.e. Agni, was yuezhi.

The Yuezhi were very powerful people which lived formerly in the west of the Gansu, precisely in the area of Dunhuang. They was nomads and warriors who fought with horse, with arcs. At one unknown time, they founded an empire which controlled in particular the basin of Tarim. At second century BC, they were overcome by nomads originating in the Mongolia, the Xiongnu. According to the Chinese historians, a great part of them left Gansu to settle in Bactriane.

It may be that some Yuezhi remained in the area of Karachahr, where they would have founded the kingdom of Agni. One would explain thus that the same language was spoken in Karachahr and in Bactriane. If Yuezhi of the Chinese sources are identical to the Tokharoi Greek sources, it results from it that Agnéens were many Tokhares. The Yuezhi equation = Tokharoi is allowed by many specialists, although it is difficult to show.

At least can one admit that Yuezhi were well the ancestors of Agnéens. In 1966, the sinologist Edwin G. Pulleyblank provided several excellent arguments to prove that Yuezhi spoke a language tokharienne. That gives a completely different dimension to Tokhariens: they were not only sedentaries living in the oases of the basin of Tarim. They also were of the warriors able to conquer vast territories. It is certain that the empire of Yuezhi enjoyed an immense prestige, a little like that of the Mongolian , but since the Chinese started to speak about him when it had already crumbled, one knows very few things about him.

A glance on the history

Origins

How is it made that languages connected with those of Europe were spoken in the west about current China? Does that suppose that a migration occurred, but when and from where? One could also consider what caused this migration and which road it borrowed.

Some of these questions will remain surely forever unanswered. One can however notice that according to the majority of the specialists, the hearth of the Indo-European languages was in the north of the Black Sea. There, towards, a type of men to the qualified skeleton of paléo-europoïde lived and which disappeared today from this area. These individuals were buried under Tumulus that the Russians call Kourganes .

Around NOR Lop, on a territory which was going to belong 1500 years later to the kingdom tokharien of Kroraina, one found a cemetery where individuals of the paléo-europoïde type were buried. This cemetery, known as to Qäwrighul, is gone back from first half of the III Certain tombs was surrounded by circles of piles or comprised female statuettes, two characteristics existing among old Indo-European people. It is trying to regard these individuals as of Tokhariens.

About the occupied territory by Tokhariens at the time of Qäwrighul, of the essential observations were made. It is known that the Sanskrit was brought to India by people called the Indo-Aryan ones, which lived about year -2000 in Bactriane (cf Théorie of the Aryan invasion). This area is located at the west of the Basin of Tarim and is separated by from it Pamir. It proves that Tokhariens and the Indo-Aryan ones borrowed the same vocabulary from the same nonIndo-European people, like the terms * āni- “hip” and * ishti - “clay, brick”. They respectively became oñi- and iśce- in koutchéen ( C always decides tch ). The linguists agree to say that these loans were carried out at a very high time (during that of Qäwrighul or even front) and in an independent way because there were no direct exchanges between Tokhariens and Indo-Aryens. These observations imply however that the two people were not very far one from the other. At that time, Tokhariens were thus, if not already in the basin of Tarim, at least in Central Asia.

Before penetrating in the basin of Tarim, Tokhariens perhaps lived in southernmost Siberia, along the higher course of the Ienisseï. During the OJ, it was there a culture known as of Afanasievo, rested by men of the paléo-europoïde type and which seems a genuine antenna of the culture of the Kourganes. It would be necessary to be able to show that the culture of Qäwrighul is in its turn an emanation of the culture of Afanasievo, but that cannot be made for the moment.

Antiquity

The people of the Asia often left few testimonys written on themselves, with share the sinicized Chinese or their neighbors, who had a historiographic tradition irreplaceable. The history of these people is known only because the Chinese spoke about them, but Chinese historical science starts truly only with Sima Qian, little before our era. Front, it is thus the darkness, even darkness complete.

One thus knows, thanks to the Chinese, that one century before our era, the principal kingdoms of the basin of Tarim existed already and that they had an evolved/moved administrative structure. In Koutchi, one practiced already an irrigated agriculture. The recent discovery of the site of Djoumboulak Koum, in the Western part of the Deserted of Taklamakan, made it possible to know that irrigated agriculture went back at least to 500 before our era. This site includes/understands a fortress whose construction had to mobilize important means. It thus lets suppose the existence of a centralized capacity. Koutchéens were also of skilful metallurgists. In addition to the work of iron, they were able to produce cast iron in kinds of primitive blast furnaces. This technique was controlled in Europe only with the XIVe century.

And front?

The Chinese sources of the Antiquité mention the existence of Quanrong, i.e. Rong-Dogs, quan meaning “dog”. The term “Rong” was applied to the Western barbarians. They were localized in Moving Sands, expression indicating the desert of Taklamakan. They raised many animals and they had a warlike temperament. King Mu of the Dynastie Zhou, which reigned of 1001 av. J. - C. with 967 av. J. - C. according to the traditional chronology, attacked them on their own territory. The weather would have been captive five kings, which shows that at that time, the Rong-Dogs did not form a unified nation.

There are various reasons to believe that the Rong-Dogs were the ancestors of Koutchéens. For example, the white color had an importance very large symbolic system in the Rong-Dogs while for the Chinese, Koutchéens were “White”. In the Rong-Dogs as at Koutchéens, one announces the existence of feasts during which an young girl was used to drink or to eat with the men. According to Georges Dumézil, these feasts would be in fact mythical and related to the search of the immortality, which was an essential component of the religion tokharienne.

One can thus admit that Tokhariens were in the basin of Tarim at least since, deduction compatible with what we have just said on the origins of these people. Certain mummies coming from this territory and which are dated from II thus have chances to have been tokhariennes (or Rong-Dogs, more precisely?). No process was applied to these bodies to allow their conservation. They were desiccated naturally, thanks to the climate and with certain properties of the ground. Tartans which were found came from the area of Hami, completely in edge of the basin of Tarim. Nothing makes it possible to think that they were tokhariens. It should be recognized that their resemblance to Celtic fabrics is very striking and completely disconcerting, but it is not necessary to suppose a migration of Celtes in China. These fabrics could be brought by the Iranian wandering, which furrowed during Antiquity most of the Eurasia. It is known besides that the Celts, at fifth century BC (time of Hallstatt), used silk from China: the international business went good progress.

The inhabitants of the basin of Tarim, to II, were generally not of paléo-europoïde type. A mixture thus occurred between the migrants and of the local populations. Tokhariens of the Buddhist era were born from these meetings.

The Buddhist era

After having demolishes the Yuezhi, the Xiongnu took in their turn possession of the basin of Tarim, with all its richnesses. It was then the time of the Dynastie Han, one of the great times of China. To weaken Xiongnu, they had to be drawn aside from the basin of Tarim. The Chinese thus sent troops to it. The kingdoms tokhariens were ballottés between these two “superpuissances” which were China and the nomads of Mongolia. To tell the truth, this very uncomfortable situation was prolonged during a great part their history.

The accounts of the diplomatic efforts made to obtain the tender of the kingdoms of Tarim or the wars which took place fill the Chinese chronicles. They mention sometimes the conflicts which occurred between these kingdoms and they are completely dumb on the internal history of each kingdom. In the texts tokhariens, one finds almost no information useful. One knows that the kings of Koutchi and Agni qualified “Large Kings”, according to the example of the Indian kings (the Mahârâja). On passes of caravans coming from Koutchi, one found the name of king Suvarnapushpa (Fleur d' Or), which reigned at least as of 618, and of his son Suvarnadeva (Gold God), which succeeded to him into 624. These two sovereigns have names Sanskrits, the second being sometimes koutchéanisé in Swarnatepe . Xuanzang met this sovereign and reported that it “has little prudence and capacity and lets itself dominate by powerful ministers”.

A major historical fact is the conversion of Tokhariens to the Bouddhisme. It is about the school Sarvāstivādin, attached so that one calls the Bouddhisme hīnayāna. One is unaware of when conversion took place, but it is known that about the year 300, Buddhism was already flourishing in Koutchi. Among the people which converted Tokhariens, it there has Khotanais, populates Iranian language installed with Khotan, in the south-west of the basin of Tarim. Certain Buddhist terms used by Koutchéens are of origin khotanaise.

The arrival of Buddhism caused an increase in the Indian influence at Tokhariens. It is after their conversion that they used the Brāhmī to note their languages. The use was spread, within the aristocracy, to bear names Sanskrits.

It is not interdict to think that Buddhism arrived very early and spent several centuries to be essential, because it ran up against the strong religious traditions of Tokhariens. In Agni, at the beginning of the seventh century, there existed always priests of the old religion. A Syncrétisme occurred. Just as Buddhism became Chinese in China, Japanese with the Japan or Tibetan with the Tibet, it became koutchéen in Koutchi.

Koutchéens created hybrid divinities, like the “god-sun of Omniscient”, where the Omniscient one is the Bouddha and the god-sun is a divinity koutchéenne. These people venerated the sun (associate with the white color), in particular the rising sun, so that the East for them the direction of reference was. In the texts koutchéens, it is sometimes question of the “rising of the god-sun of Omniscient”. The god of the Thunder of Koutchéens, Ylaiñäkte, was integrated into the Buddhist Pantheon.

In their turn, Koutchéens contributed to convert the Chinese with Buddhism. As of 1913, Sylvain Lévi noticed that certain expressions of Chinese Buddhism derived not from the Sanskrit, but of the koutchéen. Thus, the fact of becoming monk is said “to leave ahead” in Sanskrit, but Koutchéens and the Chinese say “to leave the house”. To indicate the Heresy, Koutchéens borrowed terms from the Sanskrit, like mithyādrishti “seen distorts”, but they also gave to their adjective pärnaññe “external” the direction of “heretic”, but in Chinese, the heresy says waidao “way external”.

Thus, the basin of Tarim is not a simple road which Buddhism borrowed to go to China: it there stopped and took a local coloring, before taking again its road.

End

The Dynasty Tang, created in 618 by Li Yuan, was confronted with the Blue Turks of Mongolia (that the Chinese called Tujue), just as Han had been confronted with the Xiongnu. As of the accession with the Li Yuan capacity, king Suvarnapushpa sent an embassy to him. Initially, its successor, Suvarnadeva, maintained the friendly relations with China, but it lined up then as regards Turks. Other sovereigns of the basin of Tarim having made in the same way, that involved an military intervention of the Chinese. Suvarnadeva having died into 646, it was his/her brother Haripushpa (Fleur Divine), who had to face the Chinese troops. Koutchéens threw all their forces in this war and they managed to kill a Chinese general who had been victorious in Karachahr, but in 648, they were overcome. In reprisals, the Chinese destroyed five big cities and massacred all their inhabitants, of the “myriads of men and women”, as their chronicles bring it back laconically.

This very hard blow carried in Koutchi did not result in the death of its civilization, but it was gradually sinicized, as the remainder of the basin of Tarim.

In 744, the empire of the Ouïgour S succeeded that of the Blue Turks in Mongolia. It crumbled in 840, following an invasion of the Kyrgyz. The blow was so severe that Ouïgours had to flee Mongolia. They took refuge in Gansu, then in the basin of Tarim, initially in Tourfan, then at Agnéens and Koutchéens.

Tokhariens and Ouïgours mixed, then the languages tokhariennes died out slowly, surely because Ouïgours were much higher of number. When they lived in Mongolia, the latter had converted with the Manichéisme. In contact with Tokhariens, they became little by little Buddhist. Many vestiges of the culture tokharienne would have surely remained if Ouïgours had not converted with the Islam, at the beginning of.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the inhabitants of Koutcha were famous to have an extraordinarily pure speech, so much so that the other inhabitants of the basin of Tarim had evil to include/understand them. Very gifted for poetry, they have facilities to speak in towards. As supposed it Sylvain Lévi, it is undoubtedly about a gift “inherited” old Koutchéens.

See too