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| Saka | |
|---|---|
| Khotanese, Tumshuqese | |
 Khotanese animal zodiac BLI6 OR11252 1R2 1 | |
| Native to | Kingdom of Khotan,Tumshuq, Murtuq,Shule Kingdom,[1] andIndo-Scythian Kingdom |
| Region | Tarim Basin (Xinjiang,China) |
| Ethnicity | Saka |
| Era | 100 BC – 1,000 AD developed intoWakhi[2] |
| Dialects |
|
| Brahmi,Kharosthi | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | kho |
| ISO 639-3 | Either:kho – Khotanesextq – Tumshuqese |
kho (Khotanese) | |
xtq (Tumshuqese) | |
| Glottolog | saka1298 |
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Saka, orSakan, was a variety ofEastern Iranian languages, attested from the ancientBuddhist kingdoms ofKhotan,Kashgar andTumshuq in theTarim Basin, in what is now southernXinjiang, China. It is aMiddle Iranian language.[3] The two kingdoms differed indialect, their speech known asKhotanese andTumshuqese.
The Saka rulers of the western regions of theIndian subcontinent, such as theIndo-Scythians andWestern Satraps, are traditionally assumed to have spoken practically the same language.[4] This has however been questioned by more recent research.[5]
Documents on wood and paper were written in modifiedBrahmi script with the addition of extra characters over time and unusual conjuncts such asys forz.[6] The documents date from the fourth to the eleventh century. Tumshuqese was more archaic than Khotanese,[7] 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 modernWakhi andPashto.[8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Saka was known as "Hvatanai" (from which the nameKhotan) in contemporary documents.[15] ManyPrakrit terms were borrowed from Khotanese into theTocharian languages.
Khotanese and Tumshuqese are closely relatedEastern Iranian languages.[16]
The unusual phonological development of Proto-Iranian*ćw to Khotaneseśś sets the latter apart from most other Iranian languages (which usually havesp or a product thereof). Similarities withSogdian exist but could be due to parallel developments or areal features.[17]
The two known dialects of Saka are associated with a movement of theScythians. No invasion of the region is recorded in Chinese records and one theory is that two tribes of theSaka, speaking the two dialects, settled in the region in about 200 BC before the Chinese accounts commence.[18]
Michaël Peyrot (2018) rejects a direct connection with the "Saka" (塞) of the ChineseHanshu, who are recorded as having immigrated in the 2nd century BC to areas further west in Xinjiang, and instead connects Khotanese and Tumshuqese to the long-establishedAqtala culture (also Aketala, inpinyin) which developed since ca. 1000 BC in the region.[19]
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.[20][21]
The Saka language became extinct after invading Turkic Muslims conquered theKingdom of Khotan in theIslamicisation and Turkicisation of Xinjiang.
In the 11th century, it was remarked byMahmud al-Kashgari that the people of Khotan still had their own language and script and did not know Turkic well.[22][23] According to Kashgari some non-Turkic languages like the Kanchaki andSogdian were still used in some areas.[24] It is believed that the Saka language group was what Kanchaki belonged to.[25] It is believed that the Tarim Basin became linguistically Turkified by the end of the 11th century.[26]
| Labial | Dental/Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal/ | Velar | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | Voiceless | Unaspirated | p/p/ | tt,t/t/ | ṭ/ʈ/ | k/k/ | (t,g[ʔ])[a] | |
| Aspirated | ph/pʰ/ | th/tʰ/ | ṭh/ʈʰ/ | kh/kʰ/ | ||||
| Voiced | b/b/ | d/d/ | ḍ/ɖ/ | gg/ɡ/ | ||||
| Affricate | Voiceless | Unaspirated | tc/ts/ | kṣ/ʈʂ/ | c,ky/tʃ/ | |||
| Aspirated | ts/tsʰ/ | ch/tʃʰ/ | ||||||
| Voiced | js/dz/ | j,gy/dʒ/ | ||||||
| Fricative | Non-Sibilant | t/ð/ (later > ʔ) | g/ɣ/ (later > ʔ) | |||||
| Sibilant | Voiceless | s/s/ | ṣṣ,ṣ/ʂ/ | śś,ś/ʃ/ | h/h/ | |||
| Voiced | ys/z/ | ṣ/ʐ/ | ś/ʒ/ | |||||
| Nasal | m/m/ | n,ṃ,ṅ/n/ | ṇ/ɳ/ | ñ/ɲ/ | ||||
| Approximant | Central | v/w/ hv/wʰ/,/hʷ/ | rr,r/ɹ/ | r/ɻ/ | y/j/ | |||
| Lateral | l/l/ | |||||||
| Khotanese Transliteration[30] | IPA Phonemic | IPA Phonetic |
|---|---|---|
| a | /a/ | [a] |
| ā | /a:/ | [a:] |
| i | /i/ | [i] |
| ī | /i:/ | [i:] |
| u | /u/ | [u] |
| ū | /u:/ | [u:] |
| ä | /ə/ | [ə] |
| e | /e:/[b] | [æ~æ:][c] |
| o | /o:/[b] | [o~o:][c] |
| ai | /ai̯/ | |
| au | /au̯/ | |
| ei | /ae̯/ |
Khotanese was characterized by pervasivelenition, developments of retroflexes and voiceless aspirated consonants.[31]
| Earlier | Later |
|---|---|
| *ky | c,ky |
| *gy | j,gy |
| *khy | ch |
| *tcy | c |
| *jsy | j |
| *tsy | ch |
| *ny | ñ,ny |
| *sy | śś |
| *ysy | ś |
| *st,*ṣṭ | śt,śc |
Other than aninscription fromIssyk kurgan that has been tentatively identified as Khotanese (although written inKharosthi), all of the surviving documents originate from Khotan or Tumshuq. Khotanese is attested from over 2,300 texts[32] preserved among theDunhuang manuscripts, as opposed to just 15 texts[33] in Tumshuqese. These were deciphered byHarold Walter Bailey.[34] The earliest texts, from the fourth century, are mostly religious documents. There were severalviharas in theKingdom of Khotan and Buddhist translations are common at all periods of the documents. There are many reports to the royal court (calledhaṣḍa aurāsa) which are of historical importance, as well as private documents. An example of a document isOr.6400/2.3.
In sum, the evidence that the Saka language [of North India] is Khotanese or an earlier form of it is weak. Many of the features are found in other languages as well, and it is known from other sources that non-Khotanese Iranians found their way to northern India. In any case, the large number of Indic elements in Khotanese is no proof "daß das 'Nordarisch' sprechende Volk längere Zeit auf indischem Boden saß" (Lüders 1913), since there is ample evidence that instead speakers of Middle Indian migrated into the Tarim Basin.
[T]hese western Saka he distinguishes from eastern Saka who moved south through the Kashgar-Tashkurgan-Gilgit-Swat route to the plains of the sub-continent of India. This would account for the existence of the ancient Khotanese-Saka speakers, documents of whom have been found in western Sinkiang, and the modern Wakhi language of Wakhan in Afghanistan, another modern branch of descendants of Saka speakers parallel to the Ossetes in the west.
It is noteworthy that the Wakhi language of Wakhan has features, phonetics, and vocabulary the nearest of Iranian dialects to Khotan Saka.
...descendants of these languages survive now only in the Ossete language of the Caucasus and the Wakhi language of the Pamirs, the latter related to the Saka once spoken in Khotan.
It is, however, possible that the original home of Paṣ̌tō may have been in Badaḵšān, somewhere between Munǰī and Sangl. and Shugh., with some contact with a Saka dialect akin to Khotanese.
... and their language is most closely related to on the one hand with Saka on the other with Munji-Yidgha
Pashto in its origin, is probably a Saka dialect.
