Tocharian script
Kizil Caves standingBuddha. Often attributed in the past to the 7th century AD,[1] but nowcarbon dated to AD 245-340.[2]Tocharian B inscription reading: Se pañäkte saṅketavattse ṣarsa papaiykau "This Buddha was painted by the hand of Sanketava".[3][4][5][6]
Script type	Abugida
Period	8th century
Languages	Tocharian languages
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Aramaic Brahmi Tocharian script
Sister systems	Gupta,Tamil-Brahmi,Bhattiprolu,Sinhala
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TheTocharian script,^[7] also known asCentral Asian slanting Gupta script orNorth Turkestan Brāhmī,^[8] is anabugida which uses a system of diacritical marks to associate vowels with consonant symbols. Part of theBrahmic scripts, it is a version of theIndianBrahmi script. It is used to write the Central Asian Indo-EuropeanTocharian languages, mostly from the 8th century (with a few earlier ones, probably as early as AD 300)^[9] that were written on palm leaves, wooden tablets and Chinesepaper, preserved by the extremely dry climate of theTarim Basin. Samples of the language have been discovered at sites inKucha andKarasahr, including many mural inscriptions. Mistakenly identifying the speakers of this language with theTokharoi people ofTokharistan (theBactria of the Greeks), early authors called these languages "Tocharian". This naming has remained, although the namesAgnean andKuchean have been proposed as a replacement.^[10][7]

Tocharian A and B are notmutually intelligible. Properly speaking, based on the tentative interpretation oftwqry as related toTokharoi, only Tocharian A may be referred to asTocharian, while Tocharian B could be calledKuchean (its native name may have beenkuśiññe), but since their grammars are usually treated together in scholarly works, the terms A and B have proven useful. A common Proto-Tocharian language must precede the attested languages by several centuries, probably dating to the 1st millennium BC. Given the small geographical range of and the lack of secular texts in Tocharian A, it might alternatively have been aliturgical language, the relationship between the two being similar to that betweenClassical Chinese andMandarin. However, the lack of a secular corpus in Tocharian A is by no means definite, due to the fragmentary preservation of Tocharian texts in general.

The Tocharian script is derived from theBrahmi alphabetic syllabary (abugida) and is referred to asslanting Brahmi. It soon became apparent that a large proportion of the manuscripts were translations of knownBuddhist works inSanskrit and some of them were even bilingual, facilitating decipherment of the new language. Besides the Buddhist andManichaean religious texts, there were also monastery correspondence and accounts, commercial documents, caravan permits, and medical and magical texts, and one love poem. ManyTocharians embraced Manichaean duality or Buddhism.

In 1998, Chinese linguistJi Xianlin published a translation and analysis of fragments of a TocharianMaitreyasamiti-Nataka discovered in 1974 inYanqi.^[11][12][13]

The Tocharian script probably died out after 840, when theUyghurs were expelled from Mongolia by theKyrgyz, 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^{[clarification needed]} the Turkic speaking Uyghurs now in Xinjiang.^{[citation needed]}

The Tocharian script is based on Brahmi, with eachconsonant having an inherentvowel, which can be altered by adding a vowel mark or removed by a special nullifying mark, thevirama. Like Brahmi, Tocharian uses stacking for conjunct consonants and has irregular conjunct forms of, ra.^[14] Unlike other Brahmi scripts, Tocharian has a second set of characters calledFremdzeichen that double up several of the standard consonants, but with an inherent "Ä" vowel.^[15] 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.

Tocharian vowels

Independent	A	Ā	I	Ī	U	Ū
R̥	R̥̄	E	Ai	O	Au	Ä
Vowel diacritics (here applied on as an example)	Tha	Thā	Thi	Thī	Thu	Thū
Thr̥	Thr̥̄	The	Thai	Tho	Thau	Thä

Tocharian consonants

Velars	Ka	Kha	Ga	Gha	Ṅa
Standard
Fremdzeichen
Palatals	Ca	Cha	Ja	Jha	Ña
Retroflexes	Ṭa	Ṭha	Ḍa	Ḍha	Ṇa
Dentals	Ta	Tha	Da	Dha	Na
Standard
Fremdzeichen
Labials	Pa	Pha	Ba	Bha	Ma
Standard
Fremdzeichen
Sonorants	Ya	Ra	La	Va
Standard
Fremdzeichen
Sibilants	Śa	Ṣa	Sa	Ha
Standard
Fremdzeichen

Other marks

Visarga	Anusvara	Virama (on)	Jihvamuliya	Upadhmaniya

Manuscripts in Sanskrit, using MiddleBrahmi script and the Kushan period, and carbon dated to the 2nd century CE, have been discovered in theTarim 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 byAlbert Grünwedel. The calibrated age of the manuscript by Carbon-14 technique is 130 CE (80–230 CE), corresponding to the rule of the Kushan kingKanishka.

The Tocharian script evolved from theMiddle Brahmi script of theKushan Empire:^[16]

Evolution from Brahmi to Kushan Brahmi, and to Tocharian^[17]

	a	i	u	e	o	k-	kh-	g-	gh-	ṅ-	c-	ch-	j-	jh-	ñ-	ṭ-	ṭh-	ḍ-	ḍh-
Brahmi	𑀅	𑀇	𑀉	𑀏	𑀑	𑀓	𑀔	𑀕	𑀖	𑀗	𑀘	𑀙	𑀚	𑀛	𑀜	𑀝	𑀞	𑀟	𑀠
Kushan Brahmi
Tocharian

	ṇ-	t-	th-	d-	dh-	n-	p-	ph-	b-	bh-	m-	y-	r-	l-	v-	ś-	ṣ-	s-	h-
Brahmi	𑀡	𑀢	𑀣	𑀤	𑀥	𑀦	𑀧	𑀨	𑀩	𑀪	𑀫	𑀬	𑀭	𑀮	𑀯	𑀰	𑀱	𑀲	𑀳
Kushan Brahmi
Tocharian

Tocharian script was proposed for inclusion inUnicode in 2015 but has not been approved.^[18]

• TITUS: Tocharianalphabets,conjugation tables, andmanuscripts from the Berlin Turfan Collection
• A Tocharian-to-English dictionary with nearly 200 words with accompanyingarticle
• 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

• Tocharian languages
• Tocharians
• Obsolete writing systems
• Abugida writing systems
• Kucha

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