TheTocharian (sometimesTokharian)languages (US:/toʊˈkɛəriənˌ-ˈkɑːr-/toh-KAIR-ee-ən, -KAR-;[1]UK:/tɒˈkɑːriən/to-KAR-ee-ən),[2] also known as theAgni-Kuči,Agnean-Kuchean orKuchean-Agnean languages, are an extinct branch of theIndo-European language family spoken by inhabitants of theTarim Basin, theTocharians.[3] The languages are known from manuscripts dating from the 5th to the 8th century AD, which were found inoasis cities on the northern edge of the Tarim Basin (now part ofXinjiang in Northwest China) and theLop Desert. The discovery of these languages in the early 20th century contradicted the formerly prevalent idea of an east–west division of the Indo-European language family ascentum and satem languages, and prompted reinvigorated study of the Indo-European family. Scholars studying these manuscripts in the early 20th century identified their authors with theTokharoi, a name used in ancient sources for people ofBactria (Tokharistan). Although this identification is now believed to be mistaken, "Tocharian" remains the usual term for these languages.[4][3]
The discovered manuscripts record two closely related languages, calledTocharian A (alsoEast Tocharian orTurfanian) andTocharian B (West Tocharian orKuchean).[5][6] The subject matter of the texts suggests that Tocharian A was more archaic and used as aBuddhist liturgical language, while Tocharian B was more actively spoken in the entire area fromTurfan in the east toTumshuq in the west. A body of loanwords and names found inPrakrit documents from theLop Nur basin have been dubbed Tocharian C (Kroränian). A claimed find of ten Tocharian C texts written inKharosthi has been discredited.[7]
The existence of the Tocharian languages and alphabet was not even suspected until archaeological exploration of the Tarim Basin byAurel Stein in the early 20th century brought to light fragments of manuscripts in an unknown language, dating from the 6th to 8th centuries AD.[10]
It soon became clear that these fragments were actually written in two distinct but related languages belonging to a hitherto unknown branch of Indo-European, now known as Tocharian:
Tocharian A (Turfanian, Agnean, or East Tocharian; nativelyārśi) ofQarašähär (ancientAgni, ChineseYanqi and SanskritAgni) andTurpan (ancientTurfan andXočo), and
Tocharian B (Kuchean or West Tocharian) ofKucha and Tocharian A sites.
Prakrit documents from 3rd-centuryKrorän andNiya on the southeast edge of the Tarim Basin contain loanwords and names that appeared to scholars to come from a closely related language, referred to asTocharian C.[11] However, this was found to be entirely flawed for theKrorän part (see below, section "Tocharian C"). Recently, a dissertation authored by Niels Schoubben (Leiden University) has demonstrated that all the so-called Tocharian loanwords in Niya Prakrit were, in fact, Bactrian and pre-Bactrian loanwords, or resulted from fundamental misunderstandings of specific words and orthographies. His work definitively put an end to the "Tocharian C" hypothesis.[12]
The discovery of Tocharian upset some theories about the relations of Indo-European languages and revitalized their study. In the 19th century, it was thought that the division betweencentum and satem languages was a simple west–east division, with centum languages in the west. The theory was undermined in the early 20th century by the discovery ofHittite, a centum language in a relatively eastern location, and Tocharian, which was a centum language despite being the easternmost branch. The result was a new hypothesis, following thewave model ofJohannes Schmidt, suggesting that the satem isogloss represents a linguistic innovation in the central part of the Proto-Indo-European home range, and the centum languages along the eastern and the western peripheries did not undergo that change.[13]
Tocharian probably died out after 840 when theUyghurs, expelled from Mongolia by theKyrgyz, moved into the Tarim Basin.[11] The theory is supported by the discovery of translations of Tocharian texts into Uyghur.
Some modernChinese words may ultimately derive from a Tocharian or related source, e.g.Old Chinese*mjit (蜜;mì) "honey", from Proto-Tocharian *ḿət(ə) (where *ḿ ispalatalized; cf. Tocharian Bmit), cognate withOld Church Slavonicмедъ (transliterated:medŭ) (meaning "honey"), and Englishmead.[18]
Acolophon to aCentral Asian Buddhist manuscript from the late 8th century states that it was translated intoOld Turkic from Sanskrit, via atwγry language. In 1907, Emil Sieg andFriedrich W. K. Müller proposed thattwγry was a name for the newly-discovered language of the Turpan area.[23]Sieg and Müller, reading this name astoxrï, connected it with the ethnonymTócharoi (Ancient Greek:Τόχαροι,Ptolemy VI, 11, 6, 2nd century AD), itself taken fromIndo-Iranian (cf.Old Persiantuxāri-,Khotanesettahvāra, andSanskrittukhāra), and proposed the name "Tocharian" (GermanTocharisch). Ptolemy'sTócharoi are often associated by modern scholars with theYuezhi of Chinese historical accounts, who founded theKushan Empire.[24][25] It is now clear that these people actually spokeBactrian, anEastern Iranian language, rather than the language of the Tarim manuscripts, so the term "Tocharian" is considered a misnomer.[26][27][28] Nevertheless, it remains the standard term for the language of the Tarim Basin manuscripts.[6][29]
In 1938,Walter Bruno Henning found the term "fourtwγry" used in early 9th-century manuscripts in Sogdian, Middle Iranian, and Uighur. He argued that it referred to the region on the northeast edge of the Tarim, including Agni andKarakhoja, but not Kucha. He thus inferred that the colophon referred to the Agnean language.[30][31]
Although the termtwγry ortoxrï appears to be the Old Turkic name for the Tocharians, it is not found in Tocharian texts.[6]The apparent self-designationārśi appears in Tocharian A texts. Tocharian B texts use the adjectivekuśiññe, derived fromkuśi orkuči, a name also known from Chinese and Turkic documents.[6] The historianBernard Sergent compounded these names to coin an alternative termArśi-Kuči for the family, recently revised toAgni-Kuči,[32] but this name has not achieved widespread usage.
Tocharian B inscription from theKizil Caves, in the Tocharian version of theBrahmi script, reading: 𑀲𑁂𑀧𑀜𑀓𑁆𑀢𑁂 𑀲𑀡𑁆𑀓𑁂𑀢𑀯𑀝𑁆𑀲𑁂 𑀱𑀭𑁆𑀲 𑀧𑀧𑁃𑀬𑁆𑀓𑁅 (TraditionalAshokan Brahmi) Se pañäkte saṅketavattse ṣarsa papaiykau "This Buddha, by Sanketava's hand, was painted".[33][34][35]
Tocharian is documented in manuscript fragments, mostly from the 8th century (with a few earlier ones) that were written on palm leaves, wooden tablets, and Chinesepaper, preserved by the extremely dry climate of the Tarim Basin. Samples of the language have been discovered at sites inKucha andKarasahr, including many mural inscriptions.
Most of attested Tocharian was written in theTocharian alphabet, a derivative of theBrahmi alphabetic syllabary (abugida) also referred to as North Turkestan Brahmi or slanting Brahmi. However a smaller amount was written in theManichaean script in whichManichaean texts were recorded.[36][37] 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, medical and magical texts, and one love poem.
Tocharian A and B are significantly different, to the point of beingmutually unintelligible. A common Proto-Tocharian language must precede the attested languages by several centuries, probably dating to the late 1st millennium BC.[43]
Tocharian A is found only in the eastern part of the Tocharian-speaking area, and all extant texts are of a religious nature. Tocharian B, however, is found throughout the range and in both religious and secular texts. As a result, it has been suggested that Tocharian A was aliturgical language, no longer spoken natively, while Tocharian B was the spoken language of the entire area.[11]
The hypothesized relationship of Tocharian A and B as liturgical and spoken forms, respectively, is sometimes compared with the relationship between Latin and the modernRomance languages, orClassical Chinese andMandarin. However, in both of these latter cases, the liturgical language is the linguistic ancestor of the spoken language, whereas no such relationship holds between Tocharian A and B. In fact, from a phonological perspective Tocharian B is significantly more conservative than Tocharian A, and serves as the primary source for reconstructing Proto-Tocharian. Only Tocharian B preserves the following Proto-Tocharian features: stress distinctions, final vowels, diphthongs, ando vs.e distinction. In turn, the loss of final vowels in Tocharian A has led to the loss of certain Proto-Tocharian categories still found in Tocharian B, e.g. the vocative case and some of the noun, verb, and adjective declensional classes.
In their declensional and conjugational endings, the two languages innovated in divergent ways, with neither clearly simpler than the other. For example, both languages show significant innovations in the present active indicative endings but in radically different ways, so that only the second-person singular ending is directly cognate between the two languages, and in most cases neither variant is directly cognate with the correspondingProto-Indo-European (PIE) form. The agglutinative secondary case endings in the two languages likewise stem from different sources, showing parallel development of the secondary case system after the Proto-Tocharian period. Likewise, some of the verb classes show independent origins, e.g. the class II preterite, which uses reduplication in Tocharian A (possibly from the reduplicatedaorist) but long PIEē in Tocharian B (possibly related to the long-vowel perfect found in Latinlēgī,fēcī, etc.).[6]
Tocharian B shows an internal chronological development; three linguistic stages have been detected.[44] The oldest stage is attested only in Kucha. There are also the middle ("classical") and the late stage.[45]
A third Tocharian language was first suggested byThomas Burrow in the 1930s, while discussing 3rd-century documents fromKrorän (Loulan) andNiya. The texts were written inGandhari Prakrit, but contained loanwords of evidently Tocharian origin, such askilme ('district'),ṣoṣthaṃga ('tax collector'), andṣilpoga ('document'). This hypothetical language later became generally known as Tocharian C. It has also sometimes been called Kroränian or Krorainic.[46]
In papers published posthumously in 2018, Klaus T. Schmidt, a scholar of Tocharian, presented a decipherment of 10 texts written in theKharoṣṭhī script. Schmidt claimed that these texts were written in a third Tocharian language he calledLolanisch.[47][48] He also suggested that the language was closer to Tocharian B than to Tocharian A.[48] In 2019 a group of linguists led byGeorges-Jean Pinault andMichaël Peyrot convened inLeiden to examine Schmidt's translations against the original texts. They concluded that Schmidt's decipherment was fundamentally flawed, that there was no reason to associate the texts with Krörän, and that the language they recorded was neither Tocharian nor Indic, but Iranian.[7][49]
In 2024, Schoubben conducted a systematic review of Niya Prakrit and the loanwords claimed as evidence for Tocharian C. He argued that most of the words in question could be explained as loanwords fromBactrian or otherIranian languages, and found no compelling evidence for a Tocharian substrate.[50] For example, Burrow proposed thataṃklatsa, 'a type of camel', corresponded to Tocharian Aāknats and Tocharian Baknātsa 'stupid, foolish', believing that this would refer to an 'untrained camel', from a Tocharian form *anknats (with the negative prefix *en-). Not only does this etymology presuppose anad hoc sound change from *-nkn- to *-nkl-, but the variantagiltsa also found in Niya becomes aberrant. Schoubben suggests that this might be a Bactrian word, as camels originally come from Bactria, but could not find a convincing etymology.[51] He had earlier argued that <ḱ> was used in Niya Prakrit to transcribe Bactrian -šk- (spelled ϸκ in theBactrian alphabet). For example, Burrow had tentatively connectedmaḱa, a Niya Prakrit word for an unidentified food produced on farms, with Tocharian Amalke 'milk', but Schoubben derives it fromProto-Iranian *māšaka- 'bean'.[52]
Left: So-called "Tocharian donors" fresco,Qizil,Tarim Basin. These frescoes are associated with annotations in Tocharian andSanskrit made by their painters. They werecarbon dated to 432–538 AD.[53][54] The style of the swordsmen is now considered to belong to theHephthalites, fromTokharistan, who occupied the Tarim Basin from 480 to 560 AD, but spokeBactrian, anEastern Iranian language.[55][56] Right: One of the painters, with a label in Tocharian:Citrakara Tutukasya "The Painter Tutuka". Cave of the Painters, Kizil Caves, circa 500 AD.[57][58][59]
Phonetically, Tocharian languages are "centum" Indo-European languages, meaning that they merge thepalatovelar consonants (*ḱ, *ǵ, *ǵʰ) ofProto-Indo-European with the plainvelars (*k, *g, *gʰ) rather than palatalizing them to affricates or sibilants. Centum languages are mostly found in western and southern Europe (Greek,Italic,Celtic,Germanic). In that sense Tocharian (to some extent like theGreek and theAnatolian languages) seems to have been an isolate in the "satem" (i.e.palatovelar tosibilant) phonetic regions of Indo-European-speaking populations. The discovery of Tocharian contributed to doubts that Proto-Indo-European had originally split into western and eastern branches; today, the centum–satem division is not seen as a real familial division.[60][61]
Tocharian A and Tocharian B have the same set of vowels, but they often do not correspond to each other. For example, the sounda did not occur in Proto-Tocharian. Tocharian Ba is derived from former stressedä or unstressedā (reflected unchanged in Tocharian A), while Tocharian Aa stems from Proto-Tocharian/ɛ/ or/ɔ/ (reflected as/e/ and/o/ in Tocharian B), and Tocharian Ae ando stem largely from monophthongization of former diphthongs (still present in Tocharian B).
The following table lists the reconstructed phonemes in Tocharian along with their standard transcription. Because Tocharian is written in an alphabet used originally for Sanskrit and its descendants, the transcription reflects Sanskrit phonology, and may not represent Tocharian phonology accurately. The Tocharian alphabet also has letters representing all of the remaining Sanskrit sounds, but these appear only in Sanskrit loanwords and are not thought to have had distinct pronunciations in Tocharian. There is some uncertainty as to actual pronunciation of some of the letters, particularly those representing palatalized obstruents (see below).
/n/ is transcribed by two different letters in theTocharian alphabet depending on position. Based on the corresponding letters in Sanskrit, these are transcribedṃ (word-finally, including before certainclitics) andn (elsewhere), butṃ represents/n/, not/m/.
The sound writtenc is thought to correspond to a alveolo-palatal affricate/tɕ/ in Sanskrit. The Tocharian pronunciation/tɕ/ is suggested by the common occurrence of the clusterśc, but the exact pronunciation cannot be determined with certainty.
The sound writtenṣ seems more likely to have been a palato-alveolar sibilant/ʃ/ (as in English "ship"), because it derives from a palatalized/s/.[62]
The soundṅ/ŋ/ occurs only beforek, or in some clusters where ak has been deleted between consonants. It is clearly phonemic because sequencesnk andñk also exist (fromsyncope of a formerä between them).
Tocharian has completely re-worked thenominal declension system of Proto-Indo-European.[63] The only cases inherited from the proto-language are nominative, genitive,accusative, and (in Tocharian B only) vocative; in Tocharian the old accusative is known as theoblique case. In addition to these primary cases, however, each Tocharian language has six cases formed by the addition of an invariant suffix to the oblique case — although the set of six cases is not the same in each language, and the suffixes are largely non-cognate. For example, the Tocharian wordyakwe (Toch B),yuk (Toch A) "horse" < PIE*eḱwos is declined as follows:[6]
The Tocharian A instrumental case rarely occurs with humans.
When referring to humans, the oblique singular of most adjectives and of some nouns is marked in both varieties by an ending-(a)ṃ, which also appears in the secondary cases. An example iseṅkwe (Toch B),oṅk (Toch A) "man", which belongs to the same declension as above, but has oblique singulareṅkweṃ (Toch B),oṅkaṃ (Toch A), and corresponding oblique stemseṅkweṃ- (Toch B),oṅkn- (Toch A) for the secondary cases. This is thought to stem from the generalization ofn-stem adjectives as an indication of determinative semantics, seen most prominently in the weak adjective declension in theGermanic languages (where it cooccurs with definite articles and determiners), but also in Latin and Greekn-stem nouns (especially proper names) formed from adjectives, e.g. LatinCatō (genitiveCatōnis) literally "the sly one" <catus "sly",[64][65] GreekPlátōn literally "the broad-shouldered one" <platús "broad".[6]
In contrast, theverbal conjugation system is quite conservative.[66] The majority of Proto-Indo-European verbal classes and categories are represented in some manner in Tocharian, although not necessarily with the same function.[67] Some examples: athematic and thematic present tenses, including null-,-y-,-sḱ-,-s-,-n- and-nH- suffixes as well asn-infixes and various laryngeal-ending stems;o-grade and possibly lengthened-grade perfects (although lacking reduplication or augment); sigmatic, reduplicated, thematic, and possibly lengthened-grade aorists; optatives; imperatives; and possibly PIE subjunctives.
In addition, most PIE sets of endings are found in some form in Tocharian (although with significant innovations), including thematic and athematic endings, primary (non-past) and secondary (past) endings, active and mediopassive endings, and perfect endings. Dual endings are still found, although they are rarely attested and generally restricted to the third person. The mediopassive still reflects the distinction between primary-r and secondary-i, effaced in most Indo-European languages. Both root and suffix ablaut is still well-represented, although again with significant innovations.
A given verb belongs to one of a large number of classes, according to its conjugation. As inSanskrit,Ancient Greek, and (to a lesser extent)Latin, there are independent sets of classes in the indicative present,subjunctive,perfect, imperative, and to a limited extentoptative andimperfect, and there is no general correspondence among the different sets of classes, meaning that each verb must be specified using a number ofprincipal parts.
The most complex system is the present indicative, consisting of 12 classes, 8 thematic and 4 athematic, with distinct sets of thematic and athematic endings. The following classes occur in Tocharian B (some are missing in Tocharian A):
I: Athematic without suffix < PIE root athematic.
II: Thematic without suffix < PIE root thematic.
III: Thematic with PToch suffix*-ë-.Mediopassive only. Apparently reflecting consistent PIEo theme rather than the normal alternatingo/e theme.
IV: Thematic with PToch suffix*-ɔ-. Mediopassive only. Same PIE origin as previous class, but diverging within Proto-Tocharian.
V: Athematic with PToch suffix*-ā-, likely from either PIE verbs ending in a syllabic laryngeal or PIE derived verbs in*-eh₂- (but extended to other verbs).
VI: Athematic with PToch suffix*-nā-, from PIE verbs in*-nH-.
VII: Athematic with infixed nasal, from PIE infixed nasal verbs.
VIII: Thematic with suffix-s-, possibly from PIE-sḱ-?
IX: Thematic with suffix-sk- < PIE-sḱ-.
X: Thematic with PToch suffix*-näsk/nāsk- (evidently a combination of classes VI and IX).
XI: Thematic in PToch suffix*-säsk- (evidently a combination of classes VIII and IX).
XII: Thematic with PToch suffix*-(ä)ññ- < either PIE*-n-y- (denominative to n-stem nouns) or PIE*-nH-y- (deverbative from PIE*-nH- verbs).
Palatalization of the final rootconsonant occurs in the 2nd singular, 3rd singular, 3rd dual and 2nd plural in thematic classes II and VIII-XII as a result of the original PIE thematic vowele.
Thesubjunctive likewise has 12 classes, denotedi throughxii. Most are conjugated identically to the corresponding indicative classes; indicative and subjunctive are distinguished by the fact that a verb in a given indicative class will usually belong to a different subjunctive class.
In addition, four subjunctive classes differ from the corresponding indicative classes, two "special subjunctive" classes with differing suffixes and two "varying subjunctive" classes with root ablaut reflecting the PIE perfect.
Special subjunctives:
iv: Thematic with suffixi < PIE-y-, with consistent palatalization of final root consonant. Tocharian B only, rare.
vii: Thematic (not athematic, as in indicative class VII) with suffixñ < PIE-n- (palatalized by thematice, with palatalized variant generalized).
Varying subjunctives:
i: Athematic without suffix, with root ablaut reflecting PIEo-grade in active singular, zero-grade elsewhere. Derived from PIE perfect.
v: Identical to class i but with PToch suffix*-ā-, originally reflecting laryngeal-final roots but generalized.
I: The most common class, with a suffixā < PIEḤ (i.e. roots ending in a laryngeal, although widely extended to other roots). This class shows root ablaut, with originale-grade (and palatalization of the initial root consonant) in the active singular, contrasting with zero-grade (and no palatalization) elsewhere.
II: This class has reduplication in Tocharian A (possibly reflecting the PIE reduplicated aorist). However, Tocharian B has a vowel reflecting long PIEē, along with palatalization of the initial root consonant. There is noablaut in this class.
III: This class has a suffixs in the 3rd singular active and throughout the mediopassive, evidently reflecting the PIE sigmaticaorist. Root ablaut occurs between active and mediopassive. A few verbs have palatalization in the active along withs in the 3rd singular, but no palatalization and nos in the mediopassive, along with no root ablaut (the vowel reflects PTochë). This suggests that, for these verbs in particular, the active originates in the PIE sigmatic aorist (withs suffix andē vocalism) while the mediopassive stems from the PIE perfect (witho vocalism).
IV: This class has suffixṣṣā, with no ablaut. Most verbs in this class are causatives.
V: This class has suffixñ(ñ)ā, with no ablaut. Only a few verbs belong to this class.
VI: This class, which has only two verbs, is derived from the PIE thematic aorist. As in Greek, this class has different endings from all the others, which partly reflect the PIE secondary endings (as expected for the thematic aorist).
All except preterite class VI have a common set of endings that stem from the PIE perfect endings, although with significant innovations.
Theimperative likewise shows 6 classes, with a unique set of endings, found only in the second person, and a prefix beginning withp-. This prefix usually reflects Proto-Tocharian*pä- but unexpected connecting vowels occasionally occur, and the prefix combines with vowel-initial and glide-initial roots in unexpected ways. The prefix is often compared with the Slavic perfective prefixpo-, although the phonology is difficult to explain.
Classes i through v tend to co-occur with preterite classes I through V, although there are many exceptions. Class vi is not so much a coherent class as an "irregular" class with all verbs not fitting in other categories. The imperative classes tend to share the same suffix as the corresponding preterite (if any), but to have root vocalism that matches the vocalism of a verb's subjunctive. This includes the root ablaut of subjunctive classes i and v, which tend to co-occur with imperative class i.
Theoptative andimperfect have related formations. The optative is generally built by addingi onto the subjunctive stem. Tocharian B likewise forms the imperfect by addingi onto the present indicative stem, while Tocharian A has 4 separate imperfect formations: usuallyā is added to the subjunctive stem, but occasionally to the indicative stem, and sometimes eitherā ors is added directly onto the root. The endings differ between the two languages: Tocharian A uses present endings for the optative and preterite endings for the imperfect, while Tocharian B uses the same endings for both, which are a combination of preterite and unique endings (the latter used in the singular active).
As suggested by the above discussion, there are a large number of sets of endings. The present-tense endings come in both thematic and athematic variants, although they are related, with the thematic endings generally reflecting a theme vowel (PIEe oro) plus the athematic endings. There are different sets for the preterite classes I through V; preterite class VI; the imperative; and in Tocharian B, in the singular active of the optative and imperfect. Furthermore, each set of endings comes with both active and mediopassive forms. The mediopassive forms are quite conservative, directly reflecting the PIE variation between-r in the present and-i in the past. (Most other languages with the mediopassive have generalized one of the two.)
The present-tense endings are almost completely divergent between Tocharian A and B. The following shows the thematic endings, with their origin:
Thematic present active indicative endings
Original PIE
Tocharian B
Tocharian A
Notes
PIE source
Actual form
PIE source
Actual form
1st sing
*-o-h₂
*-o-h₂ + PToch-u
-āu
*-o-mi
-am
*-mi < PIE athematic present
2nd sing
*-e-si
*-e-th₂e?
-'t
*-e-th₂e
-'t
*-th₂e < PIE perfect; previous consonant palatalized; Tocharian B form should be-'ta
In traditional Indo-European studies, no hypothesis of a closer genealogical relationship of the Tocharian languages has been widely accepted by linguists. However,lexicostatistical andglottochronological approaches suggest theAnatolian languages, includingHittite, might be the closest relatives of Tocharian.[68][69][70]As an example, the same Proto-Indo-European root*h₂wrg(h)- (but not a common suffixed formation) can be reconstructed to underlie the words for 'wheel': Tocharian Awärkänt, Tokharian Byerkwanto, and Hittiteḫūrkis.
Michaël Peyrot argues that several of the most striking typological peculiarities of Tocharian are rooted in a prolonged contact of Proto-Tocharian with an early stage ofProto-Samoyedic in South Siberia. This might explain the merger ofall three stop series (e.g. *t, *d, *dʰ > *t), which must have led to a huge number ofhomonyms, restructuring of the vowel system, development ofagglutinative case marking, the loss of thedative case, and others.[71]
In historic times, the Tocharian language stood in contact with various surrounding languages, includingIranian, Turkic, andSinitic languages. Tocharian borrowings, and other Indo-European loanwords transmitted to Uralic, Turkic and Sinitic speakers, have been confirmed.[72] Tocharian had a high social position within the region, and influenced theTurkic languages, which would later replace Tocharian in theTarim Basin.[72]
Most of the texts known from the Tocharians are religious, but one noted text is a fragment of a love poem in Tocharian B (manuscript B-496, found inKizil):[73]
I. ... for a thousand years however, Thou wilt tell the story Thy (...) I announce, Heretofore there was no human being dearer to me than thee; likewise hereafter there will be no one dearer to me than thee. Love for thee, affection for thee—breath of all that is life—and they shall not come to an end so long as there lasts life. III. Thus did I always think: "I will live well, the whole of my life, with one lover: no force, no deceit." The god Karma alone knew this thought of mine; so he provoked quarrel; he ripped out my heart from thee; He led thee afar; tore me apart; made me partake in all sorrows and took away the consolation thou wast.
^"The images of donors in Cave 17 are seen in two fragments with numbers MIK 8875 and MIK 8876. One of them with halo may be identified as king of Kucha." inGhose, Rajeshwari (2008).Kizil on the Silk Road: Crossroads of Commerce & Meeting of Minds. Marg Publications. p. 127, note 22.ISBN978-81-85026-85-5. "The panel of Tocharian donors and Buddhist monks, which was at the MIK (MIK 8875) disappeared during World War II and was discovered by Yaldiz in 2002 in the Hermitage Museum" page 65, note 30
^Adams, Douglas Q. (2001). "Tocharian". In Garry, Jane; Rubino, Carl R. Galvez;Bodomo, Adams B.; Faber, Alice; French, Robert (eds.).Facts about the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past and Present. H.W. Wilson. p. 748.ISBN978-0-8242-0970-4.Also arguing against equating the Tocharians with the Tocharoi is the fact that the actual language of the Tocharoi, when attested to in the second and third centuries of our era, is indubitably Iranian.
^Hansen (2012), p. 72 "In fact, we know that the Yuezhi used Bactrian, an Iranian language written in Greek characters, as an official language. For this reason, Tocharian is a misnomer; no extant evidence suggests that the residents of the Tocharistan region of Afghanistan spoke the Tocharian language recorded in the documents found in the Kucha region."
^Henning (1949), p. 161: "At the same time we can now finally dispose of the name 'Tokharian'. This misnomer has been supported by three reasons, all of them now discredited."
^Ji, Xianlin; Winter, Werner; Pinault, Georges-Jean (1998).Fragments of the Tocharian A Maitreyasamiti-Nataka of the Zinjiang Museum, China. Mouton De Gruyter.ISBN978-3-11-014904-3.
^Zimmer, Klaus T; Zimmer, Stefan; Dr. Ute Hempen (2019).K. T. Schmidt: Nachgelassene Schriften (in German). Hempen Verlag.ISBN9783944312538.OCLC1086566510.
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