Saka language

For the Northern Turkic language spoken in Sakha Republic, Russian Far East, see Sakha language.

Not to be confused with Makhuwa language or Scythian languages.

Saka
Khotanese, Tumshuqese
Native to	Kingdom of Khotan, Tumshuq, Murtuq and Kashgar
Region	Tarim Basin (current China)
Ethnicity	Saka
Era	100 BC – 1000 AD
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian languages Iranian Eastern Iranian Saka
Dialects	Khotanese Tumshuqese
Writing system	Brahmi, Kharosthi
Language codes
ISO 639-2	kho
ISO 639-3	Either: kho – Khotanese xtq – Tumshuqese
Linguist list	kho (Khotanese)
	xtq (Tumshuqese)
Glottolog	saka1298

Khotanese animal zodiac BLI6 OR11252 1R2 1

Khotanese Verses BLE4 IOLKHOT50 4R1 1

Book of Zambasta BLX3542 OR9614 5R1 1

(Eastern) Saka or Sakan is a variety of Eastern Iranian languages, attested from the ancient Buddhist kingdoms of Khotan and Tumshuq in the Tarim Basin, in what is now southern Xinjiang, China. It is a Middle Iranian language. The two kingdoms differed in dialect, their speech known as Khotanese and Tumshuqese.

Documents on wood and paper were written in modified Brahmi script with the addition of extra characters over time and unusual conjuncts such as ys for z. The documents date from the fourth to the eleventh century. Tumshuqese was more archaic than Khotanese, but it is much less understood because it appears in fewer manuscripts compared to Khotanese. Both dialects share features with modern Pashto and Wakhi. The language was known as "Hvatanai" in contemporary documents. Many Prakrit terms were borrowed from Khotanese into the Tocharian languages.

History

Main articles: Saka and Islamicisation and Turkicisation of Xinjiang

The two known dialects of Saka are associated with a movement of the Scythians. No invasion of the region is recorded in Chinese records and one theory is that two tribes of the Saka, speaking the two dialects, settled in the region in about 200 BC before the Chinese accounts commence.

The Saka language became extinct after invading Turkic Muslims conquered the Kingdom of Khotan in the Islamicisation and Turkicisation of Xinjiang.

Classification

Khotanese and Tumshuqese are closely related Eastern Iranian languages.

Texts

Other than an inscription from Issyk kurgan that it is tentatively identified as Khotanese (although written in Kharosthi), all of the surviving documents originate from Khotan or Tumshuq. Khotanese is attested from over 2,300 texts preserved among the Dunhuang manuscripts, as opposed to just 15 texts in Tumshuqese. These were deciphered by Harold Walter Bailey. The earliest texts, from the fourth century, are mostly religious documents. There were several viharas in the Kingdom of Khotan and Buddhist translations are common at all periods of the documents. There are many reports to the royal court (called haṣḍa aurāsa) which are of historical importance, as well as private documents. An example of a document is Or.6400/2.3.

References

Sources

International Dunhuang Project

• A Turkish-Khotanese Vocabulary H. W. Bailey Bulletin of the ..
• Bailey, H. W.. 1944. “A Turkish-khotanese Vocabulary”. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 11 (2). Cambridge University Press: 290–96. http://www.jstor.org/stable/609315.

Further reading

• Bailey, H W (1979) Dictionary of Khotan Saka, Cambridge University Press
• Encyclopædia Iranica "Iranian Languages" http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/central-asia-xiii
• Emmerick, R. E., & Pulleyblank, E. G. (1993). A Chinese text in Central Asian Brahmi script: new evidence for the pronunciation of Late Middle Chinese and Khotanese. Roma: Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. (On connections between Chinese and Khotanese, such as loan words and pronunciations)