Tocharian

Tocharian is an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family that was spoken in the Tarim Basin, in present-day Xinjiang, China, during the first millennium CE. The best-attested Tocharian languages are Tocharian A and Tocharian B. Tocharian A is often called Agnean or East Tocharian, while Tocharian B is known as Kuchean or West Tocharian. They form a distinct subgroup within Indo-European and are dated to roughly the 6th to 9th centuries CE based on surviving manuscripts.

The Tocharian languages are known primarily from manuscripts discovered at Buddhist sites along the Silk Road, including Kucha, Turfan, and Karasahr. The corpus includes religious texts such as Buddhist sutras and commentaries, translations from Sanskrit and Prakrit, as well as secular documents and literary texts. The manuscripts are written in Brahmi-derived scripts, with separate but related scripts used for Tocharian A and Tocharian B, dating roughly from the 5th to the 10th centuries CE.

Scholarly significance: The Tocharian languages contribute important data to the study of the early diversification of the Indo-European family and to the reconstruction of Proto-Tocharian. They also illuminate cultural and linguistic contact along ancient trade routes across the Tarim Basin. The languages gradually declined and disappeared by the medieval period, as Turkic languages and later Chinese became dominant in the region.