Tocharian languages

Tocharian
Period	5th to 12th century
Formerly spoken in	Tarim Basin (today's China )
Linguistic classification	Indo-European languages Tocharian languages Tocharian A Tocharian B
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xto (Tocharian A, East Tocharian) txb (Tocharian B, West Tocharian)

The Tocharian languages are an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family , most of which has been handed down in written documents from the second half of the 1st millennium AD in the Tarim Basin in what is now the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang .

Since 1890, more than 7600 fragments of manuscripts, mainly from the 5th to 8th centuries, have been discovered, most of which are translations and adaptations of Buddhist Sanskrit works and, like the original texts , are written in the North Indian Brāhmī script . C14 dates , however, show that Tocharian texts were still copied in the 12th century.

Position in the Indo-European language family

Centum languages (green, blue, violet, yellow, brown) and Satem languages (red, orange)

The Tocharian languages ​​form a separate branch within the Indo-European language family and are not closely related to the neighboring Indo-European languages.

In the past, the Indo-European languages ​​were divided into Centum and Satem languages ​​with regard to the splitting of the Urindo-European palate sounds . The numeral 'hundred' that gives the distinction is called 'hundred' in Tocharic A känt and Tocharic B kante (cf. Latin centum , Sanskrit śatam ). Due to the geographical isolation of Tocharian from the other Centum languages ​​(see illustration), however, this division has lost its linguistic significance.

In traditional Indo-European studies , no hypothesis about close relatives of Tocharian has been able to prevail.

Attempts to determine the relationship between the Indo-European languages ​​using lexicostatistic and glottochronological methods show an early split between Tocharian and Anatolian . The linguistics is based on kinship statements particular common line changes from the other languages and especially the previous language (here Urindogermanisch). Such an innovation could be the reconstruction of a parallel formation for 'wheel' only in these two languages ​​to idg. * H₂u̯erg (ʰ) - 'turn around, turn around'> toch. A would be , toch. B yerkwanto , heth. represent hurki .

Word examples:

German	Tocharian A	Tocharian B	Greek	Hittite
Fire	pure	pūwar	pỹr	paḫḫur
father	pācar	pācer	patēr	-
mother	mācar	mācer	mátēr	-
Brothers	pracar	procer	phrātēr	Lydian brafrsis
daughter	ckācar	tkācer	thygatēr	duttariyatiyas (Gen.Sg.)
dog	ku	ku	kýōn	kuwas
earth	tkaṃ	keṃ	chthōn	tekan

Designations and ethnicity

“Tocharian donors”, 6th century fresco from the Thousand Buddha Caves at Kizil near Kuqa .

The term “Tocharisch” was suggested by Emil Sieg and Wilhelm Siegling following FWK Müller. It refers to a people who are mentioned in Greco-Latin sources as Tócharoi (Τόχαροι) or Tochari (i.e. Tocharer ). It settled from the 2nd century BC. BC on the upper reaches of the river Oxus ( Amudarja ). These people are commonly identified with the Yuezhi of the Chinese sources, who had previously been expelled from their previous settlement area in Gansu immediately east of Xinjiang . Later written sources of their presumed descendants, the Kushan , are in Iranian Bactrian ; nothing is known about their original language.

However, this ethnic allocation is speculative. It is based upon disclosure in a in Old Turkish written (Uighur) Buddhist text ( Maitrisimit ), after this from the Indo-Iranian (cf.. Sanskrit tukhāra , hotansakisch ttahvāra , Old Persian tuxāri- ) in the language twγry and from this to the (old-) Turkish language ( turk tïlï ) is said to have been translated; since the same text is otherwise only available in Tocharic A, the assumption was made that twγry denotes that Tocharic A. The conclusion that twγry was the language of the Τόχαροι or Tochari is based solely on the phonetic similarity of both names. The name ārśi (arsi) was identified as the proper name of the Tocharian A speakers .

This identification was opposed by WB Henning, who stated that twγry in Uighur texts was used to designate the land of Bišbaliq-Qarašahr and should be separated from Tocharian . In addition, he read the hometown of the first translator not as Nagaradeśa (in the area of Kabul / Afghanistan), but as Agnideśa (Qarašahr, the area in which Tocharian A is distributed).

In a bilingual source in Tochar B and Sanskrit (SI P / 65b1) the Sanskrit word tokharika apparently corresponds to the Tochar B word k _u caññe . The latter was associated with both the Kushan and the Kuqa oasis , the home of Tocharisch B. However, the interpretation of both words is problematic, because on the one hand tokharika does not seem to be derived from the common name Tukhāra , on the other hand the occupied adjective is to Kuqa in Tocharian B actually k _u śiññe .

In view of the confusing names, it was suggested, especially in the English-language literature , to replace the terms Tocharian A and B with Turfanian ( Turfanian ), which was derived from the Turfan oasis , and Kuchean ( Kuchean ), whose term was formed after Kuqa. However, since the assignment of the two variants to these two different regions is also speculative, this proposal has not yet prevailed and the confusion of terms has even increased.

To differentiate, the Yuezhi and the Tócharoi (Τόχαροι) or Tochari were therefore also referred to as "real Tochars" and the speakers of the Tocharic languages ​​as "false Tochars".

Varieties

Regions of Tocharian text finds in the Tarim Basin around the Taklamakan Desert in the 5th – 12th centuries Century AD: purple: Tocharian B, blue: Tocharian A, yellow: Tocharian C.

Tocharian manuscript ( THT 133 ) from the holdings of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin

In 1908 the German linguists Emil Sieg and Wilhelm Siegling succeeded for the first time in reading the manuscript texts and identifying their language as Indo-European. They suggested the name "Tocharian" and differentiated the two language varieties Tocharian A / East Tocharian and Tocharian B / West Tocharian . Only in Tocharian B are there not only religious texts but also practical texts; these are records from monasteries, commercial documents and medical texts. This led to the theory that Tocharian A was a "dead", purely liturgical language at the time the sources were created , and Tocharian B the living everyday language.

According to another theory, the two varieties form spatially separated dialects , with East Tochar (A) being spoken in the Turfan oasis , West Tochar (B), on the other hand, mainly in the region around Kuqa . (For the connection between Tocharian and Kushan see below). To this day, it is controversial whether East and West Tocharese can be described as two dialects of the same language or as two separate languages.

The existence of a third variety of Tocharian, called Tocharian C, is believed to be the source of loan words in Prakrit texts from the region around Loulan (Krorän); but it is not certain whether this was really different from the cultivated varieties.

Texts

Most of the well-known Tocharian texts are now in collections in Berlin, London, Paris and St. Petersburg, significantly less in Japan and China. They are known by a bewildering variety of numbering systems ( sigla ), ranging from find numbers to inventory numbers and numbering in various publications. The same text can therefore be known under different numbers (e.g. "T III Š 72.1" = "A 1" = "THT 634").

Siglen of Tocharian texts (selection):

Sigle	meaning	Publication / institution	place
THT	Tocharian manuscripts from the Berlin Turfan Collection	Berlin State Library	Berlin
A.	Tocharian language remnants A	Sieg & Siegling 1921
B.	Tocharian language remnants B	Sieg & Siegling 1949, 1953
IOL daughter	India Office Library, Tocharian	British Library	London
Or.	Oriental Collections
PK	Fonds Pelliot Koutchéen AS: Ancienne série NS: Nouvelle série	Bibliothèque nationale de France	Paris
SI	Serindia B: Berezovsky Collection P: Petrovsky collection	Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences	St. Petersburg
Ot.	Otani Collection		Tokyo, Kyoto and a.
YQ	Yanqi Qianfodong	Ji et al. 1998	Urumqi

The total number of known Tocharian texts can only be estimated. Malzahn mentions at least 7600 fragments, of which only about 2000 contain a significant amount of text. About 1150 of the fragments have text in Tocharian A.

The content of the texts largely comprises Buddhist literature ( monastery rules , didactic poems , Buddha legends), which are often translations or adaptations of originals in Sanskrit . A single example of Manichean literature is the fragments of a Mani hymn in Tocharian B, found in the Turfan region and possibly dated to the mid-10th century. In addition to some scientific texts on grammar, astronomy, medicine (or magic), v. a. a fragmentarily preserved love poem is remarkable. The profane texts that have been preserved (monastery accounts, letters, caravan passes) and the occasional graffiti are all written in Tocharisch B.

font

Wooden tablet with Tocharian inscription (Ot. 19.1) from Kuqa , 5th – 8th centuries. Century, now in the Tokyo National Museum .

The Tocharian script is a variant of the Indian Brāhmī script , which is also called "North Turkestan Brāhmī". Some characters were newly created (e.g. pa from ba ) and are called "foreign characters" in research, as they are otherwise foreign to Indian scripts. Many of these innovations also occur in other Central Asian variants of the Brāhmī. Only na is restricted to Tocharian only. Foreign characters are indicated by underlining in the transliteration. They differ functionally from the non-foreign characters in that their inherent vowel is not a , but ä .

Character inventory of the Tocharian script (unconnected forms):

a	-	Ä	i	ī	u	ū	ṛ
e	ai	O	ouch

ka	ka	kha	ga	gha		n / A
approx		cha	Yes	jha		n / A
ṭa		ṭha	there	ḍha		n / A
ta	ta	tha	there	dha		n / A	n / A
pa	pa	pha	ba	bha		ma	ma
ya		ra	ra	la	la	va	wa
śa	śa	ṣa	ṣa	sa	sa
Ha

ṃ

H

"Foreign characters" and other innovations

usually only in foreign words

There are also punctuation marks (dots, Daṇḍa) and numerals. A special feature of the Tocharian script is that vowel signs (mostly u , less often ä , i or o ) could be used like consonant signs. This is how unsilbic elements were written (e.g. labialization in TB k _u se or the unsilbic component of the diphthong in TB tāko _i ). In romanization, these are traditionally identified by subscripts and a ligature bow. It was customary to write on paper with pen and ink. Caravan passes and other profane texts were also written on wooden tablets. Graffiti on cave walls was either painted or scratched.

Phonology

Since the script used is only partially suitable for reproducing the Tocharian sound system, it cannot always be understood in all details.

Consonants:

	labial	dental	alveolar	palatal	velar
Plosives	p py B	t			k ky B kw
Affricates		ts tsy B	c
Fricatives		s	ṣ	ś
Nasals	m my B	n		ñ	ṅ
Liquid		l ly	r
Half vowels	w			y

^B ) Tocharian only B.

Most of the so-called secondary palatals are limited to Tocharian B only. Occasional spelling variants (such as w or mp instead of p ) indicate that at least in parts of Tocharian there were also voiced fricatives, for which, however, no separate characters were available.

Vowels:

	front	central	back
high	i	Ä	u
medium	e		O
deep		a ā A
Diphthongs	ai B au B ( eu B ) oi B

^A ) Tocharian A only; ^B ) Tocharian only B.

While Tocharian A distinguishes three central vowels (written a , ā and ä ), in Tocharian B there are only two. However, these are spelled differently, depending on the word stress: Under accent seems a as ā and ä as a . Only Tocharian B has diphthongs . eu occurs in archaic texts in places where au is later written.

morphology

The verb with the stem formation and the personal endings clearly corresponds to the Indo-European structure; the noun shows traces of five inherited cases  - nominative , genitive , accusative , ablative and vocative  . A number of other cases were probably added due to neighboring language influences. In addition to singular and plural, there is also a dual and a paral in the numbers , and Western Tocharian also has a distributive , which is also called the plural.

vocabulary

The vocabulary shows influences from Iranian and Sanskrit (especially through the adoption of Buddhist terms). The Chinese language (weight names and a month name) had less influence.

literature

• Douglas Q. Adams: Tocharian Historical Phonology and Morphology . American Oriental Society, New Haven 1988.
• Douglas Q. Adams: A Dictionary of Tocharian B . Second, revised and greatly expanded edition. Two volumes. Rodopi, Amsterdam and New York 2013. (First edition 1999.)
• Gerd Carling (Ed.): Dictionary and Thesaurus of Tocharian A. With the collaboration of Georges-Jean Pinault and Werner Winter. First volume: AJ . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-447-05814-8 .
• Benjamin W. Fortson: Indo-European Language and Culture. An Introduction. Second edition. Blackwell Publishing, Malden MA et al. 2010, ISBN 978-1-4051-8896-8 ( Blackwell textbooks in linguistics 19), Chapter 17 “Tocharian”, pp. 400-413. (Previously: Blackwell Publishing, Malden MA et al. 2004, ISBN 1-4051-0315-9 ).
• WB Henning: Argi and the "Tokharians" . In: Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies . No. 9 , 1938, pp. 545-571 .
• Gert Klingenschmitt: Tocharian from an Indo-European perspective . In: Bernfried Schlerath (Ed.): Tocharisch. Files from the symposium of the Indo-European Society, Berlin, September 1990 (=  Tocharian and Indo-European studies (TIES), Supplementary series ). tape 4 . Málvísindastofnun Háskóla Íslands, Reykjavík 1994, p. 310-411 .
• Wolfgang Krause : West Tocharian grammar . tape 1 : The verb . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1952.
• Wolfgang Krause, Werner Thomas : Tocharisches Elementarbuch. Volume 1: Grammar ; Volume 2: Texts and Glossary . Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1960, 1964 ( Indo-European Library , Series 1).
• Sylvain Lévi : Tokharian Pratimoksa fragment . In: The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (JRAS) 1913, ISSN  1474-0591 , pp. 109-120 ( HTML; 26 KB ).
• Melanie Malzahn (Ed.): Instrumenta Tocharica. Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 3-8253-5299-4 ( Indo-European Library , Series 1, textbooks and handbooks). In this:
  • Melanie Malzahn: Tocharian Texts and Where to Find Them . S. 79-112 .
  • Melanie Malzahn: A Tocharian Brahmi Chart . S. 223-254 .
• Michaël Peyrot: Variation and Change in Tocharian B . Rodopoi, Amsterdam 2008.
• Georges-Jean Pinault: Introduction au tokharien . In: LALIES . No. 7 , 1989, pp. 5-224 .
• Georges-Jean Pinault: Chrestomathie tokharienne. Textes et grammaire (=  Collection linguistique . No. 95 ). Peeters, 2008, ISBN 978-90-429-2168-9 , ISSN  0768-1321 .
• William R. Schmalstieg: Tokharian and Baltic. In: Lituanus 20, 1974, ISSN  0024-5089 , 3 ( HTML; 25 KB ).
• Emil Sieg, Wilhelm Siegling: Tocharisch, the language of the Indoskythen. Preliminary remarks on a previously unknown Indo-European literary language. In: Meeting reports of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences 1908, pp. 915–932.
• Emil Sieg, Wilhelm Siegling: Remnants of Tocharian language . tape 1 : The texts. A. Transcription. B. Boards . de Gruyter, Berlin and Leipzig 1921. ( Online in the Internet Archive .)
• Emil Sieg, Wilhelm Siegling, Wilhelm Schulze: Tocharian grammar . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1931. (Only for Tocharisch A.)
• Emil Sieg: And yet “Tocharian” . In: Meeting reports of the Prussian Academy of Sciences 1937, pp. 130-139.
• Emil Sieg, Wilhelm Siegling: Remnants of Tocharian language. Language B . Book 1: The Udānālaṅkāra Fragments. Text, translation and glossary . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1949.
• Emil Sieg, Wilhelm Siegling: Remnants of Tocharian language. Language B . From the estate, ed. v. Werner Thomas. Book 2: Fragments No. 71-633 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1953.
• Tatsushi Tamai: Paleographic examination and C14 test. Digitization of the Chinese, Tibetan, Syrian and Sanskrit texts from the Berlin Turfan Collection. Berlin, June 2, 2005 [ PDF; 118 KB ( Memento of February 4, 2007 in the Internet Archive )].
• Werner Winter : Studia Tocharica. Selected Writings / Selected Contributions. Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu (Publishing House of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan), Poznań 1984.
• Werner Winter: Tocharian . In: Anna Giacalone Ramat, Paolo Ramat (Eds.): The Indo-European Languages . Routledge, London 1998, pp. 154-168.

Web links

• James Patrick Mallory : Bronze Age Languages ​​of the Tarim Basin. , from the publications of Penn Museum 52/3 (with distribution maps and hypothesis of Bronze Age origin).
• Thesaurus for Indo-European Text and Language Materials (TITUS): Tocharian Manuscripts from the Berlin Turfan Collection [en] - Tocharian texts from the Berlin collection.
• Thesaurus for Indo-European Text and Language Materials (TITUS): Tocharian verbal forms [en] - conjugation tables for Tocharian A and B.
• A Comprehensive Edition of Tocharian Manuscripts (CEToM) [en] - Online edition of Tocharian manuscripts, bibliography and dictionary for Tocharian A and B.
• Douglas Q. Adams: A dictionary of Tocharian B (Leiden Studies in Indo-European 10), Rodopi, Amsterdam / Atlanta 1999. [en] - The first online edition.
• Scriptures that have been lost for more than 1000 years decoded , Saarland University , August 22, 2002.
• On the trail of lost languages , campus. Journal of the Saarland University, June 2002. (Topic: Dr. Klaus T. Schmidt decrypts Kharoshthi script using Tocharian references)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Malzahn: Tocharian Texts and Where to Find Them , 2007, p. 79.
2. ↑ Tamai: Paleographical Examination and C14 Examination , 2005.
3. ↑ Hans J. Holm: “The Distribution of Data in Word Lists and its Impact on the Subgrouping of Languages”. In: Christine Preisach, Hans Burkhardt, Lars Schmidt-Thieme, Reinhold Decker (Eds.): Data Analysis, Machine Learning, and Applications. Proc. of the 31th Annual Conference of the German Classification Society (GfKl), University of Freiburg, March 7-9, 2007 . Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg / Berlin 2008. ( PDF, 563 KB )
4. ^ Václav Blažek: “From August Schleicher to Sergej Starostin. On the development of the tree-diagram models of the Indo-European languages ​​". In: JIES 35 / 1–2 Spring / Summer 2007, pp. 82–109
5. ^ Remco Bouckaert et al .: "Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family". In: Science 337/6097, August 24, 2012, pp. 957-960. Correction: Science 342/6165, 20 December 2013, p. 1446.
6. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Müller: Contribution to the more precise determination of the unknown languages ​​of Central Asia . In: Meeting reports of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences , 1907, pp. 958 ff.
7. ↑ transcribed text by: Friedrich Wilhelm Karl Müller: Contribution to the more precise determination of the unknown languages ​​of Central Asia . In: Meeting reports of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences , 1907, pp. 958 ff.
8. ↑ To the presentation of the dispute: Wolfgang Krause, Tocharisch , Verlag EJ Brill, Leiden 1955, p. 5 f.
9. ^ Presentation of the state of affairs in Werner Thomas, Die Erforschung des Tocharian , Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-515-04434-5 , pp. 14-17.
10. ^ Georges-Jean Pinault: Tokh. B k _u caññe , A k _u ciṃ et skr. Tokharika . In: Indo-Iranian Journal . No. 45 , 2002, p. 311-345 .
11. ↑ James Patrick Mallory : Bronze Age Languages ​​of the Tarim Basin. , from the publications of Penn Museum 52/3 (with distribution maps and hypothesis of Bronze Age origin).
12. ^ Malzahn: Tocharian Texts and Where to Find Them , 2007.
13. ↑ Ji Xianlin, Werner Winter, Georges-Jean Pinault: Fragments of the Tocharian A Maitreyasamiti-Nāṭaka of the Xinjiang Museum, China. Transliterated, translated and annotated by Ji Xianlin in collaboration with Werner Winter and Georges-Jean Pinault . de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1998.
14. ↑ THT 496
15. ^ Krause & Thomas: Tocharisches Elementarbuch , 1960, p. 38; Pinault: Introduction au tokharien , 1989, pp. 14-16.
16. ↑ Lore Sander: Palaeographical to the Sanskrit manuscripts of the Berlin Turfansammlung (=  directory of the oriental manuscripts in Germany . Supplementary volume 8). Franz Steiner, Wiesbaden 1968.
17. ^ Malzahn: The most archaic manuscripts , 2007. p. 261.
18. ^ Dieter Maue: A tentative stemma of the varieties of Brāhmī script along the northern Silk Road . In: Shirin Akiner, Nicholas Sims-Williams (Eds.): Languages ​​and Scripts of Central Asia . SOAS, University of London, London 1997, ISBN 0-7286-0272-5 , pp. 1-15 .
19. ^ Krause & Thomas: Tocharisches Elementarbuch , 1960, p. 40.
20. ↑ Malzahn: A Tocharian Brahmi Chart , 2007.
21. ↑ Krause & Thomas: Tocharisches Elementarbuch , 1960, pp. 39–42; Pinault: Chrestomathie tokharienne , 2008, pp. 413-415.
22. ↑ Pinault: tokharien Introduction au , 1989, p 48; Pinault: Chrestomathie tokharienne , 2008, pp. 417-420.
23. ↑ Pinault: tokharien Introduction au , 1989, p 38; Pinault: Chrestomathie tokharienne , 2008, pp. 415-417.