The Obituary
Tocharian was a branch of the Indo-European family spoken in the oasis towns of the Tarim Basin along the Silk Road, in two distinct dialects known as Tocharian A and B. Its survival in Buddhist manuscripts, mostly from the 6th to 8th centuries CE, astonished linguists when they were discovered around 1900, since the language sat at the far eastern fringe of a family centred thousands of miles west. As Turkic Uyghur peoples moved into the region, Tocharian declined and disappeared by roughly the 9th century.
Worth remembering
- It was an Indo-European language spoken thousands of miles east of all its relatives, in what is now Xinjiang, China.
- Its existence was unknown until manuscripts were unearthed in the Tarim Basin around 1890–1910.
Sources
- Tocharian was an extinct branch of Indo-European spoken in the Tarim Basin, known from manuscripts in two dialects, A and B. Wikipedia
- Tocharian manuscripts date mostly from the 6th to 8th centuries CE and were displaced by Turkic Uyghur. Encyclopaedia Britannica
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.