Tocharian A
| Tocharian A | |
|---|---|
| Tokharian A, Eastern Tocharian, Agnean, Karashahrian, Turfanian | |
| tkaṃ | |
Tocharian inscription "This Buddha was painted by the hand of Sanketava" | |
| Native to | Karasahr and Turfan |
| Region | Tarim Basin |
| Ethnicity | Tocharians |
| Extinct | 850 AD |
Indo-European
| |
Early form | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | xto |
xto | |
| Glottolog | tokh1242 |
| IETF | xto |
Tocharian languages A (blue), B (red) and C (green) in the Tarim Basin. Tarim oasis towns are given as listed in the Book of Han (c. 2nd century BC), with the areas of the squares proportional to population. | |
Diachronic map showing the centum (blue) and satem (red) groups of Indo-European languages. Tocharian, on the right (East), is part of the centum group which initially formed a continuum, before the "satemization" appeared in the Eurasian Steppe. | |
Tocharian A, also known as Tokharian A, Eastern Tocharian, Agnean (tkaṃ), Karashahrian or Turfanian is a dead language that was in use in the 1st millennium AD in the Karashahr and Turfan region of the Tarim Basin, present-day Xinjiang, Western China. First discovered from Buddhist texts dating back to around the 7th century AD, it coexisted with a related language, Tocharian B that together possibly with Kroränian form the Tocharian branch of the Indo-European languages. This language was notably used in what China's Han dynasty then called the Kiu-che Kingdom (known as the Kushan Empire). It is believed that Tocharian A died out with the other Tocharian languages when the Uyghurs and the Yenisei Kyrgyz moved into the Tarim Basin.