Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (80 page)

The identity of the Tokharoi and Yüeh-chih
people
is quite certain, and has been clear for at least half a century, though this has not become widely known outside the tiny number of philologists who work on early Central Eurasian and early Chinese history and linguistics.
²⁵
It is known that the Tokharoi and the Tokharians were the same people because the Tokharoi-Tokhwar-Yüeh-chih-Tukhâr-of Bactria and the Tukhâr-Toxar-/Toγar-Yüeh-chih of the Tarim Basin are identified as one and the same people in every source that mentions them. The principle facts may be summarized as follows:
²⁶

• In several languages of East Turkistan and neighboring regions the expression ‘The Land of the Four Toghar ~ Tokhar
(Toγar
~
Toxar,
written
twyr)’
²⁷
occurs in Manichaean texts as the name of the region “from Kucha and Karashahr to Kocho and Beshbalik.”
²⁸
This is the exact region where the language now called Tokharian was still spoken in early medieval times. The Uighurs, who translated many Buddhist texts from the language, call it
twyry tyly
‘the language of the Toxari ~ Toyari’. This was read as
‘Toxri tili’ by
F.W.K. Müller, who translated it as “Tocharisch,” that is, ‘Tokharian’.
²⁹
Although it should be read in Old Turkic as
Toxarï tili
or
Toyarï tili,
³⁰
Müller’s identification is impeccable philologically. Yet it has been questioned by some because of the existence of the name Tokhâristân ‘the land of the Tokhâr’ (Bactria), its connection with the TóΧαoi, and the fact that the people attested somewhat later as living in Tokhâristân wrote in an Iranian language now called Bactrian. However, this objection is vitiated by the well-known fact that all other linguistically identified early conquerors of Bactria, including the Greeks, the Turks, and the Arabs, shifted to the local Iranian language of the region, Bactrian, shortly after their invasion. In view of this fact, and of the small number of Tokharians (only one of three nations) in the confederation that conquered Bactria, it is extremely unlikely that they maintained their language; they may already have shifted to an Iranian language even before they entered the region.

• The apparent unrelatableness of the name
Tox
^w
ar ~ Toxâr
‘Tokhar(ian)’ and its variants with
yüeh
NMan
yuè
‘moon’ from Middle Chinese
hgwar
[
^η
g
^w
ar] (Tak. 372–373; Pul. 388 *ηjuat), the first part of the Chinese name Yüeh-chih
(or
)
NMan
yuèzhî,
has been one of the main obstacles to acceptance of the specialists’ solution.
³¹
The phonetic value of the unique Oracle Bone Inscription character for two homonyms that came to be distinguished in the Middle Old Chinese period as
NMan
yuè
‘moon’ and
NMan
xî ~ xì
‘night’, has been independently reconstructed as Early Old Chinese *nokwet.
³²
However, Early Old Chinese initial *n subsequently underwent an exceptionless sound-change, becoming *d, *t, or *l by the end of the middle period of Old Chinese; by Early Middle Chinese times at the latest in the Central dialects, reconstructed Old Chinese final *t had become *r, but in the Northwestern dialects (which were spoken near the ancient Yüeh-chih homeland), final *t had apparently merged with (or had become a sub-phonemic variant of) final *r and *n
³³
by that time in Old Chinese dialects; and intervocalically *k eventually became *g (and then *η) in the word
‘moon’. Accordingly, in one of the highly archaic border dialects of Old Chinese
³⁴
in Antiquity the word
‘moon’ would have been pronounced *tokwar or *togwar. The identity of this ancient form (i.e., the first part of the name
, which is now read Yüeh-chih) with the Bactrian name ToΧoαρ (Toxwar
~
Tuxwar) and the medieval name
Toxar ~ Toxâr
(see below) cannot be a coincidence. As for the second character of the transcription,
or
it is regularly reconstructed as Old Chinese *ke (Sta. 567). The same suffix or final compounding element in the name Yüeh-chih, with the same aberrant reading
chih
NMan
zhî
< OChi *ke,
³⁵
occurs in the names of Hsiung-nu royalty. The Hsiung-nu overthrew the Yüeh-chih, their former overlords,
³⁶
so it makes sense that the Hsiung-nu used the “royal” suffix or compounding element *ke for their overlords the Yüeh-chih or *Tok
^w
ar-ke, and after overthrowing the Yüeh-chih used it for their own royalty. In any case, it is clearly not part of the ethnonym, which is *Tok
^w
ar alone, as is very well known from the non-Chinese transcriptions.