Saka language

This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (January 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Saka
Khotanese, Tumshuqese
Khotanese animal zodiac BLI6 OR11252 1R2 1
Native to	Kingdom of Khotan, Tumshuq, Murtuq, Shule Kingdom,[1] and Indo-Scythian Kingdom
Region	Tarim Basin (Xinjiang, China)
Ethnicity	Saka
Era	100 BC – 1,000 AD developed into Wakhi[2]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Northeastern Scythian Eastern Saka
Dialects	Khotanese Tumshuqese Kanchaki?
Writing system	Brahmi, Kharosthi
Language codes
ISO 639-2	kho
ISO 639-3	Either: kho – Khotanese xtq – Tumshuqese
Linguist List	kho (Khotanese)
	xtq (Tumshuqese)
Glottolog	saka1298

Saka, or Sakan, was a variety of Eastern Iranian languages, attested from the ancient Buddhist kingdoms of Khotan, Kashgar and Tumshuq in the Tarim Basin, in what is now southern Xinjiang, China. It is a Middle Iranian language.^[3] The two kingdoms differed in dialect, their speech known as Khotanese and Tumshuqese.

The Saka rulers of the western regions of the Indian subcontinent, such as the Indo-Scythians and Western Satraps, are traditionally assumed to have spoken practically the same language.^[4] This has however been questioned by more recent research.^[5]

Documents on wood and paper were written in modified Brahmi script with the addition of extra characters over time and unusual conjuncts such as ys for z.^[6] The documents date from the fourth to the eleventh century. Tumshuqese was more archaic than Khotanese,^[7] but it is much less understood because it appears in fewer manuscripts compared to Khotanese. The Khotanese dialect is believed to share features with the modern Wakhi and Pashto.^{[8][9][10][11][12][13][14]} Saka was known as "Hvatanai" (from which the name Khotan) in contemporary documents.^[15] Many Prakrit terms were borrowed from Khotanese into the Tocharian languages.

Khotanese and Tumshuqese are closely related Eastern Iranian languages.^[16]

The unusual phonological development of Proto-Iranian *ćw to Khotanese śś sets the latter apart from most other Iranian languages (which usually have sp or a product thereof). Similarities with Sogdian exist but could be due to parallel developments or areal features.^[17]

The two known dialects of Saka are associated with a movement of the Scythians. No invasion of the region is recorded in Chinese records and one theory is that two tribes of the Saka, speaking the two dialects, settled in the region in about 200 BC before the Chinese accounts commence.^[18]

Michaël Peyrot (2018) rejects a direct connection with the "Saka" (塞) of the Chinese Hanshu, who are recorded as having immigrated in the 2nd century BC to areas further west in Xinjiang, and instead connects Khotanese and Tumshuqese to the long-established Aqtala culture (also Aketala, in pinyin) which developed since ca. 1000 BC in the region.^[19]

The Khotanese dialect is attested in texts between the 7th and 10th centuries, though some fragments are dated to the 5th and 6th centuries. The far more limited material in the Tumshuqese dialect cannot be dated with precision, but most of it is thought to date to the late 7th or the 8th century.^[20][21]

The Saka language became extinct after invading Turkic Muslims conquered the Kingdom of Khotan in the Islamicisation and Turkicisation of Xinjiang.

In the 11th century, it was remarked by Mahmud al-Kashgari that the people of Khotan still had their own language and script and did not know Turkic well.^[22][23] According to Kashgari some non-Turkic languages like the Kanchaki and Sogdian were still used in some areas.^[24] It is believed that the Saka language group was what Kanchaki belonged to.^[25] It is believed that the Tarim Basin became linguistically Turkified by the end of the 11th century.^[26]

Khotanese was characterized by pervasive lenition, developments of retroflexes and voiceless aspirated consonants.^[31]

Changes shared in common Sakan

• *ć, *j́ → s, ys, but *ćw, *j́w → śś, ś
• *ft, *xt → *βd, *ɣd
• Lenition of *b, *d, and *g → *β, ð, ɣ when initially or after vowels or *r
• Nasals + voiceless consonants → nasals + voiced consonants (*mp, *nt, *nč, *nk → *mb, *nd, *nj, *ng)
• *ər (syllabic consonant) → *ur after labials *m, *p, *b, *β; then *ir or *ar elsewhere
• *rn, *rm → rr
• *sr → ṣ
• *č, *ǰ → tc, js

Changes shared in East Sakan

• Nasals + voiced consonants → geminate nasals (*mb, *nd → *mm, *nn, but *ng remained)
• Questionable umlaut of *a into i and u before syllables with *i and *u, respectively (*masita → *misita → mista ~ mästa "big")
• Lenition of *p, *t, *č, and *k → b, d, ǰ, and g after vowels or *r
• *f, *x → *β, *ɣ before consonants
• *ɣ → *i̯ between vowels a, i and a consonant (*daxsa- → *daɣsa- → *daisa- → dīs- "to burn")
• *β → w; *ð, *ɣ → ∅ after vowels
• *rð → l
• *f, *θ, *x → *h after vowels
• *w, *j → *β, *ʝ initially
• *f, *θ, *x → *β, ð, ɣ initially before *r (θrayah → ðrayi → drai "three")
• Lengthening of stressed vowels before clusters *rC and *ST (sibilants + dentals) (*sarta → *sārta → sāḍa "cold", *astaka → āstaa "bone" but not *aštā́ → haṣṭā "eight").
  • Compensatory lengthening of vowels, before clusters containing non-sibilant fricatives and *r (*puhri → pūrä "son", darɣa → dārä "long"), however, -ir- and -ur- from earlier *ər were unaffected (*mərɣa- → mura- "fowl").
• Reduction of internal unstressed short and long vowels (*hámānaka → *hamanaka → hamaṅgä)
• *uw → u
• *β, ð, ʝ, ɣ > b, d, ɟ, g initially
• *f, *θ, *x → ph, th, kh (remaining instances)
• *rth → ṭh; *rt, *rd → ḍ
• Lenition of b, d, g (from earlier voiceless consonants) → β (→ w), ð, ɣ after vowels or *r
  • ḍ also phonetically became ḷ or ṛ in this position.
• Palatalization of certain consonants:

Other than an inscription from Issyk kurgan that has been tentatively identified as Khotanese (although written in Kharosthi), all of the surviving documents originate from Khotan or Tumshuq. Khotanese is attested from over 2,300 texts^[32] preserved among the Dunhuang manuscripts, as opposed to just 15 texts^[33] in Tumshuqese. These were deciphered by Harold Walter Bailey.^[34] The earliest texts, from the fourth century, are mostly religious documents. There were several viharas in the Kingdom of Khotan and Buddhist translations are common at all periods of the documents. There are many reports to the royal court (called haṣḍa aurāsa) which are of historical importance, as well as private documents. An example of a document is Or.6400/2.3.

• Harold Walter Bailey
• Duan Qing

• "International Dunhuang Project". Archived from the original on 2011-07-20.
• Bailey, H. W. (1944). "A Turkish-Khotanese Vocabulary" (PDF). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 11 (2): 290–296. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00072475. JSTOR 609315. S2CID 163021887. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-01-15.

Look up Khotanese in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• ""Prothetic H-" in Khotanese and the Reconstruction of Proto-Iranic" (PDF). Martin Kümmel. Script and Reconstruction in Linguistic History―Univerzita Karlova v Praze, March 2020.
• Bailey, H. W. (1979). Dictionary of Khotan Saka. Cambridge University Press.
• "Iranian Languages". Encyclopædia Iranica.
• Emmerick, R. E.; Pulleyblank, E. G. (1993). A Chinese text in Central Asian Brahmi script: new evidence for the pronunciation of Late Middle Chinese and Khotanese. Roma: Istituto italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente. (On connections between Chinese and Khotanese, such as loan words and pronunciations)
• Litvinsky, Boris Abramovich; Vorobyova-Desyatovskaya, M. I. (1999). "Religions and Religious Movements". History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 421–448. ISBN 8120815408.
• Maggi, M. (2022). "Some remarks on the history of the Khotanese orthography and the Brāhmī script in Khotan". Annual Report of the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University. 25: 149–172.