Editing Tocharian languages (section)

==Discovery and significance==
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{{Annotation|260|10|[[Afanasievo culture|Afanasievo<br>culture]]|text-align=center|font-weight=bold|font-style=normal|font-size=10|color=#FF4500}}
{{Annotation|205|60|Tocharians|font-weight=bold|font-style=normal|font-size=10|color=#000000}}
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{{Annotation|205|113|[[Indo-Aryans]]|text-align=center|font-weight=bold|font-style=normal|font-size=7|color=#FF4500}}
| caption=[[Indo-European migrations]], with location of the [[Afanasievo culture]] (genetically identical to the [[Yamnaya culture]] of the [[Pontic steppes]]) and their probable Tocharian descendants<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Narasimhan |first1=Vagheesh M. |last2=Patterson |first2=Nick |last3=Moorjani |first3=Priya |last4=Rohland |first4=Nadin |last5=Bernardos |first5=Rebecca |date=2019 |title=The Formation of Human Populations in South and Central Asia |journal=Science |language=en |volume=365 |issue=6457 |at=eaat7487 |doi=10.1126/science.aat7487 |pmc=6822619 |pmid=31488661 |doi-access=free}}</ref>
}}
[[File:IE1500BP.png|thumb|350px|upright=1.5|The geographical spread of [[Indo-European languages]]]]

The existence of the Tocharian languages and alphabet was not even suspected until archaeological exploration of the Tarim Basin by [[Aurel Stein]] in the early 20th century brought to light fragments of manuscripts in an unknown language, dating from the 6th to 8th centuries AD.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Deuel |first=Leo |title=Testaments of Time |date=1970 |publisher=Pelican Books |location=Baltimore |pages=425–455 |language=en |chapter=XXI |orig-date=First published Knopf, NY, 1965}}</ref>

It soon became clear that these fragments were actually written in two distinct but related languages belonging to a hitherto unknown branch of Indo-European, now known as Tocharian:
*'''Tocharian A''' (Turfanian, Agnean, or East Tocharian; natively {{lang|xto|ārśi}}) of [[Karasahr|Qarašähär]] (ancient ''Agni'', Chinese ''Yanqi'' and Sanskrit ''Agni'') and [[Turpan]] (ancient ''Turfan'' and ''Xočo''), and
*'''Tocharian B''' (Kuchean or West Tocharian) of [[Kucha]] and Tocharian A sites.

[[Prakrit]] documents from 3rd-century [[Loulan Kingdom|Krorän]] and [[Niya ruins|Niya]] on the southeast edge of the Tarim Basin contain loanwords and names that appeared to scholars to come from a closely related language, referred to as '''Tocharian C'''.<ref name="mallory-expedition">{{Cite periodical | issn=  0014-4738|last=Mallory |first=J. P. |date=2010 |title=Bronze Age Languages of the Tarim Basin |url=https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/bronze-age-languages-of-the-tarim-basin/ |magazine=Expedition Magazine |language=en |volume=52 |issue=3 |pages=44–53 |access-date=2012-03-21 |archive-date=2021-01-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210109090710/https://www.penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/52-3/mallory.pdf |url-status=live | publisher = Penn Museum}}</ref> However, this was found to be entirely flawed for the [[Loulan Kingdom|Krorän]] part (see below, section "Tocharian C"). Recently, a dissertation authored by Niels Schoubben ([[Leiden University]]) has demonstrated that all the so-called Tocharian loanwords in Niya Prakrit were, in fact, Bactrian and pre-Bactrian loanwords, or resulted from fundamental misunderstandings of specific words and orthographies. His work definitively put an end to the "Tocharian C" hypothesis.<ref>Schoubben, Niels. 2024. ''Traces of language contact in Niya Prakrit Bactrian and other foreign elements''. Leiden University: PhD Dissertation</ref>

The discovery of Tocharian upset some theories about the relations of Indo-European languages and revitalized their study. In the 19th century, it was thought that the division between [[centum–satem isogloss|centum and satem languages]] was a simple west–east division, with centum languages in the west. The theory was undermined in the early 20th century by the discovery of [[Hittite language|Hittite]], a centum language in a relatively eastern location, and Tocharian, which was a centum language despite being the easternmost branch. The result was a new hypothesis, following the [[wave model]] of [[Johannes Schmidt (linguist)|Johannes Schmidt]], suggesting that the satem isogloss represents a linguistic innovation in the central part of the Proto-Indo-European home range, and the centum languages along the eastern and the western peripheries did not undergo that change.{{sfnp|Renfrew|1990|pp=107–108}}

Most scholars identify the ancestors of the Tocharians with the [[Afanasievo culture]] of [[South Siberia]] ({{circa}} 3300–2500 BC), an early eastern offshoot of the steppe cultures of the Don-Volga area that later became the [[Yamnaya culture|Yamnayans]].<ref name="Anthony2010, p=264–265, 308">{{Cite book |last=Anthony |first=David W. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0FDqf415wqgC |title=The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World |date=2010 |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |isbn=978-1400831104 |pages=264–265, 308 |language=en |author-link=David W. Anthony}}</ref>{{sfn|Mallory|Mair|2000}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Klejn |first=L. S. Л. С. Клейн |author-link=Leo Klejn |date=2000 |title=Migratsiya tokharov v svete arkheologii |script-title=ru:Миграция тохаров в свете археологии |trans-title=Migration of Tokharians in the Light of Archaeological Data |url=https://www.e-anthropology.com/English/Catalog/Archaeology/STM_DWL_2u9E_eEPlfIweNNXo.aspx |journal=Stratum Plus |language=ru |volume=2000 |issue=2 |pages=178–187}}</ref> Under this scenario, Tocharian speakers would have immigrated to the [[Tarim Basin]] from the north at some later point.

Most scholars reject [[Walter Bruno Henning]]'s proposed link to [[Gutian language|Gutian]], a language spoken on the [[Iranian plateau]] in the 22nd century BC and known only from personal names.{{sfnp|Mallory|Mair|2000|pp=281–282}}

Tocharian probably died out after 840 when the [[Uyghur Khaganate|Uyghurs]], expelled from Mongolia by the [[Yenisei Kyrgyz|Kyrgyz]], moved into the Tarim Basin.<ref name="mallory-expedition" /> The theory is supported by the discovery of translations of Tocharian texts into Uyghur.

Some modern [[Chinese language|Chinese]] words may ultimately derive from a Tocharian or related source, e.g. [[Old Chinese]] {{lang|och|*mjit}} ({{zh|labels=no|c={{linktext|蜜}} |p=mì}}) "honey", from Proto-Tocharian *''ḿət(ə)'' (where *''ḿ'' is [[Palatalization (phonetics)|palatalized]]; cf. Tocharian B {{lang|txb|mit}}), cognate with [[Old Church Slavonic]] {{lang|cu|медъ}} (transliterated: {{transliteration|cu|medŭ}}) (meaning "honey"), and English ''{{linktext|mead}}''.<ref>{{harvp|Boltz|1999|p=87}}; {{harvp|Schuessler|2007|p=383}}; {{harvp|Baxter|1992|p=191}}; {{harvp|Karlgren|1957|p=405r}}; Proto-Tocharian and Tocharian B forms from {{harvp|Peyrot|2008|p=56}}.</ref>