Saka language

For the Northern Turkic language spoken in the Russian Far East, see Sakha language.

Saka
Khotanese, Tumshuqese
Spoken in	Kingdom of Khotan and Tumxuk (today Xinjiang)
Region	Central Asia
Extinct	10th century
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian languages Iranian Middle Iranian Eastern Iranian Scythian Scytho-Khotanese Saka
Dialects	Khotanese Tumshuqese
Writing system	Brāhmī
Language codes
ISO 639-2	kho
ISO 639-3	kho
linguist List	kho (Khotanese)
	xtq (Tumshuqese)

Saka or Sakan is a Middle Iranian language attested from the medieval Buddhist kingdoms of Khotan and Tumxuk in what in now Xinjiang, China. Both dialects share features with modern Wakhi and Pashto. Many Prakrit terms were borrowed from Khotanese into the Tocharian languages.

Khotanese is attested from a large number of texts preserved among the Dunhuang manuscripts. These texts, dated 100 BCE to 1000 CE and written in a derivative of the Brahmi script, were deciphered by Harold Bailey.

Tumshuqese is similar, but more archaic in nature. It is only attested in 15 manuscripts, dated from the 5th to 10th century CE.

References

Sources

• 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. 

Further reading

• 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.