Like Dust on the Silk Road

On the Earliest Iranian and BMAC Loanwords in Tocharian

Series: 

"How did the Tocharians reach China?" "Who did they meet on the way?” are some of the most intriguing questions in Indo-European studies. This book is zooming in on a specific part of the question: on their way to China, Tocharians were in contact with an Iranian people living in the south Siberian Steppes, and with a people related to the Oxus Civilization (BMAC). This Iranian people spoke a specific language, called here “Old Steppe Iranian”. They gave Tocharians many words, such as mañiye ‘servant’, etswe ‘burden-carrying horse’ or ‘mule’, pāke ‘portion, share’. The BMAC-related people gave the Tocharians other words such as etre ‘hero’ and kercapo ‘donkey’. This book reconstructs features of the language of both these peoples, and examines how they influenced the Tocharians. Based on the latest archaeological findings, it also suggests a reconstruction of the chronology and the way the Tocharians followed before entering the Tarim Basin.

Winner of the 2nd prize for the best dissertation of the Indogermanische Gesellschaft prize for the best Indo-European studies dissertation.
Copyright Year:
2025
E-Book (PDF)
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-73253-7
Publication:
26 May 2025
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-73252-0
Publication:
12 Jun 2025
Cover Like Dust on the Silk Road

Prices from (excl. shipping):

€152.98€145.00 excl. VAT
Hardback
Add to Cart
About MyBook
Chams Benoît Bernard, Ph.D. (2023), is an independent scholar, a linguist and an Arabic and Persian interpreter. He works on literature, poetry, and has a particular interest in the history of languages, and etymology. He has published articles and works on various topics, such as Middle and New Persian, Tocharian etymology, Judeo-Persian, Indo-European and Semitic languages as well as religious studies.
Acknowledgments

1 Introduction
 1.1 Tocharian and Iranian
 1.2 State of the art
 1.3 Research issues
 1.4 Methodology
 1.5 Structure
 1.6 Spelling of Tocharian stress
 1.7 Alphabetic order

2 Old Steppe Iranian Loanwords in Tocharian
 2.1 Introduction
 2.2 Old Steppe Iranian borrowings: plausible cases
 2.3 Old Steppe Iranian borrowings: possible cases
 2.4 Old Steppe Iranian borrowings: difficult cases
 2.5 Old Steppe Iranian borrowings: rejected cases
 2.6 Old Steppe Iranian calques in Tocharian
 2.7 Discussion of the features of Old Steppe Iranian

3 BMAC Words in Tocharian (a Selective Survey)
 3.1 Introduction
 3.2 Analysis of potential BMAC loanwords in Tocharian
 3.3 Other possible BMAC loanwords in Tocharian
 3.4 Discussion

4 Conclusion
 4.1 Results
 4.2 The Tocharian way

Appendix 1: The Tocharian Word for ‘Parrot’ and Its Origin
Appendix 2: On the Etymology of Tocharian B patstsāṅk and Tocharian A pātsaṅk ‘Window’
Bibliography
Index
Indo-Europeanists, Tocharologists, scholars of Buddhism and central Asia, historical linguists and academic institutes, libraries, etc.
  • Collapse
  • Expand

Manufacturer information:
Koninklijke Brill B.V. 
Plantijnstraat 2
2321 JC
Leiden / The Netherlands
productsafety@degruyterbrill.com