Episode 119: The Question of "Tukara"
Modern view of ancient Kucha (or Kuqa). Situated at the base of the mountains near a river fed by meltwater along the northern Silk Road, you can still see many of the thick walls, though decoration and much of the wood has long since eroded away. Photo by author.
This episode we are taking a bit of a tangent as we look into the record of men said to be from “Tukara”. By the way, in modern Japanese this is probably either Tsukara or Tokara. As we’ve mentioned in the past, pronunciations have shifted slightly over time.
There are three major theories that I’ve found for “Tukara”, though I wouldn’t be surprised to find more: Tukhara (aka Tokharistan), the Dvaravati Kingdom, or the Tokara islands of the Ryukyu island chain.
Tukhara and the Tokharoi
Representation of Zhang Qian and his yak-hair staff at the Shaanxi History Museum. Photo by author.
One location that is said to be “Tukara” is “Tukhara”, sometimes called Tokharistan, home of the “Tokharoi” according to Greek sources. This was at the far end of the Silk Road from the Japanese archipelago, in the area of modern Bactria. It is thought that they were the descendants of the Kushan Empire, themselves founded by members of “Kushana”, one of the polities that made up the confederacy known to the Han dynasty as the Yuezhi. After the Yuezhi were kicked out of the Tarim basin by the Xiongnu, the Han court attempted to send an ambassador, Zhang Qian, to negotiate with them to ally against their common enemy, but the Yuezhi politely refused the request.
Top of a stele in Xian erected during the Tang dynasty praising a new “Shining” religion, aka Christianity. Here you can see a cross etched into the top of the stele, which tells the history of the religion in the east, including mention of people from “Tukhara”. Photo by author.
There has been some speculation that the “Kushan” of the Kushan Empire might be a cognate with “Kucha”, an ancient city along the northern edge of the Tarim basin, in the territory thought to have belonged to the Yuezhi, before the Xiongnu pushed them out. Kucha, it turns out, is also the home of a language that is thought to have been called by in the old Turkic languages of the region, “twγry”, which was thought to be related to the “Tukhara” and the “Tokharoi”. Although that has largely been discredited, the Kuchean and Turfanian languages are still widely known as the “Tocharian” languages—often designated as Tocharian A and Tocharian B.
These languages, themselves, are a bit of a mystery as they are a “Centem” Indo-European language, thought to be similar to Celtic or Italic, while other Indo-European languages in the region—including the Indo-Iranian Bactrian language that was spoke in Tukhara— are “Satem” languages. “Centem” languages adopted the hard “c” or “k” sound for certain words in Proto-Indo-Eueropean, while “Satem” languages adopted the same sound to a sibilant “s” sound.
The possible connection between the “Tocharian” languages and Celtic and Italic further caught the attention of scholars who were also marveling at the well-preserved mummies of the region, some being three to four thousand years old and bearing features more associated with western Eurasia rather than the ethnic Han Chinese or the nomadic steppe people like the Xiongnu are believed to have been. These mummies even bore fabric in a form of plaid design that could have been at home in the ancient Hallstadt region of Central Europe. DNA evidence, however, suggests that they are, in fact, indigenous to the region, being part of an Ancient Northern Eurasian group of people. Truth is, we don’t know what languages they spoke, and many people passed through the Tarim basin over the years.
The Dvaravati Kingdom
Phra Pathom Chedi, originally built during the Dvaravati period, it has been topped with a modern prang.
This theory seems to hold a little less water than the others, but apparently the Sui and Tang new this as the “To-lo-po-ti” kingdom. The Dvaravati kingdom was a powerful ethnic Mon kingdom or confederation that arose in the modern region of Thailand, and it pre-dates the arrival of the Thai people. It lasted from about the 6th to the 12th century, and there is evidence that it traded not only with the Sui and Tang courts, but also with the middle east and even Rome.
Base of an ancient temple or stupa at Pong Tuk, near the site where the Pong Tuk lamp was found. Photo by author.
Besides Arabic and Roman coins, one of the most spectacular finds is a 6th century Byzantine lamp in fields near modern Pong Tuk. This is also known to have been the site of an ancient Dvaravati settlement, with some ruins still visible, even today.
We don’t know precisely what happened to the Dvaravati Kingdom. It may have been a natural collapse over time. There is also some thought that the Gulf of Thailand may have once reached further inland, and as the Chaophraya river brought silt down from the north, this area filled in, and cities that were once on the coast found themselves miles upriver without the same access to ports for commerce and trade.
Tokara Islands
Perhaps the most logical conclusion, however, is that “Tukara” refers to the Tokara Islands. These are the islands between Amami Oshima and Tanegashima, immediately south of Kyushu. It is possible that the terms just used similar characters to phonetically spell out these different areas.
The Tokara islands are part of the larger Ryukyu archipelago, which extends all the way to Taiwan. We know that there has been contact with the Japanese archipelago since at least the Jomon era, but they didn’t follow into the Yayoi and Kofun periods quite as much. The islands closer to the Japanese archipelago saw greater and more immediate influence, but even they have retained a separate character. The islands were populated, at some point, by a Japonic speaking people, as the indigenous Ryukyuan language that evolved is one of the few members of the Japonic language family, including modern Japanese and possibly the language of Hachijo—another group of islands south of Tokyo.
References
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