Overview

""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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Chams Benoît Bernard
Publisher:   Brill
Imprint:   Brill
Volume:   27
Weight:   0.001kg
ISBN:  

9789004732520

ISBN 10:   9004732527
Pages:   340
Publication Date:   24 July 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

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

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Author Information

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.

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