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Essay on The Silk Road
China profited by this success to recover the protectorate of the Tarim oases. These, as we have seen, formed a double arc running north and south of the Tarim basin. Those of the north were Turfan (then known to the Chinese as Kiu-shih), Kara Shahr (Yenki), Kucha (Kuche), Aksu (Kumo), Uch Turfan (Wensru), and Kashgar (Shufu). In the south were Loulan by the Lob Nor, Khotan (Hotien), and Yarkand (Soche). That in the seventh century A.D. Indo-European dialects was still being spoken at Kara Shahr, Kucha, and no doubt also at Kashgar leads to the surmise that the inhabitants of the Tarim basin must have belonged at least in part to the Indo-European family. The Kuchean language, in its seventh-century form, shows affinity with Indo-Iranian, Hittite, Armenian, and Slavic.
Though it may not be certain (as is contended by the German school of Sieg and Siegling) that the name Tokharian is applicable to the Kuchean and Karashahri dialects, their Indo-European nature is beyond dispute. There is no reason to suppose that any Indo-European invasion of the Tarim took place at the beginning of our Middle Ages. It therefore seems logical to assume the existence there of an ancient Indo-European population, no doubt contemporary with the expansion of the ScythoSarmatians through western Siberia as far as the upper Yenisei, and with that of the Saka to both slopes of the Tien Shan between Fergana and Kashgar.
In addition to the linguistic evidence furnished by "East Iranian" in western Kashgaria and by Kuchean in the north, ethnographers adduce the testimony of Chinese historians concerning the blue eyes and red hair of the Wu-sun of the Ili, northwest of Kucha. (Sally Hovey Wriggins, 1996)
These petty kingdoms of the Tarim were of great economic importance, because the great caravan route between China and....
