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Archaeology
Indian
Dictionary
Language
Naming
role
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The Tocharians were the Tocharian-speaking inhabitants of the Tarim basin,
making them the easternmost speakers of an Indo-European language in antiquity.
The Tarim mummies suggest that precursors of these easternmost speakers of an
Indo-European language may have lived in the region of the Tarim Basin from
around 1800 BC until finally they were assimilated by Uyghur Turks in the 9th
century AD.
There is evidence both from the mummies and Chinese writings that many of them
had blonde or red hair and blue eyes[citation needed], characteristics also
found in central asia. This suggests the possibility that they were part of an
early migration of speakers of Indo-European languages that ended in what is now
the Tarim Basin in western China. According to a controversial theory, early
invasions by Turkic speakers may have pushed Tocharian speakers out of the Tarim
Basin and into ancient Sogdian where they became assimilated in the population.
A later group of Tocharians were the Kushans and maybe some iranian tribes of
the Hephthalites whose iranian population also settled in modern Afghanistan,
North-Eastern Iran Usbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkestan while the nomadic
turkish ones where defeated by Bahram Gur and the Gok-Turks who pushed them over
the Hindukush mountains to Sindh (Pakistan) and North-West India.
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