Khotanese

Saka, or Sakan, was a variety of Eastern Iranian languages, attested from ancient Buddhist kingdoms in the western Tarim Basin, including Khotan and Kashgar, in what is now southern Xinjiang, China. It is a Middle Iranian language. Two varieties are known, namely Khotanese spoken in the Kingdom of Khotan, and a poorly attested variety known as Tumshuqese, so named due to its discovery in the present-day Tumshuq area.

The Saka rulers of the western regions of the Indian subcontinent, such as the Indo-Scythians and Western Satraps, are traditionally assumed to have spoken practically the same language. This has however been questioned by more recent research.

Documents on wood and paper were written in modified Brahmi script with the addition of extra characters over time and unusual conjuncts such as ys for z. The documents date from the fourth to the eleventh century. Tumshuqese was more archaic than Khotanese, but it is much less understood because it appears in fewer manuscripts compared to Khotanese. The Khotanese dialect is believed to share features with the modern Wakhi and Pashto. Saka was known as "Hvatanai" (from which the name Khotan) in contemporary documents. Many Prakrit terms were borrowed from Khotanese into the Tocharian languages.

From Wikipedia · Saka language · CC BY-SA 4.0