Talk on "Bactrian and Sogdian Influence Spheres" by Julian Kreidl at Deutscher Orientalistentag
The talk, king place from September 8th to 12th, 2025, analyzes the Bactrian and Sogdian linguistic influence in the Tarim Basin and the Hindukush and lays out what conclusions we can gather from the findings.
Establishing the absence and presence of linguistic influence can, among other things, be achieved by looking at loanwords in languages formerly or nowadays spoken in the Tarim Basin and the Hindukush. These are areas with known or suspected presence of Bactrian and Sogdian speakers from partly even before Kushan times. Specifically, the study incorporates data from e.g. Tocharian and Khotanese in the north to e.g. Khowar, Nuristani and Pashto in the south of this larger Central Asian region. Differentiating inherited from loaned words is difficult when dealing with closely related languages, but with continuing progress in the historical phonology of the involved languages, we can correct some previously held beliefs.
Specifically, I argue that the status of Sogdian as a “lingua franca” of the Silk Road cannot be upheld. Quite on the contrary, I show that unambiguous Sogdian influence is lacking in most regional languages, with the exception of Old Uyghur in the very northern part of the Silk Road and Khowar in the northern Hindukush region. Bactrian loanwords, on the other hand, are found not only in Tocharian, Khotanese and Sogdian itself, but also in Nuristani, Pashto, Munji-Yidgha.