Researchers have partially deciphered the “unknown Kushan script” – a writing system that has puzzled linguists since it was first discovered in the 1950s.
The researchers deciphered the ancient text using inscriptions on rock walls discovered in 2022 near the Almosi Gorge in northwestern Tajikistan, including parts in an extinct but well-known language called Bactrian.
“We discovered that the so-called ‘Kushan script’ was used to record a previously unknown Middle Iranian language,” says the study’s lead author. Svenja Bonmana comparative linguist at the University of Cologne in Germany, said in a video posted by the university on July 13. “In other words, we deciphered the script.”
This Middle Iranian language was probably one of the official languages of the Kushan Empire, which evolved between 200 B.C. Ancient Eurasian nomads who originally settled in the Kushan Empire — called the “Tocharians” by Greco-Roman authors — may also have spoken the language, which the researchers have suggested calling “Eteo-Tocharian.” (“Eteo” is a prefix used by modern scholars that means “true” or “original”.)
The script associated with this Kushan language has remained elusive, in part because many texts haven’t stood the test of time, Bonmann said. “Most of what was written at the time was probably recorded on organic material, such as palm leaves or the bark of birch trees. Organic material decays very quickly, which means that practically nothing remains of it.”
However, characters carved into cave walls and painted on ceramics have survived throughout Central Asia and provide clues about the Kushan language. Archaeologists have discovered several dozen inscriptions since the late 1950s, mainly in present-day Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.
“Researchers have been working on this for decades, mainly in France and Russia, but they have had little success,” Eugene hilla professor of comparative linguistics at the University of Cologne who did not participate in the study said in the video.
An Iranian language
In a study published July 12 in the journal Transactions of the Philological SocietyBonmann and her colleagues examined the newly discovered “bilingual” inscriptions and deciphered the Kushan script using methods similar to those previously used to decipher other ancient languages.
“The best-case scenario is to have a parallel text — so-called bilingual or trilingual — that has roughly the same meaning, but in two or three different scripts or languages,” Bonmann said.
In this case, the researchers were able to work out the Kushan meaning using parallel Bactrian inscriptions carved into rocks found in the Almosi Gorge and in Dašt-i Nāwur, in Afghanistan, in the 1960s.
“We had parallel texts and we knew that the elements they contained were likely to be in our script,” said Bonmann. “Step by step, we could read more and more Iranian words, so it became clear that this was an Iranian language.”
Words that referred to Kushan emperor Vema Takhtu as the “king of kings” in the texts from Tajikistan and Afghanistan tipped the researchers about the phonetic values of individual characters that had remained a mystery until then. Their observations suggest that the Kushan script records a language that developed midway between Bactrian and a language known as Khotanese Saka that was spoken in ancient western China.
The discovery sheds light on more than half of the 25 to 30 characters used in the Kushan script, according to the study. The team hopes that by reexamining known inscriptions and searching for more examples, they can decipher the remaining characters and read the puzzling script in its entirety.
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