Place · oasis kingdom · China
Khotan
A jade-producing oasis on the southern Taklamakan route, and the first substantially Buddhist kingdom in the Tarim basin — its own chronicles claim foundation by a son of Ashoka, and it used a Prakrit administrative language written in Kharosthi for centuries.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 37.110, 79.930
Worth knowing
Khotanese Saka, an Iranian language, was written in Brahmi, and Buddhist texts in Sanskrit and Khotanese were copied here for a thousand years. Jade from its two rivers reached Chinese courts from the Bronze Age, which is older than the silk trade by two millennia.
Connections (3)
- Trade routeNubra & the Karakoram Pass
From Leh the caravans went up the Nubra valley, over the Saser La and the Karakoram Pass at 5,540 metres, and down the Yarkand river to Khotan and Yarkand — eight or nine stages above five thousand metres with no fodder and no fuel. It was the highest regularly used trade route on earth and the track was findable by the bones of dead animals. This is the branch that connects the Tarim oases directly to India without going through Afghanistan.
- Teaching lineageSrinagar
Khotan's own chronicles claim foundation by a son of Ashoka and its early administrative language was a Prakrit written in Kharosthi; its Buddhism came from Kashmir and Gandhara over the Karakoram rather than from China. Khotanese Saka, an Iranian language, was written in Brahmi. An oasis kingdom on the edge of the Gobi ran its offices in an Indian language and its religion on Kashmiri doctrine for several centuries.
- Trade routeKashgar
Khotan and Kashgar are the two ends of the southern Taklamakan rim, and Faxian's account of them is the earliest description of the Tarim oases as Buddhist kingdoms rather than as way-stations. He gives Khotan ten thousand monks and a great image procession; within eight centuries both cities were Muslim and the monasteries were sand.
On these journeys
- The Silk Road — Antioch to Chang’an, through India
- Faxian — overland to India, home by sea (399–414)
- Xuanzang — sixteen years overland (629–645)
Sources
Wikipedia, “Hotan”. Aurel Stein’s reports; Susan Whitfield, Life Along the Silk Road; the International Dunhuang Project.
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