Kucha

Kucha was an ancient Tocharian Buddhist kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the northern edge of what is now the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin and south of the Muzat River. The people of Kucha spoke Kuchean (also known as Tocharian B) and a local variant of Gandhārī Prakrit, known as Kucha Prakrit, was used by Kucha for official and administrative purposes, with evidence indicating that it remained in use until 6th century. The former area of Kucha now lies in present-day Aksu Prefecture, west-central Xinjiang, China. Kuqa town is the county seat of Aksu Prefecture's Kuqa County. Though the history of toponyms for modern Kucha remains problematic, it is clear that Kucha (Kuchar, in Turkic languages) and Kuché (modern Chinese) both correspond to the Kushan of Indic scripts from late antiquity. Chinese annals uniformly record the kingdom's name as 龜茲 (Qiūcí) from the Han to the Song dynasty. Its earliest attestation is in the Hanshu. Commentators indicate that the name was pronounced specifically as 丘慈 (Qiūcí, Old Chinese *kʽǐwə-dzǐə) rather than the ordinary reading Guǐzī (Old Chinese *kǐwə-tsǐə). A later 4th‑century transcription, 屈茨 (Qūcí, EMC *khut-dzi), corroborates this pronunciation. Attested forms in other pre-Islamic languages include Niya-Gāndhārī *kuciya, Sanskrit kuci-, Kuchean kᵤśiññe, Sogdian ’kwc’, and Old Turkic küsän.