Federico Dragoni. Watañi lāntaṃ: Khotanese and Tumshuqese Loanwords in Tocharian
Federico Dragoni. Watañi lāntaṃ: Khotanese and Tumshuqese Loanwords in Tocharian. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2023, 332 p. (Beiträge zur Iranistik, 50)
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1The monograph under review examines all lexical items in the Tocharian (Toch.) languages, Tocharian A (TA) and Tocharian B (TB), for which an origin in Khotanese (Khot.) or Tumshuquese (Tum.) has been claimed, as well as the few loanwords in the opposite direction (Toch. → Khot. / Tum.). The present publication has been revised from Dragoni’s 2022 doctoral dissertation, which won first prize from the Indogermanische Gesellschaft (2022) and the Award for Iranian Studies of the Societas Iranologica Europaea (2023).
2The volume opens with a chapter (p. 17–25) introducing the languages, previous studies of loanword contacts, and the methodology and criteria adopted for evaluating potential loanwords. The main part (Chapter 2, p. 27–204) is devoted to an analysis of all Toch. lexical items that have been argued to be from Khot. For each word, the text occurrences in both Toch. and Khot./Tum. are given, then the history of research, etymological problems and cognate forms (especially on the Iranian side), and finally a brief but useful “Results” section. The chapter concludes with lists grouping the items into “reliable”, “less reliable and doubtful”, and “rejected” loanwords, along with a handful which are deemed to be borrowings from Sogdian or Old Steppe Iranian (p. 204–208).
3The “reliable loanwords” furnish the basis for Chapter 3 (p. 209–228), where Dragoni proposes successive stages of borrowing, from Proto-Tumshuquese-Khotanese (PTK) to pre-Khotanese (PK), Old Khotanese, and Late Khotanese, and the associated phonological and morphological correspondences. Chapter 4 (p. 229–235) then groups the reliable loanwords into 13 semantic fields, which may be reduced to four domains: “materia medica” (terms relating to plants, diseases, body parts, and so forth); administrative, political and economic institutions; moral actions and qualities; and Buddhist terms.
4Chapter 5 (p. 237–251), an addition to the dissertation, investigates the meager evidence for Toch. influence on Khot. and Tum. (the only likely candidates are Old Khot. puka- ‘arm-span’, haṃbālke ‘without permission’ and Tum. p(a)laca- ‘request, plea’). Chapter 6 (p. 253–258) summarizes the chronological layers of Khot. loanwords in Toch. and offers hypotheses on the nature of language contact between Khot. and Toch. speakers over the period from approximately 1000 BC to the Tang protectorate. The book concludes with a bibliography (p. 259–288) and indexes of words (p.289–311), Khot. loanwords in Toch. (p.313–315), and cited text passages (p.317–331).
5Dragoni’s study identifies far more Khot. loanwords in Toch. than heretofore assumed, making it an indispensable work for scholars of Middle Iranian in general. Through reconstruction of Proto-Khotanese (PK) and Proto-Tumshuqese-Khotanese (PTK) preforms, he posits earlier borrowings which look quite different from the attested Khot. forms, such as TB uwātano*, TA wataṃ* ‘Khotanese’ ← Old Khot. hvatana- (whence the title watañi lāntaṃ ‘in (the tune of) the king of Khotan’; p. 43–61); TB eñcuwo, TA añcu* ‘iron’ ← PTK *henśwanya- (cf. OKhot. hīśśana-; 62); TB kito* ‘help’, ekita yām- ‘to help’ ← PK acc. *gīθu (cf. OKhot. ggīha-; 87–92); and TB, TA śāñcapo ‘mustard’ ← PTK acc. *śanźapu (cf. OKhot. śśaśvāna-; p.173–174). He also discusses numerous other interesting problems, such as the etymology of Khotan (p. 59–61); the Khot. and Tum. calendars (p.161–164); and contacts with Chinese, Tibetan, and Old Uyghur.
6The results of Dragoni’s study allow us to recover in greater detail than previously imaginable the evolution of Tocharian-Iranian linguistic contacts from the 2nd millennium BC down to the period immediately preceding the earliest surviving documents. It appears that speakers of (pre-)Toch. and PTK were in contact already by the mid-1st millennium BC, with the lexical domains of borrowing suggesting a sedentary PTK-speaking population with an elaborate social organization engaging in commercial activity, from whom the pre-Tocharians borrowed terms relating to administration and economy. The assignment of multiple loanwords to each chronological stage (PTK, PK, Old Khot., Late Khot.) indicates that these contacts endured until the late 1st millennium AD, through migration and the spread of Buddhism, trade, and medical knowledge.
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Ronald I. Kim, « Federico Dragoni. Watañi lāntaṃ: Khotanese and Tumshuqese Loanwords in Tocharian », Abstracta Iranica [En ligne], Volume 45 | 2023, document 4, mis en ligne le 30 décembre 2024, consulté le 22 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/abstractairanica/56919 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/14ar5
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