Whom the Tocharoi met along the way

Another fine openaccess book from Brill on the great steppe: Like Dust on the Silk Road. This, Shams Benoît Bernard's PhD, concerns the Tocharians' preBuddhist origins. They'd already left Yamnaya before entering Junggar, over a couple centuries starting 3000 BC. Centuries later, 2100 BC - the Aryans came.

Specifically this book claims that first the Tocharians met the BMAC - rather, something like them (see below). After that (and after the end of BMAC), the Tocharians met the Iranians - specific Iranians, not basal IndoIranians nor protoIndians like the Mitanni. That makes the book a sequel to the great split from Baltic. This is all long before the Tocharians occupied the Tarim.

We only get Tocharian after their split to Tocharians A and B, their embrace of the Buddha, and their settlement into the Tarim - and beyond. (There is as yet no "C".) Tocharian B - 10000 documents strong - was first spoken in Kucha (probably) as "Kuśi"; it enjoyed some historical spread and development into a classical language, then a later dying language. Tocharian A for "Agnean", interestingly the more-innovative of the two (and a borrower from Classical Kuchean), only exists as a classical language specifically a holy language. With 2000 documents.

To be sure, as languages for Buddhists, much actual-Indic did enter Tocharian. But such words are clear Sanskrit and/or Prakrit, not basal Indic like Mitannian. And they trend high jargon against native kombuistaal. This book ignores Indic as it sequesters, oh, Bactrian or Khotanese (like for iron): to debunk claimed Iranian loans as came too late.

The book ponders Tocharian's relationship to Iranian as an oriental parallel to Armenian's, except less extreme.

The data-chapters here concern Iranian for chapter 2 then BMAC, in shorter chapter 3. Iranian is of course still with us in many descendents, including ancient ones like Avestan and (in writing!) Old Persian. So the Iranian loans can be rated, even including calques: words that Tocharian inherited from IndoEuropean but then repurposed, to translate terms from Iranian.

INTERJECT 6/21 In the process is deconstructed "paraću", as had been done from protoGreek elsewhere. Benoît Bernard removes "paraθu" from Old Persian. The Persians and Elamites had instead something like dabar; in fact Persians still have it. This renders paraśú an Iron Age silk-road loan. It may be Old Steppe Iranian even Saka; spreading thence to India south, and to Choresmia north. The great Iranian steppe is where the Tocharians got their own parat.

The book finds that the Iranian language was met during the Steppe Bronze Age. The Tocharians would get their word for iron from the Khotanese, rather from their ancestors, later. The book even proposes which Iranian subbranch: Kushan (only lately deciphered!), with much commonality with Ossetic and other "Scythian". That said, I do wonder why old Azeri is not noted in the dataset of Middle Iranian.

Also claimed is that the "BMAC" whom the Tocharoi met were not those of Balkh-Merw. The Tocharoi met an eastern people, around Junggar - a more primitive people, as we'd expect of a people met so early. The BMAC proper (famously) was a high civilisation, and we hope a literate one.