This glossary defines the shelf-specific names, languages, manuscript tools, and places that recur in the Tocharian pages of the Good Work Library.
This folder glossary is a shelf-specific slice from the central Good Works Glossary. The central glossary remains the source of truth.
Tocharian Terms
Agnean — A traditional name for Tocharian A, associated with Agni, one of the northern Tarim Basin oasis regions. Tocharian A appears to have functioned chiefly as a Buddhist literary or liturgical language in the surviving manuscript record.
Brahmi — The Indic script family used to write Tocharian manuscripts. Tocharian texts use a Central Asian Brahmi script adapted for local phonology, in the same broad manuscript world as Sanskrit Buddhist texts from the Tarim Basin.
CEToM — The Comprehensive Edition of Tocharian Manuscripts, maintained by the University of Vienna. It provides a major online scholarly doorway into Tocharian manuscripts through images, transcriptions, translations, commentary, and search tools.
Kucha — A major oasis kingdom on the northern Silk Road and the region most closely associated with Tocharian B. Kuchean Buddhist culture produced and preserved many of the manuscripts through which Tocharian is known.
Kuchean — A traditional name for Tocharian B, the western Tocharian language. Tocharian B is more widely attested than Tocharian A and appears across religious, administrative, medical, magical, and secular documents.
Pelliot Collection — The Central Asian manuscript collection gathered by Paul Pelliot during the French expedition of 1906-1909, including Tocharian and other Silk Road materials now associated especially with Paris collections. The HisTochText project studies the history and textual setting of these Tocharian manuscripts.
Ṣaḍḍanta-Jātaka — A Buddhist birth-story of the six-tusked elephant, preserved among Tocharian A materials and treated in a special TITUS edition. It is one of the clearer public doorways for seeing how Tocharian Buddhist narrative survives in fragmentary manuscript form.
Tarim Basin — The desert basin of what is now Xinjiang, bounded by oasis cities along the Silk Road. Tocharian A and B are known from manuscript finds in this region, where Buddhism, Sanskrit learning, Iranian languages, Turkic languages, Chinese administration, and local oasis cultures met.
TITUS — The Thesaurus Indogermanischer Text- und Sprachmaterialien, a digital text project at Frankfurt. Its Tocharian section points to Berlin Turfan materials, other collections, and selected teaching editions.
Tocharian A — The eastern Tocharian language, also called Agnean or East Tocharian. It is an extinct Indo-European language known from Central Asian Buddhist manuscripts, especially from the Turfan and Agni regions.
Tocharian B — The western Tocharian language, also called Kuchean or West Tocharian. It is the better-attested Tocharian language and appears in Buddhist, administrative, medical, magical, and other manuscript fragments from the northern Tarim Basin.
Turfan — A major oasis region in the eastern Tarim Basin and one of the principal find-spots for Central Asian Buddhist manuscript materials. The Berlin Turfan collection is central to modern Tocharian studies.
Colophon
This glossary was compiled as a support page for the Tocharian shelf. It is a reader aid, not a translated primary text.
Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.
🌲