Saka language

The two known dialects of Saka are associated with a movement of the Scythians. No invasion of the region is recorded in Chinese records and one theory is that two tribes of the Saka, speaking the two dialects, settled in the region in about 200 BC before the Chinese accounts commence.[8]

The Saka language became extinct after invading Turkic Muslims conquered the Kingdom of Khotan in the Islamicisation and Turkicisation of Xinjiang.

In the 11th century, it was remarked by Mahmud al-Kashgari that the people of Khotan still had their own language and script and did not know Turkic well.[9][10] According to Kashgari some non-Turkic languages like the Kanchaki and Sogdian were still used in some areas.[11] It is believed that the Saka language group was what Kanchaki belonged to.[12] It is believed that the Tarim Basin became linguistically Turkified by the end of the 11th century.[13]

Khotanese and Tumshuqese are closely related Eastern Iranian languages.[14]

Manuscript in Khotanese from Dandan Oilik, NE of Khotan. Now held in the British Library.

Other than an inscription from Issyk kurgan that it is tentatively identified as Khotanese (although written in Kharosthi), all of the surviving documents originate from Khotan or Tumshuq. Khotanese is attested from over 2,300 texts[15] preserved among the Dunhuang manuscripts, as opposed to just 15 texts[16] in Tumshuqese. These were deciphered by Harold Walter Bailey.[17] The earliest texts, from the fourth century, are mostly religious documents. There were several viharas in the Kingdom of Khotan and Buddhist translations are common at all periods of the documents. There are many reports to the royal court (called haṣḍa aurāsa) which are of historical importance, as well as private documents. An example of a document is Or.6400/2.3.