HiddenMysteries: Fragments of the Tocharian

Between 1902 and 1914 the German Ethnological Institute sent repeated expeditions into the great Taklamakan desert of Central Asia, in search of ancient manuscripts that had survived destruction due to the arid climate of the Tarim Basin.

Andrew Leonard

One expedition brought back fragments of a manuscript written in a hitherto unknown language but employing a familiar North Indian script. Later dubbed Tocharian A, the language was deciphered by two linguists at Germany's Gottingen University, Emil Siel and Wilhem Siegling. The parchment turned out to be part of the Maitreyasamiti-Nataka, a Sanskrit Buddhist work in the Mahayana canon that foretells the coming of the Buddha.

In the mid-thirties a budding Chinese linguist, Ji Xianlin, arrived in Gottingen to study Sanskrit with Siel. Before receiving his Ph.D. in 1941, he also mastered Tocharian and a handful of other obscure languages. After the conclusion of World War II, he returned to China and began a long career as one of China's top specialists in ancient Indian languages and culture. In the late '90s, he published his own analysis and translation of newly discovered fragments of a Tocharian-language Maitreyasamiti-Nataka discovered in 1974 in the city of Yanqi in China's Xinjiang province.

Only a handful of people in the world can read Tocharian; mastering the language is not a path to notoriety. But Ji, the author of numerous books and monographs, has other claims to fame. Perhaps most amazingly, he secretly translated the entire Indian epic, "The Ramayana," from the original Sanskrit into Chinese, while experiencing the travails that afflicted nearly all Chinese intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution.

Earlier this week, the Indian government bestowed one of its greatest honors, the Padma Bushan award, on the 97-year-old Ji, in honor of his contributions to cross-cultural understanding. In the realpolitik of Chinese-Indian diplomacy, the move was immediately interpreted as as indicating a positive direction in the relationship between the two countries.

Symbolically speaking, the theory has some merit. Ji has long been a believer in the transformative virtue of translation. When he received a lifetime achievement award in China in 2006 for his contributions to the field of translation, he observed that "The reason our Chinese culture has been able to remain consistent and rich throughout its 5,000 years of history is closely linked to translation. Translations from other cultures have helped infuse new blood into our culture."

How the World Works applauds such sentiments. And although, to be honest, I had no idea that the Tocharian language even existed 24 hours ago, after becoming curious about it when reading up on Ji, I now see the mysterious Tocharians as prototypical agents of globalization.

Why mysterious? Because hard evidence on who the Tocharians were or where they came from is scarce. Ethnically speaking, they are believed to be a Caucasian race that flourished for thousands of years in Central Asia before being swallowed up almost without a trace by their Turkic neighbors, sometime around the end of the first millennium (Recently discovered well-preserved corpses of European-looking bodies have even been cited by present-day Uighur Turk separatists as proof that China has no claim to Xinjiang.)

Tocharian belongs to the Indo-European family of languages, but is distinguished by having traveled further East than any other Indo-European subgroup. Intriguingly, it shares some similarities with the most far-western Indo-European languages, such as Celtic. For early 20th century linguists, incorporating the new Tocharian data required a complete rethinking of theories of Indo-European linguistic migration.

With a civilization clustered around the oasis entrepots that marked the Silk Road connecting West to East, the Tocharians are thought to have played a major role in spreading Buddhism from India to China. That alone is an earthshaking event. Much earlier, theorized one archaeologist, the Tocharians might have introduced the wheeled chariot into China. The Mandarin words for lion and honey are thought by some linguists to be loan words from Tocharian (The word "Mandarin," incidentally, is Sanskrit in origin.)

Much more than that, we really don't know, although we can hope that somewhere in the desert caches of as-yet undiscovered manuscripts hold more clues to how culture and language spread across the globe in ancient times. The more we know about such interflows, the closer the ties that bind us all together. Or, as Ji Xianlin put it:

The river of Chinese civilization has kept alternating between rising and falling, but it has never dried up, because there was always fresh water flowing into it. It has over history been joined by fresh water many times, the two largest inflows coming from India and the West, both of which owed their success to translation. It is translation that has preserved the perpetual youth of Chinese civilization. Translation is hugely useful!"

UPDATE: An essay by Yo-yo Ma in Thursday's International Herald Tribune, "From the Berbers to Bach," evinces some delightful, (I think) synchronicities with the theme of this post. (reprinted below)

http://www.salon.com

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From the Berbers to Bach

By Yo-Yo Ma

Over the past 30 years as a professional cellist, I have spent the equivalent of two full decades on the road, both performing and learning about musical traditions and cultures. My travels have convinced me that in our globalized world, cultural traditions form an essential framework for identity, social stability and compassionate interaction.

A world changing so quickly as ours is bound to create cultural insecurity, to make people question their place. Globalization so often seems to threaten the identity of the individual, by subjecting us to someone else's rules. That naturally makes us nervous, since these rules ask us to change our time-honored habits.

So the critical question for today's global leaders is: How can habits and cultures evolve to join a bigger planet, without sacrificing distinct identities and individual pride?

My musical journeys have reminded me that the interactions brought about by globalization don't just destroy culture; they can create new culture and invigorate and spread traditions that have existed for ages. It's not unlike the ecological term "edge effect," which is used to describe what happens when two different ecosystems meet, for example the forest and savannah.

At that interface, where there is the least density and the greatest diversity of life forms, each living thing can draw from the core of the two ecosystems. Sometimes the most interesting things happen at the edge. The intersections there can reveal unexpected connections.

Culture is a fabric composed of gifts from every corner of the world. One way of discovering the world is by digging deeply into its traditions. In music, for instance, at the core of any cellist's repertoire are the Cello Suites by Bach. At the heart of each suite is a dance movement called the sarabande. The dance originated with music of the North African Berbers, where it was a slow, sensual dance. It next appeared in Spain, where it was banned because it was considered lewd and lascivious. Spaniards brought it to the Americas, but it also traveled on to France, where it became a courtly dance. In the 1720s, Bach incorporated the sarabande as a movement in his Cello Suites.

Today, I play Bach, a Paris-born American musician of Chinese parentage. So who really owns the sarabande? Each culture has adopted the music, investing it with specific meaning, but it belongs to us all.

In 1998, I founded the Silk Road Project to study the flow of ideas among the many cultures between the Mediterranean and the Pacific over several thousand years. When the Silk Road Ensemble performs, we try to bring much of the world together on one stage. Its members are a peer group of virtuosos, masters of living traditions, whether European, Arabic, Azeri, Armenian, Persian, Russian, Central Asian, Indian, Mongolian, Chinese, Korean or Japanese. They all generously share their knowledge and are curious and eager to learn about other forms of expression.

Over the last several years, we have found that every tradition is the result of successful invention. One of the best ways to ensure the survival of traditions is by organic evolution, using all the tools available to us in the present day. Through recording and film; through residencies in museums, universities, design schools and cities; through performance from classroom to stadium, ensemble musicians, including myself, are learning valuable skills. Returning home, we share these skills with others, ensuring that our traditions will have a seat at the cultural table.

We have found that performing a tradition abroad energizes the practitioners in the home country. Most of all, we have developed a passion for each others' music and developed a bond of mutual respect, friendship and trust that is palpable every time we're on stage.

This joyous interaction is such a desirable common greater goal that we have always been able to resolve any differences through amicable dialogue. As we open up to each other, we form a bridge into unfamiliar traditions, banishing the fear that often accompanies change and dislocation.

In other words, when we broaden our lens on the world, we better understand ourselves, our own lives and culture. We share more in common with the far reaches of our small planet than we realize.

Finding these shared cultures is important, but not just for art's sake. So many of our cities - not just London, New York or Tokyo, but now even the mid-sized cities - are experiencing waves of immigration.

How will we assimilate groups of people with their own unique habits? Must immigration inevitably lead to resistance and conflict, as it has in the past? What about the Turkish population in Germany, Albanians in Italy, North Africans in Spain and France?

A thriving cultural engine can help us figure out how groups can peacefully meld, without sacrificing individuality and identity. This is not about political correctness. It's about acknowledging what is precious to someone, and the gifts that every culture has given to our world.

Yo-Yo Ma, the cellist, is the founder of the Silk Road Project, which promotes multicultural artistic exchanges. This article is based on a talk he gave at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. Global Viewpoint, distributed by Tribune Media Services.

http://www.iht.com

Fragments of the Tocharian

Sunday, February 03 2008 @ 11:44 AM CST