New discovery led to advancement
The unknown Kushan script is a composing system that remained in use in parts of Central Asia in between about 200 BCE and 700 CE. It can be associated with both the early nomadic individuals of the Eurasian steppe, such as the Yuèzhī, and the judgment dynasty of the Kushans. The Kushans founded an empire which, to name a few things, was responsible for the spread of Buddhism to East Asia. They likewise developed huge architecture and art work.
Far, numerous lots mostly brief inscriptions are understood, many of them stemming from the area of the contemporary states of Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan. There is likewise a longer trilingual that was found by French archaeologists in the 1960s at Dašt-i Nāwur in Afghanistan: on a stone at 4,320 m altitude on Mount Qarabayu, approximately 100 km southwest of Kabul.
The writing system has been understood since the 1950s but has never been effectively deciphered. In 2022, a brief bilingual was discovered sculpted into a rock face in the Almosi Gorge in northwestern Tajikistan, around 30 km from the capital Dushanbe. In addition to the unknown Kushan script, it also contains a section in the already-known Bactrian language.
This discovery led to restored efforts by several researchers to decode the script– individually of one another. In the end, the linguists at the University of Cologne prospered in partially analyzing the writing system in cooperation with the Tajik archaeologist Dr Bobomullo Bobomulloev, who was instrumental in the discovery and documentation of the bilingual.
Success 200 years after the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs
The team applied an approach based upon the way unidentified scripts have been understood in the past, i.e. the Egyptian hieroglyphs utilizing the Rosetta Stone, ancient Persian cuneiform script, or Greek Linear B script: Thanks to the known content of the bilingual inscription found in Tajikistan (Bactrian and unidentified Kushan script) and the trilingual inscription from Afghanistan (Gandhari or Middle Indo-Aryan, Bactrian and unknown Kushan script), Bonmann, Halfmann and Korobzow had the ability to gradually draw conclusions about the kind of composing and language.
The breakthrough was lastly made possible by the royal name Vema Takhtu, which appeared in both Bactrian parallel texts, and the title King of Kings, which could be recognized in the matching sections in the unknown Kushan script. The title especially showed to be an excellent indication of the underlying language. Step by step, using the Bactrian parallel text, the linguists had the ability to evaluate more character sequences and figure out the phonetic values of specific characters.
Key to a better understanding of Kushan culture
According to the research study group, the Kushan script recorded a completely unknown Middle Iranian language, which is neither identical to Bactrian nor to the language referred to as Khotanese Saka, which was once spoken in western China. The language most likely occupies a middle position in the advancement between these languages.
It could be either the language of the settled population of northern Bactria (on a part of the area these dayss Tajikistan) or the language of certain nomadic individuals of Inner Asia (the Yuèzhī), who initially resided in northwestern China. For a particular duration of time, it obviously acted as among the main languages of the Kushan Empire alongside Bactrian, Gandhari/Middle Indo-Aryan, and Sanskrit. As an initial name, the scientists propose the term Eteo-Tocharian to explain the freshly determined Iranian language.
The group is planning future research trips to Central Asia in close cooperation with Tajik archaeologists, as brand-new finds of additional inscriptions are to be anticipated and appealing potential sites have currently lain. First author Svenja Bonmann remarked, “Our decipherment of this script can help improve our understanding of the language and cultural history of Central Asia and the Kushan Empire, similar to the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs or Mayan glyphs for our understanding of ancient Egypt or Mayan civilization.”
Referral: “A Partial Decipherment of the Unknown Kushan Script” by Svenja Bonmann, Jakob Halfmann, Natalie Korobzow and Bobomullo Bobomulloev, 12 July 2023, Transactions of the Philological Society.DOI: 10.1111/ 1467-968X.12269.
Where the bilingual inscription was discovered in Tajikistan. The archaeologist Dr. Bobomullo Bobomulloev documented the finding in 2022 and sent images to the linguists at the University of Cologne, resulting in the definitive development in their decipherment of the unknown Kushan script. Credit: Bobomullo Bobomulloev
A group of early-career scientists from the University of Cologne has actually successfully figured out the enigmatic unidentified Kushan script, a script that has puzzled scholars for over seventy years. After a multi-year investigation, scientists Svenja Bonmann, Jakob Halfmann, and Natalie Korobzow examined pictures of cave inscriptions, together with markings on a varied series of pottery products retrieved from several Central Asian nations in order to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
On 1 March 2023, they first revealed their partial decipherment of the unknown Kushan script at an online conference of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan.
Currently, about 60 percent of the characters can be read, and the group is working to figure out the staying characters. An in-depth description of the decipherment has actually now been published in the journal Transactions of the Philological Society.
The archaeologist Dr. Bobomullo Bobomulloev documented the finding in 2022 and sent images to the linguists at the University of Cologne, leading to the decisive advancement in their decipherment of the unidentified Kushan script. The unidentified Kushan script is a composing system that was in usage in parts of Central Asia between about 200 BCE and 700 CE. In addition to the unknown Kushan script, it likewise includes an area in the already-known Bactrian language.
The advancement was finally made possible by the royal name Vema Takhtu, which appeared in both Bactrian parallel texts, and the title King of Kings, which could be recognized in the matching areas in the unknown Kushan script. For a certain period of time, it apparently served as one of the official languages of the Kushan Empire together with Bactrian, Gandhari/Middle Indo-Aryan, and Sanskrit.