A Khotanese Brahmi amulet from Southern Xinjiang

[Khotanese Buddhist tradition]. Amulet Scroll.

€ 48.000,00

A scroll in a Brahmi script typical of the Taklamakan Desert region in the late first millennium CE, when the Tarim Basin was a crossroads of linguistic, religious and cultural influences along the Silk Road. This type of scroll was typically used in amulets, with other such examples being known from Khotan, and probably served a protective purpose.

In the first six lines, we see the same word (represented by three characters representing three syllables) repeated at the end of lines 1-5 and just before the end of line six, which points to a formulaic nature of the text, presumably a charm or invocation for protection. The script is a cursive form of the Brahmi adapted for writing the Saka languages, particularly that of the Kingdom of Khotan. In addition to the Brahmi-derived script itself, the linguistic mixture of Sanskrit and Khotanese bears witness to the Buddhist cultural influence that shaped this tradition.

The oasis cities of the Taklamakan Desert had a flourishing culture in the first millennium CE, boosted by the prosperity brought by their position along the Silk Road. They were home to numerous languages, notably varieties of Tocharian, an extinct branch of Indo-European, and the Saka (Scythian) tongues of the Eastern Iranian branch, most notably Khotanese and the closely related Tumshuqese. Buddhist missionaries brought the Brahmi script and Sanskrit, while Chinese and Tibetan dominance of the region in the seventh and eighth centuries (when this scroll was written) brought yet more cultural and linguistic influences into play. By the eleventh century, the Turkic-speaking Uyghurs had become the dominant force in the region, and Islam began to displace Buddhism.

An item such as this, reflecting Indian and Khotanese cultural elements from a time of Chinese and Tibetan political dominance, bears testimony to the region as a remarkable crossroads, in every sense of the word.