Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s29: Khotan
Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c11.s29
- Language
- English
Khotan
c11.s29.1
In Khotan also legend connects the foundation of the kingdom with Kunāla and Taxila, the seat of his viceroyalty. The story takes different forms in the pages of Hiuen Tsang and his biographer, and in Tibetan books of later date¹. Miracles apart, all forms of the legend agree in tracing the origin of Khotan to two settlements one of Indians from Taxila and the other of Chinese, the former led by Kunāla or the officials of Taxila who were banished for their share in his blinding, the latter by a Chinese prince; the two settlements which were founded at the same time and in the same neighbourhood started by quarrelling, and their differences were composed by divine intervention. We may not now hope to discover the actual facts that gave rise to this tradition; but we may note the facts in the ethnic and cultural history of Khotan as now known which have a bearing on the historicity of these traditions. The earliest documents from Khotan so far known belong to about the middle of the third century A.D.; they are numerous, and relate to secular affairs of public administration or ordinary private life; they are written in Kharoshṭhī, a script used for some centuries before and after the Christian era in the region round Taxila, the traditional home of the Indian colonists of Khotan; the language of the records likewise is ‘beyond all doubt an Indian language closely allied to the old Prākṛits of North-Western India’ (Stein). Buddhism by itself cannot account for these features; for the language of Northern Buddhism was Sanskrit and its script Brāhmī. On the ethnic side a general resemblance between the features of the Khotanese and Kashmiris has been noted by Stein, and in the early sculpture and painting of Khotan quasi-Mongolian facial features appear in the midst of art forms otherwise entirely Indian in character. Thus the cultural milieu of the antiquities of Ancient Khotan can be adequately explained by the postulate of an early connection between Khotan and the Taxila region, and there is nothing against our assuming that it began in Aśoka's reign.
c11.s29.2
¹ Rockhill : *Life of the Buddha* ch. viii; Beal—*Buddhist Records* i. pp. 143 ff. ii. pp. 309 ff : *Life*, p. 203 : Watters ii. pp. 295-305. Stein, *Ancient Khotan* (Oxford, 1907) i. pp. 156-66, and 368. Konow, *Khotan Studies* JRAS 1914, pp. 344 ff.