Geographical and Economic Studies in the Mahabharata: Upayana Parva c5.57

c5.57

The Tocharians have also received much attention. The scholars have generally occupied Marquart's identification of Ta-hia with Tu-ho-lo a designation met in the history of Northern Wei³⁹ (A.D. 386-556). But many scholars from Richtofen to Herzfeld have held that the Tochari were the Yüe-Chï. The word has been identified with the Thagouroi of Ptolemy (VI, 16, 5) on the silk route; the Chinese knew of remnants of the Togara in Kan-su in the second century B.C.; the name occurs in or about Kan-su in Tibetan texts; and the same name *taugara* for a town in Kan-su is found in a document in the Khotan Saka with date equivalent to as late as 800 A.D.⁴⁰ It follows that the Tochari in Bactria as mentioned by Apollodorus came from Kan-su, but the Chinese historians say that Yüe-chï came to Bactria at that time. Again we know from Apollodorus and Pliny that while there were no Tocharis in the Tarim basin in the reign of Euthydemus (died 190 B.C.) there were Tochari there later at the date of some source of Pliny (VI. 55), and here again we learn from the Chinese sources that the little Yüe-Chï came and settled there sometime not long after 174 B.C.; and the Indian writers called them by the same name Tokhāra.⁴¹ Finally Ptolemy unknowingly locates Tochari at several places where the Yüe-Chï are known to have been on their journey. Thagourai in Kan-su, Takoraioi north of Imaos, Tagouraioi near lake Issyk-Kul, Tachoroi in Sogdiana and Tocharoi in Bactria which alone should be conclusive.⁴² The Yüe-Chï hoard therefore was composed of two different peoples who appear in the Greek sources as Asii or Tochari. The Trogus source gives out the relationship where he says that the Asii are lords of the Tochari.⁴³