Tocharian/Kushana is the Cognate language to Meroitic

Clyde Winters,PhD

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Copyright© Clyde Winters 2012

Uthman dan Fodio Institute

11541 South Peoria

Chicago, Illinois 60643

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The Meroitic God Apedemek and a Vedic God

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Tocharian is the Cognate language to Meroitic

There are many mysteries concerning the Meroites of the Meroitic civilization of Nubia and the

Sudan. This ancient civilization lasted for hundreds of years and has left us many wonderful

monuments. In addition to many grand monuments the Meroites left us a written language.

Although scholars have been able to read the letters of this ancient Kushite writing for many

years up to now the full meaning of the Meroitic texts had alluded us. Today we can read the

Meroitic text in their entirety using the cognate language for Meroitic: Tocharian (Winters

1984,1989, 1996a, 1996b,1996c).

Linguist call this language formerly spoken in Central Asia: Tocharian (Burlak, 2008;

Winters 1988b, 1991, 1996b); the Chinese historical literature , indicates that the Tocharian

speakers were called Kushana or Yueh chih and that this group originated in China. In this paper

I will refer to the Tocharian speakers as Tocharian or Kushana.

The people of Meroe, had their own alphabet of 23 signs. This was a wonderful improvement

over hieroglyphic writing which was made up of numerous ideographic and phonetic signs. Prior

to the introduction of Meroitic, the Meroites used Egyptian hieroglyphics and Demotic.

In a recent article Starostin A. Burlak (2008) disputes this decipherment. He claims that for

a number of reasons there is no relationship between Meroitic and Tocharian

Francis Llewellyn Griffith, an Egyptologist was able to decipher the Meroitic script over 60

years ago. Although Griffith deciphered Meroitic, he was unable to read this writing because he

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did not know the cognate language.Using the comparative method I was able to discover that

Tocharian is cognate to Meroitic. This led to the full decipherment of the Meroitic script. We can

now read Meroitic using Tocharian ( Krause,1952 ; Windekens 1941, 1979).

Maurice Pope in THE STORY OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL DECIPHERMENT , has

made it clear that before an unknown language can be deciphered you must have the right

theoretical structure to base your inquiry upon (p.191).

Pope found that in the historical decipherments of ancient languages three preliminary

conditions must be met:

1) confidence that a script can be deciphered;

2) location of proper names must be determined;

3) the grammatical rules of the target language/script must be found (pp.186-187).

I was able to read Meroitic because these preliminary conditions were met, and I was able to

develop new hypothesis based on historical evidence to determine the cognate language of

Meroitic. Conditions number one and two were met by Griffith when he deciphered the Meroitic

script in 1910, and his discovery of the proper names of the Meroitic gods and individuals in

Meroitic text.

Griffith (1911a, 1911b, 1912) also discovered the direction the Meroitic writing was written.

This recognition by Griffith of the solubility of the Meroitic text was reinforced in 1978, with

publication of UNESCO's The Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Decipherment of the

Meroitic Script. This was an important publication because it provided researchers with up-to-

date information on the status of the Meroitic language.

Condition number three for the decipherment of Meroitic was met in 1979 when Fritz Hintze

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published his Beitrage zur meroitischen Grammatik . The research of F. Hintze (1979) and I.

Hoffmann (1981) have made it possible for us to find the cognate language of Meroitic:

Tocharian (Winters 1984 ,1989), because it gave us important information on the Meroitic verbal

system..

The work of Griffith (1911a,1911b, 1912) and Hintze (1979) fulfilled all the requirements for

the decipherment of the Meroitic writing .These text gave us the Meroitic proper names and

possible structure of Maroitic. Classical literature supported the view that we might be able to

find the Meroitic cognate language through a comparison of the Meroitic terms and Kushan

lexical items.

To test the Kushana hypothesis we had to then:

1) find agreement between Kushana and Meroitic terms;

2) compare Central Asian and Egypto-Sudanese toponomies;

3) compare Kushana and Meroitic grammatical forms.

Given this background we will now discuss the concerns of Dr. Burlak (2008). Burlak gives 11

reasons why he believes Tocharian and Meroitic are not related.

1. Burlak (2008) claimed that the Tocharian Meroitic cognates are mainly from

Tocharian A, and “for chronological and geographical reasons Meroitic can hardly

be more closely related to one of the Tocharian languages than the other” (p.100).

This is not surprising because the Classical literature makes it clear that Indian scholars

settled in the Meroitic Empire ( Corybeare,1950) .If Indian scholars were living in the Meroitic

Sudan, these scholars probably introduced the Tocharian language and Kharosthi script to the

Meroites. I used the Kushana hypothesis as the foundation of my decipherment of Meroitic.

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My decipherment of Meroitic is based on the Kushana theory. The Kushana theory is that a

group of "East Indian" scholars introduced the Meroitic writing system to the Meroites.

The Kushana hypothesis was based on the following evidence, 1) no African language has

been found to be a cognate language of Meroitic 2) the Classical literature says that the Kushites

lived in Asia and Africa; 3) the Gymnosophists, or "naked sages" of Meroe came from India

(Corybeare, 1950).

Flavius Philostratus, the writer of the Vita Apollonii, Vol. 1,claimed that the

Gymnosophists of Meroe originally came from India (Conybeare, 1950). Given the fact that the

Kushana had formerly ruled India around the time that the Meroitic writing was introduced to the

Kushite civilization,led to the hypothesis that the ancestors of the Gymnosophist may have been

Kushana philosophers.

Many Tocharian speakers lived predominately in Xinjiang and Gansu, China until they were

forced out of the region between 176-160 BCE. Other Tocharian speakers were probably already

in India, as supported by the Kharosthi inscriptions of the Asokan period.

The exodus of the Kushana or Tocharians from China, was around the time Meroitic was

introduced to the Meroites. The first Meroitic inscriptions date back to Queen Shanakdakheto

(REM 0039,0051-0054). Scholars vary on the dating of the inscriptions: Dunham (1957) 177-

155 BC; Hintze (1959) 180-170 BC; Wenig (1978) 170-150 BC; Shinnie (1996) 170-150 BC;

Welsby (1996) 180-170 BC. Torok (1996) suggest the end of the 2nd Century BC and considers

Queen Shanakdakheto to be the direct predecessor of King Tanyidamani.

The historical evidence of the Kushana having ruled India made the Classical references to

Indians in Meroe, an important source for the construction of alternative theories about the

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possible location of the cognate language of Meroitic. Moreover, the fact that the Tocharians fled

their original homeland before the rise of Meroitic script gave the Kushana ample opportunity to

have settled the Meroitic empire and introduce the Tocharian language and the script it was

written in Kharosthi to the Meroites.

There is external evidence, which supports the Kushana theory. A theory explains

observed phenomena and has predictive power. I have theorized that due to the claims of the

Classical writers that some of the Meroites came from India ( Conybeare , 1950 Vol.2:271).

According to the Life of Apollonius,the Indian Meroites were formerly led by a King

Ganges, who had "repulsed the Scythians who invaded this land [India from] across the

Caucasus" (Conybeare, 1950 Vol.1:273). Pilostratus also made it clear that the Indians of Meroe

came to this country after their king was killed.

The presence of this tradition of an Indian King of the Indian-Meroites conquering the

Scythians predicts that the Indian literature should record this historical episode. This prediction

is supported by a Jaina text called the Kalakeharya-Kathanaka, which reports that when the

Scythians invaded Malwa, the King of Malwa, called Vikramaditya defeated the Scythians

(Kulke & Rothermund, 1990 :73). This king Vikramaditya may be the Ganges mentioned in the

Life of Apollonius. Confirmation of the Ganges story, confirms the Classical literary evidence

that their were Indianized-Meroites that could have introduced the Tokharian trade language to

the Meroites.

There were other Indians in North Africa besides Kush/Meroe. For example, at Quseir al-

Qadim there was a large Indian speaking community ( Salomon, 1991,1993) that left us many

inscriptions written in their native script.. These Indians were in Egypt writing messages in their

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own language, around the time we see a switch from Egyptian hieroglyphics and Demotic to the

Meroitic writing system.

The evidence presented above provides internal and external validity for the Kushana

Hypothesis based upon the sources I have cited previously. The sources I have used are

impartial, to disconfirm my hypothesis someone needs to show that my propositions are not fully

informed[i.e., there were no Indians North Africa and Kush when the Classical writers

maintained they were] and present rival explanations based on the evidence. The fact that the

claims made by the Classical writers is supported by the Indian textual material is strong

confirmation of the Kushana hypothesis.

The hypothesis based on the classical literature, was enough to support the original Kushana

Hypothesis. The predicting power of the original theory, matches the observed natural

phenomena which was confirmed elsewhere by cognate place names, ethononyms, lexicalitems

and grammatical features, indicate that my theory has not be falsified.

The Classical literature makes it clear that Indians physically settled in the Meroitic Empire. It

was these Indians who probably introduced Kharosthi writing and the Tocharian A language.

The direct transfer of Tocharian A to the Meroites by Indian scholars would explain why the

language of the Meroitic inscriptions is Tocharian A .

2. The length of Meroitic words is too short.

Burlak (2008) argues that a basic problem of my decipherment is the word length. Whereas I

have found that the average length of Meroitic words is one-to-three characters in length . Burlak

(2008) maintains that the average length of Meroitic words is not one –to- three charaters, but

five to eight characters in length based on Meroitic proper names.

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Using Meroitic names to determine the length of Meroitic words fails to accurately describe

Meroitic lexemes, because names usually are compound words e.g., Kasta/ Kushto ‘the Kushite’

(Abdalla, 1989 p.876; Trigger, 1964 p. 193; Welsby, 1996). For example many Meroitic names

include the names of deities: Tamwetamani ; Arqamani; Anlamani ; and Takideamani.

Welsby (1996 p.190) noted that other Meroitic names include the words mak (god), malo

(good) and mote (child). Many Meroitic words are only two-three characters e.g., mk (god),

Wos (Isis), mn (Aman) and nob (Nubian). A common place name element in Meroitic place-

names is –te, e.g., Np-te (Napata), and ph rs-te (Faras). The majority of Meroitic ethnonyms are

also two-three characters lk (Lak), šq (Shaqa), and nob (Nubian).

A comparison of Meroitic and Tocharian grammatical features also indicates that in many

cases Meroitic words average one- three characters. In recent years researchers were able to

develop a grammar of Meroitic, without being able to read Meroitic. The research of Hintze

(1979) and Hoffman (1981) made it possible for us to find the cognate language of Meroitic:

Tokharian (Winters 1984 ,1989).

Hintze (1979) grammar of Meroitic provided the necessary material to compare Meroitic

with other languages to find its cognate language. Hintze (1979) recognized three approaches to

the study of Meroitic: 1) philological, 2) comparative, and 3) structural (i.e., the morphological-

syntactical).

The philological methods of Hintze (1979) was informed guesses based upon context.In the

comparative method the structures of two or more languages are compared to determine the

relationship between languages. Hintze's (1979) discussion of the Meroitic affixes provided us

with the linguistic material to compare Meroitic successfully with Tocharian.

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The comparative method is used by linguist to determine the relatedness of languages, and to

reconstruct earlier language states. The comparative linguist looks for patterns of

correspondence, i.e., the isolation of words with common or similar meanings that have

systematic consonantal agreement with little regard for location and/or type of vowel.

Consonantal agreement is the regular appearance of consonants at certain locations in words

having analogous meanings.

Hintze (1979) was sure that there were a number of Meroitic affixes including:

p

ye

-te

-to

-o

B.G. Trigger in his "Commentary" (Hintze 1979) mentioned several other possible Meroitic

affixes including:

-n

-te

-b

In addition , A. M. Abdalla in his "Commentary" (Hintze 1979)mentioned three possible verbal

suffixes , including:

-ñ

-t

-y

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These alleged Meroitic grammatical elements encouraged me to seek out a language that

contained these typological features as the possible cognate language for Meroitic. The Kushana

language includes all of these affixes.

Researchers working on Meroitic determined several possible prefixes:

p,

p

-s

y.

These proposed affixes for Meroitic are one character in length. Given the fact that experts in

Meroitic like Abdalla and Hintze recognized that Meroitic had a number of single character

lexemes makes it clear that when I found that many Meroitic terms were one-to-three character

in length illustrates that I was only following the linguistic findings of other Meroitists who are

the foundation of this decipherment of Meroitic.

Winters took these suggested Meroitic lexemes and compared them to Tocharian to discover

if similar affixes existed in Kushana. In Tocharian we find these prefixes: p(ä), the imperfect

prefix and imperative, y- the Tocharian element are joined to demonstratives , e.g., yopsa ‘in

between’.

There are other affixes that relate to the Meroitic suffixes proposed by Abdalla and Hintze

(1979) that are explained by Tocharian including –te, the demonstrative ‘this, etc.’; -o, the suffix

used to change nouns into adjectives. For example: aiśamñe ‘knowledge’, asimo ‘knowing;

klyomñ ’nobility’, klyomo ‘noble’.

Other Tocharian affixes which provide insight into Meroitic affixes include –te and -l. The

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Tocharian locative suffix is –te. The ending particle in Tocharian is –l. The Meroitic –t,

corresponds to the –t ‘you’. In Tocharian the pronouns are placed at the end of words: nas-a-m ‘I

am’, träkä-s ‘he says’, träkä-t ‘you say’.

The –t element in Tocharian can also be used to represent the third person singular e.g.,

kälpa-t ‘he found’.The p-, element used to form the imperative and imperfect in Tocharian .

This affix is used in both Tocharian A and B. For example,Tokh.A klyos "to hear, to

listen"p(a)klyos "You listen"p(a)klyossu "s/he listens"Tokh. B klyausp(a)klyaus 'you listen"A.

ta, tas, "to lay, to put"ptas 'you lay'B. tes, tas 'to put, to lay'ptes 'you put'.

The Tocharian -n-, has many uses . It can be used to form the subjuntive, e.g., yam 'to do',

yaman 's/he do(es). It is also used to form the plural se 'son', pl. sewan 'sons; ri 'city', pl. rin

'cities'.The plural in Tocharian is formed by the –ñ. For example,are ‘plough’, pl. areñ ‘ploughs’

ri ‘city’ , pl. riñ ‘cities.

Recognition of analogous structural elements in relation to Kushana/ Tocharian and Meroitic

allowed us to divide the Meroitic phonemes into words. Griffith (1911a,1911b,1912) provided us

with evidence for selected Meroitic nouns.

These examples of Meroitic names and lexical items make it clear that the average length of

characters for Meroitic words is less than 5-8 characters. It also illustrates that Winters based his

ideas on the possible length of some Meroitic words on the research of Abdalla and Hintze

(1979). This makes Burlak’s (2008) claim that the length of Meroitic terms is generally five-

seven characters as he alleges.

3. Burlak (2008 p.99) claims that there are too many verbs that are only one character

in length.

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This is an unjustified criticism of my decipherment. Many verbs in Tocharian are a single

character in length. Since Tocharian is the cognate language of Meroitic it is only natural that

Meroitic would have a number of verbs of one character in length. Moreover, this is not

surprising because Abdalla and Hintze (1979) had already noted the existence of Meroitic

lexemes of one character in length.

The nature of Tocharian as the cognate language of Meroitic allowed me to translate many

Meroitic verbs. Abdalla (Hintze 1979, 149) was sure that he detected several common verbs in

Meroitic including:

hr,

the,

tk,

we,

pl,

do,

mde

yi mde.

Following this lead I searched the Tocharian language to determine if it possessed any verbs

that might match the proposed hypothetical verbs of Abdalla in his “Commentary” (Hintze,

1979). A comparison of Kushan and Meroitic proved to be successful. We now know that he was

absolutely right about his interpretation of possible Meroitic verbs.

Below is the interpretation of these Meroitic verbs based on Tocharian cognates. Many of

these verbs were discussed by Burlak (2008) as part of the Tocharian language.

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hr , to have dignity

the , to move

tk , to set in motion, to investigate

w-e , to give escort

pl , to boast, to praise

m-de , measure the offering

y i m-de , go make (full) measure of the offering

Recognition of these Meroitic terms as verbs gave us even more confirmation that Kushana

was probably the Meroitic cognate language. This discovery of Meroitic verbs and nouns, and

cognate toponomies in Central Asia and Upper-Nubia-Sudan (see Appendix) proved that

Meroitic could be read using Kushana lexical items.

The Egyptian writing does not have vowel notations. The reality that Tocharian verbs and

affixes are vowels may explain why the Meroitic script has vowel notations. They may have

these vowel notations to indicate the fact that they represent lexemes.

4. Tocharian text do not date back to the 2nd Century BC.

The Tocharian language was written in Khatrosthi script. This script was used to write the

Gandhararan Buddist Text. According to Glass (2000) the Kharosthi script appears fully

developed in the Asokan inscriptions of Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra. These inscriptions date

back to 3rd Century BC (Glass, 2000 p.20). It continued to be used in Gandhara, Kushan and

Sogdian. Glass provides evidence that Kharosthi writing dates back to the first Brahmi

inscriptions of India (Glass, 2000 pp.20-21). The fact the writing was used in India by Asoka to

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produce the rock edicts (Glass, 2000) , demonstrates that Khasrothi was in use long before the

introduction of the Meroitic script to Kush.

The Meroitic script resembles many Khaorsthi signs. Some researchers argue that the

Meroites did not adopt the writing system of the Kushana/Tocharian people which was

Kharosthi. Although this is their opinion a comparison of the Meroitic and Kharosthi symbols

make it clear that both writing systems share many cognate signs.

Aubin (1996) did a comparison of Meroitic and Kharothi and discovered that 34 out of 42

signs or 81% matched.

Figure 1 : Aubin (1996) Comparison of Meroitic and Kharosthi Signs

Since Tocharian was written is Kharosthi the cognition between Kharosthi and Meroitic is

quite interesting and shows some connection between these scripts. It also offers additional

support to the Tocharian origin of Meroitic writing given the analogy between the signs.

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Let's not forget that Welsby in The Kingdom of Kush , notes that "only four of the

[Meroitic] letters resemble the equivalent Egyptian demotic signs" (p.193) But as you can see

from the above there are more than four demotic signs that match Meroitic, and even more of

these signs match Kharosthi.

The summary , Kharosthi script dates back to the 3rd Century BC. It was used to write

Tocharian inscriptions. This makes it clear that Kharosthi was in use long before the Meroitic

script was created.

5. Burlak (2008) claims that Meroitic terms should be compared to Proto-Tocharian and

that Winters’ did not compare Meroitic to Proto-Tocharian (p.101).

Comparing Meroitic to Proto-Tocharian was unnecessary for two reasons. First, the Kushana

Hypothesis makes it clear that there was no need to compare Meroitic to Proto-Tocharian

because , Kharosthi and Tocharian A was probably physically taken to Meroitic Sudan by the

Indian scholars mentioned in the Classical Literature. Secondly, you can not decipher an ancient

script using a proto-language because a proto-language can not be verified as having ever

existed, because it is reconstructed from living languages, but lack any textual material to

document its former existence.

You can not decipher a dead language using a Proto- language. This was attempted in the case

of Olmec and proved to be a failure.

Before my decipherment of Meroitic the attested vocabulary of Meroitic was only 26 terms.

Researchers proved decades ago that none of these terms have Nubian and Nilo-Saharan

cognates. This makes Rilly's ideas about deciphering Meroitic using Proto-Northern Eastern

Sudani a farce.

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This is a farce because we do have document evidence of Meroitic, but none for the Nilo-

Saharan languages. As a result, any proto-term from Northern Eastern Sudani Rilly compares

with Meroitic will be conjecture since there is no documented evidence of Nilo-Saharan

languages being spoken in the Meroitic

Rilly claims that lexicostatistics or glottochronology and Proto- Northern eastern Nilo-

Saharan allows him to read Meroitic. This idea does not correspond to linguistic reality.

Lexicostatistics is used to fit datable events among languages that theoretically are descendant

from a common ancestor through examination of the basic vocabulary. The basic vocabulary is

that part of the lexicon that shows slow change. These terms relate to basic cultural practices and

universal human experiences.

Rilly can not use a Proto-Language to read Meroitic because there are only 26 attested

Meroitic terms accepted by the establishment. None of these terms are cognate to Nubian or

Taman terms except the name for a Meroitic god.

Rilly claims to be able to decipher Meroitic using a method that compares basic cultural

words languages separated in time and space. Rilly, can not use this method to read Meroitic,

because none of the attested Meroitic terms have Nilo-Saharan cognates save one, the term for

god.

Rilly has found only 1 cognate shared between Nubian and Meroitic there is no way you can

date the time Meroitic speakers and Nilo-Saharan speakers spoke a common ancestral language.

The absence of Meroitic and Nubian cognates prevents any fruitful comparisons between these

languages.

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There are three ways to verify a protolanguage is congruent with reality 1) there is

documentary evidence of the ancestor or near ancestor of the target language that allows

comparison of actual terms and grammars to the construct (i.e., reconstructed lexical items and

grammars); 2) written evidence in the form of inscriptions exist from systematic excavation that

compare favorably to the construct; and 3) the power of prediction that this or that construct will

conforms to objective reality.

Rilly's ideas that he can read Meroitic based on Kushite names from Kerma, which he calls

proto-Meroitic names (even though he knows full well that a protolanguage is artificial and

comes from reconstruction); and a list of Northern Proto-Eastern Sudani terms from the Nubian,

Nara, Taman and Nyima languages meets none of these standards. This linguistic material fails

to meet the standard because there is no textual or documentary evidence for Northern Proto-

Eastern Sudani dating to the Meroitic period. Moreover, the principle language Rilly hopes to

use to read Meroitic text: Nubian, was not spoken in the Meroitic Empire. A fact Rilly admits in

his own paper where he notes that Nubians invaded the Meroitic Empire during the declining

days of the empire.

Theodora Bynon, Historical Linguistics, wrote that ,"a protolanguage is no more than a

theorectical construct designed to link by means of rules the systems of historically related

languages in the most economical way. It thus summarizes the present state of our knowledge

regarding the systematic relationships of grammars of the related languages....When dealing with

past language states it is possible to assess the distance between construct and reality only in

cases where we possess documented evidence regarding an ancestor or a near ancestor, such as is

provided by Latin, in the case of the Romance languages"(p.71).

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We can reject Rilly's claim he can use this protolanguage to read Meroitic because there is no

documented evidence of Northern Eastern Sudani speakers ever living in the historic Meroitic

Empire, until after the Meroitic Empire was in decline. The absence of documentary evidence of

any Nilo-Saharan language spoken in the Meroitic Empire during the Meroitic period precludes

any possibility that Rilly's alleged Proto-Northern Eastern Sudani has any relationship to

Meroitic or reality for that matter.

Empire.H.H. Hock, in Principles of Historical Linguistics (1986), observed that there

are two major arguments against the idea that comparative reconstructions recover the

"prehistoric reality" of a language.The first principle, is that languages change over time. This

makes it almost impossible to "fully" reconstruct the lexcical items and grammar of the ancestral

language. Secondly, there are few, if any dialect free languages. Constructs resulting from

comparing lexical items and grammars from an available set of languages,produce a dialect free

protolanguage, that is unnatural and "factually incorrect as shown by the insights of the wave

theory" (p.568). If a proto-language is factually incorrect there is no way it can be used to

represent a dead language.

First, it must be stated that no “dead “ language has been deciphered using a proto-

language. These languages were deciphered using living languages, Coptic in the case of

Egyptian, Oromo and(Ethiopian) Semitic was used to decipher the Mesopotamian Cuneiform

scripts. The basic problem with using a proto-language to read a dead language results from the

fact that the proto-language has been reconstructed by linguist who have no knowledge or textual

evidence of the alleged proto-language.

Secondly, there are subgroups in anyfamily of languages. This means that you must first

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establish the intermediate proto-language (IPL) of the subgroup languages in the target

language family. Once the IPLs have been reconstructed, you can then reconstruct the

superordinate proto-language (SPL). You can only reconstruct the SPL on the basis of attested

languages. In addition, before you can reconstruct the IPLs and SPL a genetic relationship must

be established for the languages within the Superfamily of languages, e.g., Nilo Saharan.

The problem with Rilly’s method, is there is no way he can really establish the IPLs in

Eastern Sudanic because we have no textual evidence or lexical items spoken by people who

lived in the Sudan in Meroitic times. As a result, the languages spoken by people in this area

today may not reflect the linguistic geography of the Sudan during the Meroitic period.

This is most evident when we look at modern Egypt. Today the dominant spoken language in

the country is Arabic, Arabic has no relationship to ancient Egyptian. If we accept Rilly’s

method for deciphering Egyptian we would assume that once me reconstructed proto-Semitic ,

we could read Egyptian—but as you know Egyptian is not a Semitic language.

Secondly, researchers have compared the “attested Meroitic” terms to all the Nilo-Saharan

languages. The results were negative, they do not relate to any Eastern Sudanic language. If the

lexical items attested in Meroitic are not cognate to Eastern Sudanic terms, there is no way to

establish a genetic relationship between these languages. Absence of a genetic relationship

means that we can not reconstruct the imagined IPLs of Meroitic sister languages, since these

researchers failed to find a connection between Meroitic and the Eastern Sudanic. As a result,

Rilly’s reconstructions of Nilo-Saharan can offer no insight into the language spoken by the

Meroites.

Granted, by comparing languages and associating them with a particular time period you can

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make comparative reconstructions that may eliminate dialectal diversity. But Rilly can not do

this because none of the attested Meroitic terms have Nubian cognates. This along with the fact

that we have no textual evidence of Nilo-Saharan during the Meroitic period demonstrating that

Nilo-Saharan languages were spoken in the Meroitic Empire, especially Nubian,precludes using

proto-Northern Eastern Sudani terms to read Meroitic.

Using proto-Northern Eastern Sudani terms to read Meroitic will fail to provide a

linguistically realistic situation in Nubia 2000 years ago. This is especially true for Nubian,

which was not spoken in the Meroitic Empire.

6. Meroitic has too many words that find direct parallels in Tocharian A.

This is explained by the fact that Indians physically took Tocharian A and Kharosthi to the

Meroitic Sudan . A direct physical transfer of Tocharian A to the Meroites would explain the

abundance of Tocharian-Meroitic cognates.

7. Burlak declares that Tocharian prefers the SOV order

Tocharian is written in various syntax in addition to SOV. . The Tocharian syntax is the result of

the fact that most Tocharian text are translations from Sanskrit. And as noted by Werner Winter

(1982) Tocharian is written in metrical form. This means that the text must fit the requirements

of the meter. As a result, it can be written in any word order SOV or SVO .

8. Burlak (1990) claims that Meroitic does not have negative forms and the pa affix.

This is false. I did discuss the Tocharian prefix pä , which appears in Meroitic as the

imperfect prefix which is found in line 19, of the Tanyidamani stela (Winters, pp.366 & 380).

Meroitic does have the Tocharian negative particle. In line 47 of the Tanyidamani stela we

read: mi-m-n i s-ne š qor o s-ne Amn pt es. The translation is “Injure him not, go protect the

Page | 22

good patron. The monarch to open the Supporter (of ) Aman to manifest praise”. The key terms

in Meroitic: mi ‘injure’, -m ‘not’ and –n ‘him’. Mi-m-n reads: “injure not him”.

9. Burlak claims that Tocharian lacks the possessive markers –n/ne ‘his’ and -tō

‘your’.

This is false. Tocharian has these pronouns e.g., Tocharian A tu ‘you’> Meroitic tō, and

Tocharian B ne ‘he,his’> Meroitic ne ‘he,his’ (Adams, 1988).

10. Burlak claims that there is no evidence of population movement in Kush during this

period for the switch from Demotic to Meroitic (p.101).

Ancient Kush extended across a large part of the Sudan. In this vast region encompassing the

Napatan and Meroitic civilizations there were many different nationalities, that spoke a myriad

of languages.

Due to the ethnic diversity of the Napatans, it is clear that at least from the Napatan period of

Kush the rulers of the empire had decided that no single language spoken in the empire would be

used to record political, administrative and religious information. To maintain an equilibrium

within and among the Napatan nationalities Egyptian was used as the lingua franca of the

Napatan empire.

The leaders of the Napatan empire probably used Egyptian because it was an international

language, and few Kushites were of Egyptian ethnic origin.Egyptian remained the lingua franca

for the Kushites during the Napatan and early Meroitic periods in Kushite history. After the

Assyrians defeated the Egyptians the ethnic composition of the Kushite empire began to change.

Many Egyptians began to migrate into Kushite, to avoid non-Egyptian rule.

Beginning with the Assyrian defeat of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty large numbers of nomadic

Page | 23

people from the Middle East began to migrate into Egypt. These foreign people began to take

over many Egyptian settlements. In response, Egyptians fled to Nubia and Kush to avoid non-

Egyptian rule.

Other political and military conflicts erupted after the Assyrians defeated the Twenty-Fifth

Dynasty. These incidents led many Egyptians to migrate out of Egypt into Nubia and Kush. For

example, Herodotus’ mentions the mutiny of Psamtik I’s frontier garrison at Elephantine—these

deserters moved into Kush.

The archaizing trend in Kush among the post Twenty-Fifth Dynasty Kings testify to a

possible large migration of Egyptians into Kush. In 343 BC Nectanebos II, fled to Upper Egypt.

Later according to the Natasen period stela we have evidence of other Egyptians migrating into

Kush from Egypt (Torok, 1997, p.391).

Between the 260’s-270’s BC Upper Egyptian Nationalists were fighting the Ptolemy (Greek)

rulers of Egypt. The rebellion was put down by Ptolemy II. This military action led to Egyptians

migrating out of Egypt into Kush (Torok, pp.395-396). Rebellions continued in Egypt into the

2nd Century BC (Torok, p.426).

Between Ptolomy II and Ptolemy V, the Greeks began to settle Egypt. This was especially

true in the 150’sBC. These conflicts led to many Egyptians migrating into Nubia and the Sudan.

By the time the Romans entered Egypt, many Egyptians had already left Egypt and settled in the

Meroitic Sudan.

Roman politics also forced many Egyptians to migrate into Kush. This was compounded by

the introduction of the Pax Agusta policy of the Romans which sought the establishment of

Roman hegemony within territories under Roman rule . This led to the emigration of many

Page | 24

Romans into Egypt, and the migration of Egyptians into Kush.

During most of Kushite history the elites used Egyptian for record keeping since it was

recognized as a neutral language.As more and more Egyptians, fled to Kush as it came under

foreign domination . Egyptians became a large minority in the Meroitic Empire. Because of

Egyptian migrations to Kush, by the rule of the Meroitic Queen Shanakdakheto, we find the

Egyptian language abandoned as a medium of exchange in official records, and the Meroitic

script takes its place.

The textual and historical evidence is clear. There was a large migration of Egyptian speaking

nationals into Kush. This made Egyptian a major language spoken by Meroitic citizens. The

change in demographics in the Meroitic Empire probably led to the shift from Egyptian to

Tocharian, which would have been see as a neutral language because only a few Indians were

probably living in the empire at the time.

11. Burlak does not understand why there are many synonyms in Meroitic.

There are many synonyms in meroitic because of the absence of certain Meroitic sounds. As a

result, certain words beginning with h, q, and k for example have the same meaning. You can

have a word which has different phonemes but have the same meaning. For example, look at the

letters z and s in English. These phonemes sound similar and when used to spell words does not

change the meaning of the word e.g., Am Eng. Civilization and British Eng. Civilisation.

12. Burlak believes Winters’ decipherment of Meroitic and use of Tocharian words to

read Meroitic must be wrong, because the Tocharian words used by Winters to read

Meroitic have no plausible Indo-European etymology.

Page | 25

This is a silly complaint. The fact that the Tocharian words used to read and translate Meroitic

do not have an Indo-European etymology should have nothing to do with using Kushana words

to read Meroitic.

Burlak (2008) acknowledges that many attested Tocharian terms are “hapax legomena, or

have unknown meaning. The vocabulary of both languages is full of loan-words which are

themselves not recognized and etymologised. Additionally there are many words which may be

either native or loan” (p.99). If many of the terms recognized as Tocharian, are not I-E in origin

Burlak’s complaint about the origination of Tocharian terms used to read Meroitic is quite petty,

since many Tocharian terms lack I-E etymology in the first place and he already recognizes this

fact in his article.

Winters (1990) has argued that their ancestral culture was the Qijia culture of western

China. The Chinese claimed that the Tocharians called themselves Kushana > Kuishuang. The

Qijia culture is characterized by domesticated cattle, sheep and pig. This culture existed from the

upper Weishui Valley in the east, the Huangshui Valley of Qijia in the West, Ningxia and the

westernmost Inner Mongolia in the north.

This was the most advanced agro-pastoral group in early China (Chang 1987:283). The Qijia

pottery signs are analogous to those found in the Harappan writing and on Harappan pottery

(Chang 1987:283).

Many Indo-Europeanists would agree that the spread of the Pit Grave and Andronovo

cultures of the 3rd and 2nd millennium B.C., may reflect the Indo-Iranian infilling of the steppe

zone Mallory 1989; Sherratt & Sherratt, 1988). This view is complicated by Tocharian which

reflects little affinity to Indo-Iranian.

Page | 26

To explain this anomaly Tocharianists argue that Tocharian early separated from its Proto-

Indo-European neighbors (Adams 1995). An additional argument used to explain the difference

between Tocharian and the Iranian speakers is the theory that Tocharian is a "western" Indo-

European language that early lost contact with its cogeners, but reflects palatals that place it in

the centum I-E branch (Pulleyblank 1995). This second hypothesis is used to explain the

numerous archaisms in Tocharian and the few common innovations shared by Tocharian and

speakers of the "western" Indo-European languages (Adams 1995:411). But Adams (1995)

makes it clear that:” Subsequent investigation has led to the conclusion that Tocharian is not

closely related to any other Indo-European branch. Shared lexical innovations do tend to show a

greater degree of relationship with various western branches of Indo-European than with the

eastern ( i.e., Indo-Iranian) but the lexical associations are not very overwhelming" (p.404).

The Sherratts (1988) have suggested two solutions to the Tocharian "problem". The first

solution is that Tocharian may represent the earliest phase of Indo-European migration from the

Proto-Indo-European homeland. The alternative solution is that Tocharian is a late Indo-

European language associated with trade along the Silk Road (Sherratt 1988:587; Winters,

1998).

In 1908 Sieg and Siegling published their findings that Tocharian was an IE language. This

discovery was accepted without any challenge. But Ringe (1995) maintains that although

Tocharian is an IE language "the Tocharian languages do not closely resemble any other IE

languages. In other words Tocharian is a separate "branch" of the I-E family, on a par with

Germanic, Greek, Indo-Iranian, etc." (p.439).

Page | 27

Tocharian does not detail many features associated with I-E languages. For example,

Tocharian fails to illustrate original cases associated with I-E nouns. Moreover, whereas I-E

languages are grammatically synthetic, in contrast Tocharian is an agglutinative language. For

example, grammatically Latin illustrates a genitive case and nominative case.

Although Tocharian is accepted as an IE language there is disturbing linguistic evidence that

makes it difficult to properly place Tocharian in the IE family. A large part of the vocabulary of

Tocharian detailed etymology. There is considerable influence on Tocharian from Sanskrit and

Iranian due to Buddhism. Tocharian also shares many phonological and word formational and

lexical correspondences with Balto-Slavic languages.

J.Van Windekens (1976) has compared Tocharian and IE vocabularies and established the

following Tocharian isoglosses, ranked as follows: 1) Germanic, 2) Greek, 3) Indic, 4-5) Baltic

and Iranian, 6) Latin, 7) Slavic, 8) Celtic, 9) Anatolian, 10) Armenian and 11) Albanian. D.Q.

Adams (1984) established a different rank order 1) Germanic, 2) Greek, 3) Baltic, 4) Indic, 5)

Slavic, 6-8) Latin, Celtic, Iranian, 9) Albanian, 10) Anatolian and 11) Armenian.

Tocharian shares many ancient features with Hittite in noun morphology. For example,

Tocharian A e-, B ai- 'to give' : Hittite pai- < pa-ai-; Tocharian A ya- 'to do': Hittite iia-;

Tocharian A tkam, B kem 'earth': Hittite tekan.

In relation to Sanskrit and Greek, Tocharian has preserved the mediopassive voice and the

presence of both subjunctive and optative mood. The most important evidence of Tocharian

relations within the IE family are the Greek and Tocharian cognates: Tocharian A ñkat, B ñakte

'God'; A natäk 'lord', nasi 'lady'; Greek wanakt 'King', *wanakya queen' .

Page | 28

There is also evidence of Sanskrit and Iranian influences in relation to religious and technical

terms. Tocharian has a limited association with Iranian, especially in relation to "Old Iranian"

or Avestan terms, Bactrian terms and Ossetic terms.

Page | 29

Indo-European archaisms are preserved in Tocharian, Celtic, Phrygian and Anatolian

(Mallory 1989:155). In addition, Tocharian, Latin, Irish, Hittite and Phrygian retain the

medio-passive ending in -r, e.g., Tocharian A -mar, B -mar; A klyosmar, B

klyausemar 'hear'; Latin loquitur, Old Irish labrithir 'speaks'.

Bonfante (1987:77) has observed that Tocharian has old contacts only with Slavic or

through Slavic. As a result of this contact Tocharian shares many phonological, word

formational and lexical correspondences with Balto-Slavic.

Ringe (1990)believes that many of the Tocharian innovations which link it to the

western IE languages may have developed independently in Tocharian and reflect "

natural" language changes (Ringe, 1995: 440). Bonfante (1987) list four Tocharian

innovations shared with Slavic: 1) IE *eu becomes yu; 2) the prefix so- with perfective

value (found Tocharian only in the imperative); 3) Tocharian A rake, B reki; Slavic rec,

and 4) Tocharian A sar, B ser, Slavic sestra 'sister'.

Schmidt (1990) has argued that many of the innovations in Tocharian may be the

result of substratum influences of non-IE languages. Winters (1988a, 1989, 1991, 1998)

has argued that there is a Dravidian substratum to Tocharian.

The Dravidian substratum in Tocharian appears to be from the Tamil and Telugu

languages. In addition to lexical items, the Tamil and Tocharian languages possess

structural and grammatical analogy. For example, Dravidian and Tocharian share the

plural ending element -lu and -u, e.g., Telugu magadu 'man, husband', (pl.) magalu

'men'; Tocharian wast 'house', (pl.) wastu 'houses'.

30

It is interesting to note that Dravidians and Tocharians share many terms for animals,

e.g., Dravidian ku-na 'dog', Tocharian ku 'dog'; and Dravidian kode 'cow', Tocharian ko

'cow'.

There are five different IE roots for horse. This multiplicity of IE roots for horse

makes these terms inconclusive for the IE proto-lexicon. This is interesting because the

Dravidian term for horse is iyuli, this is analogous to Tocharian yuk (Winters 1988,1991,

1998).

The Tocharian lexicon has also been influenced by Tibetan, Chinese and Uighur

(Blazek 1988; Winters 1991). The Sino-Tibetan influence is evident in certain key terms,

e.g., Tocharian B plewe 'boat, Gurung plava 'boat', Archaic Chinese plyog and ancient

Chinese plyow 'boat'; these terms for boat corresponds with Tamil patavu 'boat';

Tocharian A kuryur, B karyar 'business', purchase', B kary 'to buy', Tibetan-Burmic

*kroy , in Burmic Krwè 'debt', Kochin khoi 'borrow or lend'; and Tocharian A and B par

'bring, take', IE *bher 'bring', Tibeto-Burmic *p-, in *par 'trade, buy, sell' and Kannanda

bar 'bring'.

The Dravidian and Altaic substratums in Tocharian supports the hypothesis of

Winters (1998) and, Andrew and Susan Sherratt (1988) that Tocharian was a trade

language. This would also agree with Chinese evidence that the Tocharians migrated into

Central Asia from the east, not the northwest.

If Tocharian was a trade language , this would explain the evidence that Tocharian is

not a centum language and its illustration of a clear dual contrast in reflexes of the

gutturals. This hypothesis also offers an explanation of the great time depth indicated for

the separation of Tocharian from Proto-IE.

31

Central Asia has long been characterized by the habitation of this area by diverse

groups. Thus its history is manifested by the infilling of central Asia by various nomadic

groups in search of conquest and/or colonization made this part of Asia a centre of

pluralistic societies. Given Central Asia's situation as a centre of linguistic fragmentation

made the development of a lingua franca advantageous for inter-tribal relations.

A down the line pattern of conquest and settlement by successive non-indigenous

populations in Central Asia probably led to extensive bilingualism in central Asia. These

bilingual speakers handled trade between the various Central Asian populations, and their

trading partners in neighboring countries.

This suggest that down the line exchange directional trade pattern through the use of

bilingual speakers at each step of the chain may offer one explanation for the origin of

Tocharian as a trade language combining elements and vocabulary from the language

spoken by populations of different bilingual speakers participating in the Central Asian

exchange system. This means that Tocharian may be a mixed language--a Central Asian

lingua franca similar to the Swahili language of east Africa, which combines the Bantu

and Arabic languages.

The large corpus of non-IE words in Tocharian discussed by Blazek (1988) and

Winters (1988a, 1990, 1991) is congruent with the hypothesis that IE elements in

Tocharian, especially Greek (and Slavic) were loanwords into Tocharian after the Greek

conquest of Bactria. This borrowing pattern is consistent with the spread of the Greek

language into Bactria by a small politically dominant minority of Greek settlers into a far

larger and previously long-established non-IE speaking majority population.

32

The Greco-Bactrians were probably bilingual . Bilingualism can be induced through

two methods 1) state coercion or 2) its ability to offer advantages to two or more

populations in contact. The latter method of change usually accounts for bilingualism--

people use the new language to obtain better access to status, security, ritual or goods.

The Greek emphasis on direct methods of political control in Bactria forced many non-

Greeks to become bilingual due to its advantage as a tool for greater upward mobility

during Greek rule.

The historical and linguistic evidence suggest that convergence in Central Asia, was

unidirectional, in that successive IE speaking populations namely Greek and Slavic

speakers conquered the indigenous Central Asian Dravidian speakers. This convergence

led to the raise of Tocharian as a trade language.

As a result of prolonged bilingual contact between Greek and non-Greek speakers,

Tocharian was more than likely an interlanguage used for purposes of trade based on the

Greek superstratum and Dravidian substratum. The view that Dravidian was spoken over

a large part of Central Asia is supported by the islands of Dravidian speakers found today

in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Southern Russia. These pockets of contemporary

Dravidian speakers support the archaeological evidence of Dravido-Harappan

colonization of Central Asia over 4000 years ago (Winters 1988a,1990).

Tocharian shares linguistic features with Altaic, Greek and Dravidian. These analogies

suggest centuries of contact within a multilingual setting.

Over the centuries various nomadic groups have swept into the Central Asian steppes

to plunder and conquer sedentary populations, e.g., Greeks, Turks, Sogdians and Sakians.

As a result of this conflict, widespread bilingualism became a normal feature of the

33

socio-linguistic reality of ancient Central Asia. This inturn would lead to analogous

phonetic surface structures resulting from centuries of interference. The diverse

languages spoken in Central Asia around this time would have made a lingua franca

necessary to insure trade and communication could effectively and efficiently take pace

in this region. Tocharian probably served this purpose, and probably explains the

numerous non-I-E features and vocabulary found in Tocharian.

As a result of the Greek influence in Bactria, Bactrians had to acquire "Greek Culture"

to enhance their position and opportunity in Bactria during Greek rule, placed prestige on

status elements introduced by the Greeks. Status acquired by Bactrians was thus centred

around acquisition of Greek language and Greek culture. This would have inturn added

pressure on the Bactrians to incorporate Greek terms into a Bactrian lingua franca (i.e.,

Tocharian).

Given the fact that Greek administrators in Bactria refused to fully integrate Bactrians

into the ruling elite led to subsequent generations of native Bactrians to progressively

incorporate more Greek terms into their native language. This would explain why

Tocharian has many features that relate to certain IE etymologies associated with the

Greeks, but illustrates little affinity to Indo-Iranian languages which are geographically

and temporally closer to Tocharian.

The influence of colonial Greeks in Central Asia would explain why the most

important evidence of Tocharian relations within the IE family are the Greek and

Tocharian cognates (Adams, 1984; Mallory 1989: Windekens, 1976).

34

The Greek invasion/elite dominance model for IE elements in Tocharian is congruent

with the linguistic and historical evidence which indicates the early settlement of Central

Asia by Dravidian speakers among a diverse Bactrian population that used a Proto-

Dravidian language as a lingua franca. This lingua franca: Tocharian, probably allowed

intra-ethnic communication in the region. Mallory's (1989:182) hypothesis of a Pontic-

Caspian steppe homeland for the Tocharians lacks congruency given the historical

evidence for the subjugation of the Bactrians by IE speakers, and a Chinese origin for the

Tocharians (Pulleyblank 1995; Winters 1990, 1991).

In summary, Andrew and Susan Sherratt's (1988) hypothesis that trade may have

played a role in the raise of Tocharian, may be the best solution for the Tocharian

problem. It supports the historical evidence of a strong Greek influence in Central Asia

which allowed the Greek language to become a Superstratum of a Dravidian based trade

languages which we call Tocharian today.

The Greek colonization of Bactria, made the Greek language a link language between

the non-IE languages spoken in Central Asia three thousand years ago, which after many

generations of bilingualism led to an interlanguage phenomena that became a permanent

feature of the literate speech community in this region. We can define the

institutionalization of an interlanguage as language recombination, i.e., the mixing of the

vocabulary and structures of the substratum language (Dravidian) and the superstratum

language (Greek and later Slavic speaking Saka people) to form a new mixed language:

Tocharian.

The "elite dominance model" hypothesis would have two basic consequences in

relation to Tocharian linguistics. First, it would account for the correspondence in

35

grammar (especially agglutination) and vocabulary between Dravidian and Tocharian on

the one hand, and Tocharian and Indo-European on the other. Secondly, the settlement of

the Saka in Bactria after the Greeks, would explain the great topological similarity

between Tocharian and Balto-Slavic. The evidence of Saka and Greek conquest of

Bactria/ Central Asia confirms the Sherratt (1988) hypothesis that Tocharian may be a

trade language, and offers a plausible solution to the non-I-E character of Tocharian.

In conclusion, it is clear from this review that Tocharian is the cognate language to

Meroitic. It has been explained that Tocharian was probably a trade language and it was

adopted by the Meroites to serve as a means of communication—a lingua franca-- for the

diverse populations living in the Meroitic empire.

The ability to reliably predict a linguistic relationship between Kushana and Meroitic,

was further confirmation of the Kushana Hypothesis, because the linguistic connections

were deducible from prediction. I controlled the Kushana Hypothesis by comparing the

statements of the classical writers, with historical, linguistic anthropological and

toponymic evidence found not only in Africa, but also India and Central Asia (see

Appendix). I constructed three testable hypotheses in support of the Kushana theory, and

it seems only fair that these variables must be disconfirmed, to falsify the Kushana

Hypothesis.

Hypothesis 1: If the Meroites used a writing system of non-African origin a tradition

mentioning this fact will exist. (Hypothesis confirmed. Classical literature mentions

Indian scholars in ancient Meroe.)

Hypothesis: 2. If the classical literature mentions Indians who lived in Egypt

influencing the Meroites their should be historical evidence relating to this tradition.

36

(Hypothesis confirmed .Classical literature mentions a King who left his country is

mentioned in the Jaina text called the Kalakeharya-Kathanaka.)

Hypothesis: 3. If Classical literature is true about the Indian origin of the

Gymnosophists Indians will be found living near the Meroites around the time the

Meroitic inscriptions appear. (Hypothesis confirmed. Artifacts and coins with Indian

inscriptions have been found in Egypt and Ethiopia.) Failure to disconfirm these theorem,

implies validity of my prediction. Burbak (2008) attempted to deny a relationship

between Meroitic and Tocharian by making claims that were not supported by the

evidence. His claims that the length of words was too short, and selected elements

associated with Tocharian was not evident in Meroitic have proven to be false, and did

not reflect the significant in roads into reading Meroitic made by Abdalla and Hintze

(1979).

My confirmation of the above variables in the Kushana Hypothesis: 1) the presence

of Indians in Africa writing in their own scripts; 2) the presence of Kushana sages in

India who may have migrated to Meroe;3) cognate lexical items; 4)cognate verbs and 5)

cognate grammatical features; indicates systematic controlled, critical and empirical

investigation of the question of Tocharian representing the Meroitic cognate language.

The evidence that the Classical references to an Indian King who

conquered the Scythians is supported by the Indian literature, provides

external corroboration of the tradition that some of the Meroites were

of Indian origin. The presence of Indian traders and settlers in Meroe

(and Egypt), makes it almost impossible to deny the possibility that

Indians, familiar with the Tocharian trade language did not introduce

this writing to the Meroites who needed a neutral language to unify the

diverse ethnic groups who made up the Meroite state. In relation to the

37

history of linguistic change and bilingualism, it is a mistake to

believe that linguistic transfer had to take place for the Meroites to

have used Tocharian, when it did not take place when they wrote in

Egyptian hieroglyphics for hundreds of years.

The Classical literature makes it clear that Indians physically settled in the Meroitic

Empire. It was these Indians who probably introduced Kharosthi writing and the

Tocharian A language. The direct transfer of Tocharian A to the Meroites by Indian

scholars would explain why the language of the Meroitic inscriptions are written in

Tocharian A .

Burbak (2008) failed to illustrate that Tocharian and Meroitic were not related because

he did not know that textual and archaeological material indicated that the Classical

literature made it clear that Indians lived in the Meroitic empire. This provided evidence

that Indians physically introduced Tocharian and the Kharosthi script to the Meroites.

The physical transfer of Tocharian and Kharosthi by the Gymnosophists would explain

why a specific Kushana language: Tocharian A was used to write Meroitic.

My research into Kushana or Tocharian has led me to recognize that this language was

probably used as a lingua franca or trade language in Central Asia by the diverse peoples

living there in an intense bilingual environment (Winters 1996a, 1996b). Winters

(1991,1998) has illustrated how the Greek and Slavic terms in Tocharian were loanwords,

absorbed by Tocharian after the Greek conquest of Bactria.

This borrowing pattern was consistent with the spread of the Greek language into

Bactria by a small elite group of warriors.The classical and Egyptian sources make it

clear that Upper Nubia and the Sudan was inhabited by numerous tribes. The possible

38

early use of Kushan\Tocharian as a trade language made it an ideal candidate for use by

the Meroitic elites who ruled an empire that was made up of many diverse ethnic groups

as the language for literate Meroites

The evidence is clear Meroitic was a lingua franca that allowed the diverse people of

the Meroitic Empire to communicate in a common language. I have never argued that the

Kushites abandoned their native language or that Meroitic was spoken anywhere except

in the Meroitic Sudan.

I have argued, and supported with evidence the fact that the Kushites. never wrote

their inscriptions in a Kushite language. They used lingua francas to unite the diverse

speakers in the Napatan and Meroitic civilizations first Egyptian and later Meroitic.

This is supported by the abundance of Kushite documents written in Egyptian before

the introduction of Meroitic. the Napatans and Meroites wrote their inscriptions in

Egyptian until the Egyptians became a sizable minority in the Meroitic Empire.

The Kushites had a tradition of using a non-Kushite language to record their

administrative and political religious activities due to the numerous and diverse subjects

from different tribes they ruled. Since the Meroitic and Napatan documents were written

in Egyptian there is no lexical evidence of the languages spoken by the Kushites and

other groups in the inscriptions left by these people.

The classical literature makes it clear that there was a connection between the

Gymnosophists (of Meroe) and the Indians. The fact that historical events mentioned in

the classical sources are found in the Indian literature confirm the view that there were

Indian-Meroites who could have introduced the Tocharian trade language to the Meroites.

And that since Meroitic was probably a lingua franca, the Kushites would not have had to

39

abandon their own native language while using Meroitic for purposes of communication.

The discovery that Tocharian is cognate to Meroitic has led to the full decipherment of

the Meroitic script. We can now translate Meroitic using Tokharian. This allows us to

obtain new information about the Meroitic civilization.

40

Appendix 1 Central Asian and Sudanic Toponyms.

Using the comparative methods proposed by Hintze we have found that the Meroitic inscriptions are written in Tocharian, a language used as a lingua franca in Central Asia by the Kushana or Kush people. The Kushana people ruled Central Asia and India. Linguist prefer to call the Kushana language Tocharian, after the Sanskrit term for Kushana: Tu-kara.(Winters 1984, 1989, 1996a, 1996b).

There is structural, morphological and toponymic evidence which support the view that Tokharian is cognate to Meroitic(Winters 1984,1989). There are many Central Asian place names that agree with toponomies in Nubia/ Sudan. Below we list a few of these common toponomies:

CentralAsia……………….Sudan

Pap………………………………………….Pap

Karnak…………………………………Karnak

Kukushka…………………………..Kurush

Shaur ……………………………………Sarur

Kandi………………………………………….Kandi

Urban……………………………………….Borgan

Khara ……………………………………….Kara-

Kupuri………………………………………….Gabur, Capur

These placenames can be compared with the maps of Central Asia and the Sudan supplied published by Dr. Vamos-Toth Bator in his Tamana studies .

41

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d'Archeologie Orientale: Bibliotheque d' Etudes 106/2) pp.1-15.

Abdalla, A.M. 1978. The Meroitic Civilization:Its Mediterranean Contacts and

Africaness. In Afrique Noire et monde mediterranean dans L'Antiquité Colloque de

Dakar. (Dakar: Université de Senegal) 89-114.

Adams, W.Y. 1977. Nubia:Corridor to Africa. London: Penguin Ltd.

Adams, W.Y. 1975. "Meroitic North and South". Meroitica 2,Berlin:Akademie-Verlag.

Adams, D.Q. (1988). Tocharian Historical Phonology and Morphology. American

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Arkell, A.J. 1961. A History of the Sudan from earliest times to 1821. London:

University of London Press.

Aubin,P. (1996). Evidence for an Early Nubian Dialect in Meroitic Inscriptions:

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