AHC/WI: Tocharian survival

As in the title, how would one go about making the Tocharians survive as a distinct linguistic group for centuries after they died IOTL? If possible they don't just need to survive but also reach a position where they can reliably survive up to the modern day, kinda replacing new Uyghur.

Preferable earliest POD is 800 CE, you can push a couple centuries earlier but if possible attempt to use later PODs.

Edit: I know 800 CE is pretty late all things considered, still it's interesting to see if by changing the collapse of the Tibetan empire you can make them survive long enough.
 
Perhaps what you can get, so that there aren't too many butterflies, the Uyghurs to still end up in the Tarim Badin, but that they assimilate and merge with the Tocharian (or did someone come in between these two?). It would be a histoey like the Bulgarians.
 
It is possible that Tocharian speakers may have spread well beyond the Tarim Basin in OTL. The Kushans, who formed an empire covering what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan and north India, originated as a branch of the Yuezhi confederation, which was plausibly Tocharian-speaking. The POD could be the Kushan Empire lasting longer and the locals adopting their language.
 
Survival alone is doable: have an early migration into the Hindu Kush, Pamir or Badakhshan. A few valleys' worth of peasants could be speaking Tocharian to this day. But once the Tocharians become an urban culture speaking a prestige language that would have restricted to the Tarim basin, you have to do a lot of narrative magic to redirect away the various Turcic empires, potential Muslim arrivals, as well as Chinese expansion west, and the prestige languages those conquerors would bring with them.

Dominance is obviously even harder and would require a POD in a time and place with which I am not very familiar.
 
Perhaps what you can get, so that there aren't too many butterflies, the Uyghurs to still end up in the Tarim Badin, but that they assimilate and merge with the Tocharian (or did someone come in between these two?). It would be a histoey like the Bulgarians.
That's what I was thinking, but how you do achieve that? Can Tibet retaking the area allow the locals to assimilate the Turks?
Survival alone is doable: have an early migration into the Hindu Kush, Pamir or Badakhshan. A few valleys' worth of peasants could be speaking Tocharian to this day. But once the Tocharians become an urban culture speaking a prestige language that would have restricted to the Tarim basin, you have to do a lot of narrative magic to redirect away the various Turcic empires, potential Muslim arrivals, as well as Chinese expansion west, and the prestige languages those conquerors would bring with them.

Dominance is obviously even harder and would require a POD in a time and place with which I am not very familiar.
What I'm not exactly sure of is where was Tocharian spoken just before its extinction? Which parts of the Tarim Basin?
 
What if the Kushans did worse, not expanding so far but remaining proportionally more Tocharian-speaking? That’d have tremendous butterflies all over Asia, especially if that affected their spreading of Buddhism to China...
 
Aside from having Tocharians relocated to the Pamirs or modern Qinghai or another easily survivable place, the best way to do so might be to have them adopt an ethnolinguistic identity. Perhaps some prominent figures are enthusiastic converts of the Christianity (Church of the East or some other flavour), Manichaeanism, or another faith. The Chinese, Turkic peoples, and Persian peoples around them never adopt this faith, and this keeps a segment of their culture alive for centuries to come.

OTL they were pretty religiously diverse, since most works in Tocharian languages are translations of Buddhist and Manichaean texts.

It is possible that Tocharian speakers may have spread well beyond the Tarim Basin in OTL. The Kushans, who formed an empire covering what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan and north India, originated as a branch of the Yuezhi confederation, which was plausibly Tocharian-speaking. The POD could be the Kushan Empire lasting longer and the locals adopting their language.

Which could put the Tocharians anywhere in the Kushan Empire, although my guess would be somewhere in the Pamirs.

Survival alone is doable: have an early migration into the Hindu Kush, Pamir or Badakhshan. A few valleys' worth of peasants could be speaking Tocharian to this day. But once the Tocharians become an urban culture speaking a prestige language that would have restricted to the Tarim basin, you have to do a lot of narrative magic to redirect away the various Turcic empires, potential Muslim arrivals, as well as Chinese expansion west, and the prestige languages those conquerors would bring with them.

Dominance is obviously even harder and would require a POD in a time and place with which I am not very familiar.

Pretty much. You need to have a Tocharian population abandon their urban culture. Which might not be totally impossible, since several Tocharian cities like Kröran were abandoned over the years because of warfare or drought. Although they seemed to prefer to resettle elsewhere in the Tarim Basin, perhaps they could be led elsewhere (into Qinghai or the Tian Shan mountains). This is where you get the "Tocharian Burma" scenario I've posted here several times (which is probably straight up wank and needs a BC-era POD along with a "great man" or two, but isn't totally implausible given how Burma became Burmese). The same scenario is far more likely to get you a hill tribe or two in Qinghai, Sichuan, or Yunnan which speaks a Tocharian language.

What I'm not exactly sure of is where was Tocharian spoken just before its extinction? Which parts of the Tarim Basin?

In the eastern city states of the Tarim Basin. Each city state spoke different Tocharian languages, none of which used "Tocharian" as an endonym. Since this was the Silk Road, the Tocharian states were pretty diverse, with many Sogdians, Saka, and other East Iranian-speaking peoples, as well as the Chinese and others.
 
Essentially you need enough population and/or language prestige for at least one of the dialects to survive.
Not impossible but difficult.
 
Aside from having Tocharians relocated to modern Qinghai or another easily survivable place,
How might Tocharian speakers arrive in Qinghai? What would be the push and pull factors? Why is Qinghai a "easily survivable place"?

Maybe Tocharians speakers could be resettled by the Mongols somewhere? What about Manchuria, China, Persia, Russia?
the best way to do so might be to have them adopt an ethnolinguistic identity. Perhaps some prominent figures are enthusiastic converts of the Christianity (Church of the East or some other flavour), Manichaeanism, or another faith. The Chinese, Turkic peoples, and Persian peoples around them never adopt this faith, and this keeps a segment of their culture alive for centuries to come.
Ethno -religious or ethno-linguistic identity.

Perhaps a ethnic relgion could be a possibility?
Pretty much. You need to have a Tocharian population abandon their urban culture. Which might not be totally impossible, since several Tocharian cities like Kröran were abandoned over the years because of warfare or drought. Although they seemed to prefer to resettle elsewhere in the Tarim Basin, perhaps they could be led elsewhere (into Qinghai or the Tian Shan mountains).
Urban living is not neccsarily something that leads to a language weakening or dissapearing. Various Jewish languages in Europe survived existance in urban environments as minorities. Why not Tocharian?
 
Top