Is Tocharian survival possible?

The Tocharians were a mostly Buddhist Indo-European speaking group that lived in the Tarim basin until the 9th century or so, when they merged and assimilated with the Uyghurs and eventually were Islamicised with the rest of the Tarim Basin to create the modern Uyghur culture.

So is there any good way to keep the Tocharian language alive? They don't have to be the dominant culture of the Tarim basin, nor maintain their "caucasoid" looks they were noted for. But can they survive at all? One thing that crossed my mind is using religion for that. If the Tarim Basin remains Buddhist or Manichaean, can the Tocharians adopt Islam and become like the Hui? The Tocharian language would be much reduced, but they'd have a distinct identity.

And if not Islam, could Nestorian Christianity be the solution? The Tarim Basin is where Nestorian Christianity entered China, after all, so could a vigorous and skillful saint convert the Tocharians and even after the calamities that befell their civilisation, leave behind a remnant culture maybe akin to the modern Assyrians or Copts? I don't doubt Tocharian would be endangered in this scenario, but does it have a chance with this, or at least to survive as well as Coptic did as a liturgical language with a large amount of writings?

I'm interested, so any other ideas or comments?
 
The Kalash people of northern Pakistan survived with their language, pagan religion, and unique genetics intact even though they were and are surrounded by a sea of Muslims. I am sure the Tocharians can do the same.

You could do some cool things with them. I have this vision of them acting as the Jews of the Silk Road; a spread out and small community which nonetheless remains a cohesive community.
 
The Kalash people of northern Pakistan survived with their language, pagan religion, and unique genetics intact even though they were and are surrounded by a sea of Muslims. I am sure the Tocharians can do the same.

You could do some cool things with them. I have this vision of them acting as the Jews of the Silk Road; a spread out and small community which nonetheless remains a cohesive community.

That's true. The Kalash survived, but there had to be a reason why the Tocharians did not survive even though they could have lasted a lot longer, why they completely assimilated into the Uyghurs.

But yes, it seems like they would fit into that merchant role like many Copts, Jews, and other ethnic groups of that nature do.
 
The modern-day Uyghurs who live around the Tarim basin *are* the genetic descendants of the Tocharians (along with the Iranic-speaking Saka who were dominant in Kashgar and Hotan, with further ancestral input from the Turkic tribes who assimilated them and every other people who crossed the Silk Road and intermarried with them). They *do* maintain the “Caucasian” features of their Tocharian and Saka ancestors, just not the languages.

The Tocharian languages were threatened by pressures from the much larger language groups surrounding them - Chiefly, the Altaic (Turkic and Mongolian), Indo-Aryan, and Chinese languages. I suspect that adter the Turkic tribes, the Indo-Aryan speakers constituted the biggest threat to their survival, as they come from the same broader language family and already had a huge foothold in southern Xinjiang and the neighboring Ferghana Valley. The Greek-speaking population of classical Central Asia was assimilated in this way.

The Tocharian languages can certainly be preserved, but it would greatly help to expand their domain beyond the Tarim basin (which it appears they did to some degree). If it is enough to keep them around as a minority language, you simply need to push them into secluded mountainous regions beyond the big international trade routes and desirable land areas, where they might survive as well as other Central Asian minority languages such as the Pamiri languages, Kalash, and Burashahki.
 
The modern-day Uyghurs who live around the Tarim basin *are* the genetic descendants of the Tocharians (along with the Iranic-speaking Saka who were dominant in Kashgar and Hotan, with further ancestral input from the Turkic tribes who assimilated them and every other people who crossed the Silk Road and intermarried with them). They *do* maintain the “Caucasian” features of their Tocharian and Saka ancestors, just not the languages.

The Tocharian languages were threatened by pressures from the much larger language groups surrounding them - Chiefly, the Altaic (Turkic and Mongolian), Indo-Aryan, and Chinese languages. I suspect that adter the Turkic tribes, the Indo-Aryan speakers constituted the biggest threat to their survival, as they come from the same broader language family and already had a huge foothold in southern Xinjiang and the neighboring Ferghana Valley. The Greek-speaking population of classical Central Asia was assimilated in this way.

The Tocharian languages can certainly be preserved, but it would greatly help to expand their domain beyond the Tarim basin (which it appears they did to some degree). If it is enough to keep them around as a minority language, you simply need to push them into secluded mountainous regions beyond the big international trade routes and desirable land areas, where they might survive as well as other Central Asian minority languages such as the Pamiri languages, Kalash, and Burashahki.

Are those mountainous regions near the Tarim Basin even inhabitable? There's a particularly sparsely populated part of Tibet, and northwards some more mountains right in the middle of the heartland of the Eurasian steppes.

So is there no hope for the Tocharians barring the religious situation I mentioned earlier? Even if urban culture is mostly a loss, couldn't Tocharian function something like Coptic where the people form a coherent ethnic group with their own language, where even if basically no one speaks it, it still has a ton of written stuff (moreso than Tocharian OTL).
 
If the Indo-Aryan tribes migrate earlier, the Turks might migrate predominately into their lands. That way, there might be fewer migrants into the Tarim and the Tocharians might assimilate the Uighurs rather than the other way around.
 
The Tocharian languages can certainly be preserved, but it would greatly help to expand their domain beyond the Tarim basin (which it appears they did to some degree).

I would argue that the Kushana Empire is something bigger than "some degree". Although the imperial phase possibly contributed to the language's demise since the elite was spread out thinly into regions with an already very well established literary tradition, and in an area where broadly similar languages were in use (Indo-Iranian ones primarily).
 
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