Khotanese as a Language of the Tarim Borderlands

This paper examines the Khotanese tradition in the political and cultural history of the Tarim Basin in the first millennium CE by foregrounding its role as an active facilitator within a multicultural and continually transforming geopolitical environment. The paper approaches Khotanese as both a medium through which local forms of social organization were articulated and a mediator embedded in wider circuits of exchange linking the Tarim Basin with South, Central, and East Asia. Particular attention is given to the linguistic and textual evidence for interaction with other traditions in and around the Tarim Basin, and to cases in which adaptation, (re-)composition, and translation can be associated with identifiable historical settings, institutions, and actors. The paper argues from selected examples that the history of Khotanese illuminates how regional languages sustained local authority while remaining deeply entangled with transregional formations of knowledge, culture, and exchange, and how, in the contested spaces of imperial borderlands, local communities had to hone cultural prestige in and through their languages in order to maintain their standing.