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Tushara Kingdom


The Tushara Kingdom according to Ancient Indian literature, such as the epic Mahabharata was a land located beyond north-west India. In the Mahabharata, its inhabitants, known as the Tusharas, are depicted as mlechchas ("barbarians") and fierce warriors.

Modern scholars generally see Tushara as synonymous with the historical Tukhara, also known as Tokhara or Tokharistan – another name for Bactria. This area was the stronghold of the Kushan Empire, which dominated India between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE.

The historical Tukhara appears to be synonymous with the land known by Ancient Chinese scholars as Daxia , from the 3rd century BCE onwards.

Its inhabitants were known later to Ancient Greek scholars as the Tokharoi and to the Ancient Romans as Tochari. Modern scholars appear to have conflated the Tukhara with the so-called – an Indo-European people who lived in the Tarim Basin, in present-day Xinjiang, China, until the 1st millennium. When the of the Tarim were rediscovered in the early 20th Century, most scholars accepted a hypothesis that they were linked to the Tukhara (who were known to have migrated to Central Asia from China, with the other founding Kushan peoples ). However, the subjects of the Tarim kingdoms appear to have referred to themselves by names such as Agni, Kuči and Krorän. These peoples are also known to have spoken centum languages, whereas the Tukhara of Bactria spoke a satem language.


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