Traces of language contact in Niya Prakrit

Niya Prakrit, a dialect of Central Asian Gandhari, served as the administrative language of the former Shanshan kingdom (3rd–4th century CE; Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Northwest China). The corpus consists of around 1,000 administrative documents and letters. Niels Schoubben presents the first comprehensive study of language contact in Niya Prakrit, highlighting the profound influence exerted by Iranian languages. Through a systematic analysis of over 100 loanwords, Niels Schoubben demonstrates that most Iranian elements derive from Bactrian, a Middle Iranian language formerly spoken in present-day Afghanistan. He further argues that Bactrian also influenced Niya Prakrit’s grammatical structure, particularly its past tense constructions. Earlier claims of substrate influence from an unattested sister language of Tocharian A and B (the so-called “Tocharian C”) are reassessed and found to be unconvincing. Instead, the author proposes that Niya Prakrit acquired its distinctive features through its use as a chancellery idiom by Kushan officials who spoke Bactrian as a native language. The volume concludes with three appendices and detailed indices and will be of interest to Indologists, Iranianists, Indo-Europeanists, and historians of Central Asia.