From an early period, the Tarim Basin had been inhabited by different groups of Indo-European speakers such as the
Tocharians and
Saka people. Jade from Khotan had been traded into China for a long time before the founding of the city, as indicated by items made of jade from Khotan found in tombs from the
Shang (Yin) and
Zhou dynasties. The jade trade is thought to have been facilitated by the
Yuezhi. This trade helped the kingdom hold influence over the surrounding regions. It remained an important supplier of jade to China and the whole of Central Asia. These may be found in accounts given by the Chinese pilgrim
Xuanzang and in Tibetan translations of Khotanese documents. All four versions suggest that the city was founded around the third century BC by a group of Indians during the reign of
Ashoka. The legend suggests that Khotan was settled by people from northwest India and China, and may explain the division of Khotan into an eastern and western city since the
Han dynasty. In the 1900s,
Aurel Stein discovered
Prakrit documents written in
Kharoṣṭhī in
Niya, and together with the founding legend of Khotan, Stein proposed that these people in the Tarim Basin were Indian immigrants from Taxila who conquered and colonized Khotan. The use of
Prakrit however may be a legacy of the influence of the
Kushan Empire. There were also Greek influences in early Khotan, based on evidence such as
Hellenistic artworks found at various sites in the Tarim Basin, for example, the
Sampul tapestry found near Khotan, tapestries depicting the Greek god
Hermes and the winged
pegasus found at nearby
Loulan, as well as
ceramics that may suggest influences from as far as the
Hellenistic kingdom of
Ptolemaic Egypt. One suggestion is therefore that the early migrants to the region may have been an ethnically mixed people from the city of Taxila led by a Greco-Saka or an
Indo-Greek leader, who established Khotan using the administrative and social organizations of the
Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. In
Tibetan literature, a long list of
Indian kings is preserved.
Sten Konow, the
Norwegian Indologist who critically examined the different versions of the tradition concluded as follows: According to the oldest detailed
Chinese and
Tibetan texts (including a
Tibetan text which may be contemporary), which we cannot distrust, the colonizing groups of exiled
Indians (including the son and ministers of Emperor
Ashoka) founded the Kingdom of
Khotan. The various manuscripts found in the regions surrounding Khotan come from various time periods, ranging from the fifth to the tenth centuries. Surviving documents from Khotan of later centuries indicate that the people of Khotan spoke the
Saka language, an
Eastern Iranian language that was closely related to the
Sogdian language (of
Sogdiana); as an Indo-European language, Saka was more distantly related to the
Tocharian languages (also known as Agnean-Kuchean) spoken in adjoining areas of the Tarim Basin. It also shared
areal features with Tocharian. It is not certain when the
Saka people moved into the Khotan area. Archaeological evidence from the
Sampul tapestry of Sampul (Shanpulu; / ), near Khotan may indicate a settled Saka population in the last quarter of the first millennium BC, although some have suggested they may not have moved there until after the founding of the city. The Saka may have inhabited other parts of the Tarim Basin earlier – presence of a people believed to be Saka had been found in the
Keriya region at Yumulak Kum (Djoumboulak Koum, Yuansha) around 200 km east of Khotan, possibly as early as the 7th century BC. The Saka people were known as the Sai (塞, sāi,
sək in Old Sinitic) in ancient Chinese records. These records indicate that they originally inhabited the
Ili and
Chu River valleys of modern
Kyrgyzstan and
Kazakhstan. In the Chinese
Book of Han, the area was called the "land of the Sai", i.e. the Saka. According to the
Sima Qian's
Shiji, the Indo-European
Yuezhi, originally from the area between Tängri Tagh (
Tian Shan) and
Dunhuang of
Gansu, China, were assaulted and forced to flee from the
Hexi Corridor of Gansu by the forces of the
Xiongnu ruler
Modu Chanyu in 177-176 BC. In turn the Yuezhi were responsible for attacking and pushing the Sai (i.e. Saka) south. The Saka crossed the
Syr Darya into
Bactria around 140 B.C. Later the Saka would also move into Northern India, as well as other Tarim Basin sites like Khotan,
Karasahr (Yanqi),
Yarkand (Shache) and
Kucha (Qiuci). One suggestion is that the Saka became Hellenized in the
Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, and they or an ethnically mixed Greco-Scythians either migrated to
Yarkand and Khotan, or a bit earlier from
Taxila in the
Indo-Greek Kingdom. Documents written in
Prakrit dating to the 3rd century AD from neighbouring
Shanshan show that the king of Khotan was given the title
hinajha (i.e. "generalissimo"), a distinctively Iranian-based word equivalent to the
Sanskrit title
senapati. Similar documents in the Khotanese-Saka language dating mostly to the 10th century have been found in
Dunhuang.
Early period , king of Khotan. Khotan, 1st century AD.
Obv: Kharosthi legend, "Of the great king of kings, king of Khotan, Gurgamoya.
Rev: Chinese legend: "Twenty-four grain copper coin".
British Museum In the 2nd century AD a Khotanese king helped the famous ruler
Kanishka of the
Kushan Empire of South Asia (founded by the
Yuezhi people) to conquer the key town of
Saket in the
Middle kingdoms of India: According to Chapter 96A of the
Book of Han, covering the period from 125 BC to 23 AD, Khotan had 3,300 households, 19,300 individuals and 2,400 people able to bear arms.
Eastern Han period Minted coins from Khotan dated to the 1st century AD bear dual inscriptions in Chinese and
Gandhari Prakrit in the
Kharosthi script, showing links of Khotan to India and China in that period. When the Han military officer
Ban Chao went to Khotan, he was received by the King with minimal courtesy. The soothsayer to the King suggested that he should demand the horse of Ban, and Ban killed the soothsayer on the spot. The King, impressed by Ban's action, then killed the Xiongnu agent in Khotan and offered his allegiance to Han. By the time the Han dynasty exerted its dominance over Khotan, the population had more than quadrupled. The
Book of the Later Han, covering 6 to 189 AD, says: Han influence on Khotan, however, diminished when Han power declined.
Tang dynasty court, in
Wanghuitu circa 650 AD The
Tang campaign against the oasis states began in 640 AD and Khotan submitted to the Tang emperor. The
Four Garrisons of Anxi were established, one of them at Khotan. The Tibetans later defeated the Chinese and took control of the Four Garrisons. Khotan was first taken in 665, and the Khotanese helped the Tibetans to conquer
Aksu. Tang China later regained control in 692. The
An Lushan Rebellion began in 755, and the Khotanese king sent some 5,000 troops to assist in the suppression efforts. Khotan was taken by the Tibetan Empire in 792, who capitalized on the weakness of the Tang Dynasty and conquered much of Central Asia. Viśa' Saṃbhava married the daughter of Cao Yijin, the ruler of the Guiyi Circuit. Cao Yijin's grandson, Cao Yanlu, married the third daughter of Viśa' Saṃbhava. Indian deity attributed to Viśa Īrasangä.jpg|
Indian deity on the obverse of a painted panel, most likely depicting
Shiva. Khotanese artist
Viśa Īrasangä or his father Viśa Baysūna, 7th century Persian deity attributed to Viśa Īrasangä.jpg|
Persian deity on the reverse of a painted panel, probably depicting the legendary hero
Rustam. Khotanese artist Viśa Īrasangä or his father Viśa Baysūna, 7th century File:Hotan bm.jpg|Grotesque face, stucco, found at Khotan, 7th-8th century. File:2015-13-101702 - Hotan Museum - Keramik mit Kuh- und Menschenkopf, Tang Dynastie.JPG|Human head ceramic with cow, Tang Dynasty.
Hotan Cultural Museum, China
Turco-Islamic conquest of Buddhist Khotan , a 10th-century king of Khotan,
Mogao Caves,
Dunhuang,
Gansu province In the 10th century, the Iranic Saka Buddhist Kingdom of Khotan was the only city-state in the
Tarim Basin that was not yet conquered by either the Turkic Uyghur
Qocho Kingdom (Buddhist) or by the Turkic
Kara-Khanid Khanate (Muslim). During the latter part of the tenth century, Khotan became engaged in a struggle against the Kara-Khanid Khanate. The Islamic conquests of the Buddhist cities east of Kashgar began with the conversion of the Karakhanid
Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan to Islam in 934. Satuq Bughra Khan and later his son Musa directed endeavors to proselytize Islam among the Turks and engage in military conquests, and a long war ensued between Islamic Kashgar and Buddhist Khotan. Satuq Bughra Khan's nephew or grandson Ali Arslan was said to have been killed during the war with the Buddhists. Khotan briefly took
Kashgar from the Kara-Khanids in 970, and according to Chinese accounts, the King of Khotan offered to send in tribute to the Chinese court a dancing elephant captured from Kashgar. Accounts of the war between the Karakhanid and Khotan were given in
Taẕkirah of the Four Sacrificed Imams, written sometime in the period from 1700 to 1849 in the Eastern Turkic language (modern Uyghur) in
Altishahr probably based on an older oral tradition. It contains a story about four Imams from Mada'in city (possibly in modern-day Iraq) who helped the Qarakhanid leader Yusuf Qadir Khan conquered Khotan, Yarkand, and Kashgar. There were years of battles where "blood flows like the Oxus", "heads litter the battlefield like stones" until the "infidels" were defeated and driven towards Khotan by Yusuf Qadir Khan and the four Imams. The imams however were assassinated by the Buddhists prior to the last Muslim victory. Despite their foreign origins, they are viewed as local saints by the current Muslim population in the region. In 1006, the Muslim Kara-Khanid ruler Yusuf Kadir (Qadir) Khan of Kashgar conquered Khotan, ending Khotan's existence as an independent Buddhist state. It has been suggested Buddhists in Dunhuang, alarmed by the conquest of Khotan and ending of Buddhism there, sealed Cave 17 of the
Mogao Caves containing the
Dunhuang manuscripts so to protect them. The Karakhanid Turkic Muslim writer
Mahmud al-Kashgari recorded a short Turkic language poem about the conquest: : According to Kashgari who wrote in the 11th century, the inhabitants of Khotan still spoke a different language and did not know the Turkic language well. It is however believed that the Turkic languages became the lingua franca throughout the Tarim Basin by the end of the 11th century. By the time
Marco Polo visited Khotan, which was between 1271 and 1275, he reported that "the inhabitants all worship
Mohamet." ==Historical timeline==