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Kushan script

The unknown Kushan script is a partially deciphered writing system and abugida, written from right to left. A 2023 analysis by Bonmann et al. hypothesizes that the language recorded is either: "a missing link between Bactrian, Sogdian, the Saka languages, ... Alanic and ‘Old Steppe Iranian’," such as a native dialect of northern Bactria, that was adopted by the Yuezhi after migrating into the area, or; a language has "more affinities with Sakan and perhaps ‘Old Steppe Iranian’," which would "imply that it belongs to a ... steppe-related environment, befitting the original home of the Dà Yuèzhī/Kushans in the grasslands of Gansu."

Bonmann's analysis
Bonmann's analysis primarily focuses on the trilingual Dašt-i Nāwur inscription and bilingual carving found in the Almosi Gorge, using the phrase "king of kings" to find graphemic minimal pairs within the unknown text from a particular language hypothesized to be represented. Following this, a step-by-step phonetic substitution with expected names and then parallel sections was performed. Initially, Bonmann identifies 25-30 independent signs in the writing system (shown right), indicating that the script does not represent a logo-syllabic system. The hypothesis is rather that the script represents an Indic-type alphasyllabary, with each letter having the basic vocalic value /a/; the vowel quality or quantity can then be changed with additional strokes. In both the DN (Dašt-i Nāwur inscription) and AG (Almosi Gorge) inscriptions, the phrase "king of kings" followed by the name Vema Takhtu occurs in the Bactrian sections. Given this co-occurrence, Bonmann's decipherment is based on the hypothesis that this phrase occurs in the sections of each inscription written in the Kushan script. Through a distributional analysis, a parallel sequence was found between DN III and AG I. Bonmann's decipherment begins initially with noticing a sequence in line 1 of AG I with repeating characters. Then, hypothesizing that the text in the Kushan script contains the same elements as the Bactrian parallel and assuming that the language represented is an Indo-European language, Bonmann identifies the sequence 23-3 as the stem for "king" and the pattern (23-3-)22-22(-23-3) as "king of kings." Additionally, the sequence 16-17-16 is assumed to represent the Takhtu part of "Vema Takhtu,"` with 16-17-16 representing the sequence -TKT. Through further analysis, Bonmann rules out a Tocharian or Sogdian language as possible options for the language of the unknown script. The preliminary reading for the phrase "king of kings" then becomes ⟨Šā-W"-Nā-N'-Šā-W"⟩. The decipherment has been described by researchers as a significant step toward understanding Kushan-era inscriptions and the region's administrative and cultural history. == See also ==
Source: Wikipedia ↗
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