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Kucha
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Kucha or Kuche (also: Kuçar, Kuchar) Uyghur (?????), Chinese Simplified: ??; Traditional: ??; pinyin Kùche; also romanized as Qiuzi, Qiuci, Chiu-tzu, Kiu-che, Kuei-tzu. Also known in ancient China as: ?? ??; ??; ??, also Po (bai in pinyin?); was an ancient Buddhist kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin and south of the Muzat River.
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Encyclopedia
Kucha or Kuche (also: Kuçar, Kuchar) Uyghur (?????), Chinese Simplified: ??; Traditional: ??; pinyin Kùche; also romanized as Qiuzi, Qiuci, Chiu-tzu, Kiu-che, Kuei-tzu. Also known in ancient China as: ?? ??; ??; ??, also Po (bai in pinyin?); was an ancient Buddhist kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin and south of the Muzat River. (The area lies in present day Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang, China; Kucha city itself is the county seat of that prefecture's Kuqa County). Its population was given as 74,632 in 1990.
History
According to the Book of Han, Kucha was the largest of the 'Thirty-six kingdoms of the Western Regions,' with a population of 81,317, including 21,076 persons able to bear arms.
Transcriptions of the Han or the Tang also infer an original form Küchï, (Kusan during the Mongol and Ming periods). The form Kusan is also attested by the Tarikh-i-Rashidi, Cf. ELIAS and ROSS, Tarikh-i-Rashidi, in the index, s. v. Kuchar and Kusan.
- “One MS. [of the Tarikh-i-Rashidi] reads Kus/Kusan. Both names were used for the same place, as also Kos, Kucha, Kujar, etc., and all appear to stand for the modern Kuchar of the Turki-speaking inhabitants, and Kuché of the Chinese. An earlier Chinese name, however, was Ku-sien.” Elias (1895), p.124, n. 1.
Kucha was strongly influenced by Indian and Scythian thought, and Indian kings are said to have reigned there. Christopher Beckwith identifies the king of Gu-zan of the Li yul lung-btsan-pa or ‘Prophecy of the Li Country’ who went on campaign with Kanishka in the company of the king of Kucha (Kuci, Kuca, Kushâ, Küsän). See Beckwith (1987), p. 50, and n. 66. However, Chinese transcriptions are explicitly in favour of the form Küsän/Güsän/Kuxian/Quxian and not Küshän or Kushan (Yuanshi, chap. 12, fol 5a, 7a).
For a long time Kucha was the most populous oasis in the Tarim Basin. The language, as evidenced by ancient records, was Tocharian, an Indo-European language. It was located on a crossroad of the great cultures of India, Persia, Bactria and China. The extensive ruins of this ancient capital of the Kingdom of Guici [the 'City of Subashi'] lie 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of Kucha.
Kuchan music was very popular in China during the Tang Dynasty, particularly the lute which became known in Chinese as pipa.
Francis Younghusband, who passed through the oasis in 1887 on his epic journey from Beijing to India, described the district as "probably" having some 60,000 inhabitants. The Chinese town was about 700 yards (640 m) square with a 25 ft (7.6 m) high wall, with no bastions or protection to the gateways, but a ditch about 20 ft (6 m) deep around it. It was filled with houses and "a few bad shops". The "Turk houses" ran right up to the edge of the ditch and there were remains of an old Turk city to the south-east of the Chinese one, but most of the shops and houses were outside of it. About 800 yards (732 m) north of the Chinese city were barracks for 500 soldiers out of a garrison he estimated to total about 1500 men, who were armed with old Enfield rifles "with the Tower mark."
Kucha and Buddhism
Buddhism was introduced to Kucha before the end of the 1st century, however it was not until the 3rd century that the kingdom became a major center of Buddhism, primarily the Sravakayana branch but also Mahayana. (In this respect it differed from Khotan, a Mahayana-dominated kingdom on the southern side of the desert.)
According to the Chinese Book of Jin, during the third century there were nearly one thousand Buddhist stupas and temples in Kucha. At this time, Kuchanese monks began to travel to China. The fourth century saw yet further growth for Buddhism within the kingdom. The palace was said to resemble a Buddhist monastery, displaying carved stone Buddhas, and monasteries around the city were numerous.
Monasteries
- Ta-mu had 170 monks
- Che-hu-li on Po-shan (Chinese ???; pinyin: bai shan?), a hill to the north of the town, had 50 or 60 monks.
- Another monastery, founded by the king of Wen-Su (Uch-Turfan) had 70 monks.
Nunneries
There were two nunneries at A-li (Avanyaka):
- Liun-jo-kan: 50 nuns
- A-li-po: 30 nuns
Another nunnery, Tsio-li, was 40 li north of Kucha and is famous as the place where Kumarajiva's mother Jiva retired.
Monks
Po-Yen
A monk from the royal family known as Po-Yen travelled to the Chinese capital, Luoyang, from AD 256-260. He translated six Buddhist texts to Chinese in 258 at China's famous White Horse Temple, including the Infinite Life Sutra, an important sutra in the Pure Land Buddhism.
Po-Po-Srimitra
Po-Srimitra was another Kuchean monk who traveled to China from 307-312 and translated three Buddhist texts.
Po-Yen
A second Kuchean Buddhist monk known as Po-Yen also went to Liangzhou (the Wuwei region of modern Gansu), China and is said to have been well-respected, although he is not known to have translated any texts.
Neighbors
The kingdom bordered Aksu then Kashgar to the west, and Karasahr then Turfan to the east. Across the Taklamakan desert to the south was Khotan.
Timeline
Sources
Other meanings
Kuché is also a breed of 'dog' in Bulgarian where it was introduced from Turkic kuchuk, a dog. Kucha is the Japanese term for temple tea offerings to the Buddha (see Jennifer L. Anderson, 1991). Kucha means "street" in Persian There is a region called Kutch on the west coast of India, in the state of Gujarat. Kuca (kucha) means house or dwelling in Serbian and Bosnian.
Footnotes
External links
- (The Silk Road Seattle website contains many useful resources including a number of full-text historical works)
- (Dru C. Gladney)
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