History
For more details on this topic, see Kingdom of Khotan.The oasis of Hotan is strategically located at the junction of the southern (and most ancient) branch of the famous “Silk Route” joining China and the West with one of the main routes from ancient India and Tibet to Central Asia and distant China. It provided a convenient meeting place where not only goods, but technologies, philosophies, and religions were transmitted from one culture to another.
Tocharians lived in this region over 2000 years ago. Several of the Tarim mummies were found in the region. At Sampul, to the east of the city of Hotan, there is an extensive series of cemeteries scattered over an area about a kilometre wide and 23 km long. The excavated sites range from about 300 BCE - 100 CE. The excavated graves have produced a number of fabrics of felt, wool, silk and cotton and even a fine bit of tapestry showing the face of Caucasoid man which was made of threads of 24 shades of colour. The tapestry had been cut up and fashioned into trousers worn by one of the deceased. Anthropological studies 56 individuals studied show a primarily Caucasoid population "similar to the Saka burials of the southern Pamirs". Recent DNA testing on the mummies found in the Tarim basin showed that they were an admixture of Western Europeans and East Asian.
There is a relative abundance of information on Hotan readily available for study. The main historical sources are to be found in the Chinese histories (particularly detailed during the Han and early Tang dynasties), the accounts of several Chinese pilgrim monks, a few Buddhist histories of Hotan that have survived in Tibetan, and a large number of documents in Khotanese and other languages discovered, for the most part, early this century at various sites in the Tarim Basin and from the hidden library at the “Caves of the Thousand Buddhas” near Dunhuang.
The ancient Kingdom of Khotan was one of the earliest Buddhist states in the world and a cultural bridge across which Buddhist culture and learning were transmitted from India to China.
Read more about this topic: Hotan
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