Khotan: the Country, its Legends and History

The once great city-state of Khotan, called li yul in Tibetan,¹ is today called Hotan (or Hetian) and is located in China’s Xinjiang province. An oasis kingdom on the southwest edge of the vast Taklamakhan desert that fills the Tarim Basin, Khotan lies to the north of the Kunlun mountain range, which divides it from present-day Ladakh to the southwest, Aksai Chin to the south, and Western Tibet to the southeast. It was an important trade center on the southern branch of the Silk Route, which from Kashgar followed the southern side of the desert through Khotan and Shanshan to Lop Nor and Dunhuang, while the more important northern Silk Route reached Dunhuang from Kashgar along the northern edge of the desert through Kucha and Karashahr.

During the last few centuries before the Christian Era and the first millennium ᴄᴇ, the Silk Route as a whole—almost the only conduit for high value trade between China and the rest of East Asia and the classical civilizations of Europe, the Arab world, Turkey, Persia, and India—gave rise to unparalleled wealth in the small countries, kingdoms, and city states along it, allowing agriculture to be sustained by complex irrigation schemes as well as the funding of artistic, literary, and spiritual pursuits, all favoring a high level of cultural diversity and exchange.

The earliest cultural influence on Khotan may have been Iranian, but by the time of the Mauryan empire (third century ʙᴄᴇ) trade routes were bringing increasing contact with India, Bactria, other nearby city states, and China.            

In Indian Buddhist sources, Khotan is said to have been covered by a great lake until the Buddha Śākyamuni flew there to bless it as a site for the future implantation of the Dharma, and miraculously drained the lake; this is the narrative of the sūtra The Prophecy on Mount Gośṛṅga (Gośṛṅgavyākaraṇa, Toh 357), see below. Other canonical works, including the Aśokāvadāna and one of its chapters, the Kunālāvadāna,² give differing accounts of a later period in which a son of Aśoka named Kunāla (or Kustana in the Kharoṣṭhī manuscripts, but according to Brough 1948, p. 334 n.6, following Lévi and Bailey, the indigenous form in Khotanese was Gostana), after either having been blinded as a child by a jealous stepmother, or banished by Aśoka himself as a threat to his reign, or appointed as governor of Gandhāra, settled in Khotan as a founding ruler. His name constitutes one postulated origin of the name Khotan, and he is identified with Suckler of the Earth Breast in The Prophecy on Mount Gośṛṅga (Toh 357) and the other Tibetan texts on Khotan.

According to The Prophecy Concerning the Land of Khotan (li’i yul lung bstan pa, Toh 4202) the wandering Kustana / Gostana had been adopted, at Vaiśravaṇa’s behest, by the king of China, who wanted thereby to add to his 999 sons and round up the number to 1,000. According to some versions of the story, therefore, Gostana arrived in Khotan as representing China along with some Chinese subjects, while from India came the minister Yaśa with his own contingent of dissident subjects of Aśoka; they joined forces and this constituted the population of Khotan.

Whatever historical facts may have given rise to the legends, at some time during or following the rule of Aśoka in India, Khotan became an outpost of Indian culture and gradually, during the first millennium ᴄᴇ, a place where Chinese merchants, monks, and scholars encountered Indian Buddhist doctrine, practices, and texts. It therefore had an important role in the transmission of Buddhism to China and the rest of east Asia.

Historical accounts do not allow precise dating of the first establishment of monastic and lay communities practicing pre-Mahāyāna forms of Buddhism. Even from the traditional histories, it does not seem to have been as early as the Mauryan period in India. It is possible that Buddhism had reached Khotan during the first century ʙᴄᴇ, even if it was not widely adopted there, since the southern Silk Route was the probable conduit for the transmission of Buddhism to China in the early first century ᴄᴇ.³ The Prophecy Concerning the Land of Khotan mentions the presence of Mahāsāṅghika and Sarvāstivāda Nikāyas in Khotan when the Khotanese king defeated Kashgar and converted its ruler and people to Buddhism in about 100 ᴄᴇ, and speaks of monasteries of the adherents of both Nikāyas during the reign of King Vijaya Dharma I (which might, very speculatively, be dated to the third or fourth century ᴄᴇ). There is as yet no archaeological evidence for stūpas or residential monasteries before the late third and early fourth century, although archaeological investigations are ongoing. In terms of texts, a kharoṣṭhī recension of the Dharmapada in a Gāndhāri Prākrit, dated to between the first and third century, was discovered in Khotan in 1892 by Jules-Léon Dutreuil du Rhins. While this single manuscript is so far the only concrete evidence of Āgama-related literature at an early period, it is known from several Chinese accounts that the transmission of texts (both vinaya and sūtra) prior to the introduction of the Mahāyāna was largely oral, with an active bhāṇaka tradition seemingly the norm over the entire Tarim basin and not only in the more northerly centers that remained faithful to the non-Mahāyāna traditions for longer. Indeed, it may only have been the advent of the Mahāyāna, with its sūtras making explicit reference to the merit of copying the scriptures in writing, that stimulated across the region the production of texts and translations‍—of both Mahāyāna and non-Mahāyāna works.⁴

If Khotan had hitherto been a predominantly non-Mahāyāna Buddhist community, early evidence of Mahāyāna influence comes from the transmission to China of The Transcendent Perfection of Wisdom in Twenty-Five Thousand Lines. Both of the early Chinese translations, made in the late third century, were of manuscripts originating in Khotan. The story begins with the account of the travels of the Chinese monk Zhu Shixing, who had studied Lokakṣema’s early translation of The Transcendent Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines (Taishō 224) in Luoyang and had set out westward to find the “more complete” text that had been heard about in China but had not been seen. He had determined to travel all the way to India if necessary, but did not have to go that far as he found the text in Khotan, probably in 260 ᴄᴇ. After various trials and tribulations he sent his Khotanese disciple Puṇyadhana with a copy to China, but himself remained in Khotan for the rest of his life. Puṇyadhana set out from Khotan with the manuscript in 282 but it was only some five years later that he arrived in Cangyuan, where Mokṣala, who was also Khotanese, undertook its translation (Taishō 221) in 291. Another Sanskrit manuscript translated into Chinese (Taishō 222) slightly earlier, in 286 ᴄᴇ by Dharmarakṣa, who was born in Dunhuang, had been brought to Chang’an, also from Khotan, by a Khotanese monk, Gītamitra, who assisted Dharmarakṣa in its translation. It included only the first twenty-seven chapters, while Mokṣala’s more complete translation included all ninety chapters.⁵

Other accounts of Chinese visitors to Khotan include those of Faxian, who in 401 spent three months there. He describes the large Buddhist community consisting of tens of thousands of priests, most of whom belonged to the Mahāyāna. And Zhi Faling found there in the early fifth century the text of the smaller recension of the Avataṃsaka (Taishō 278).

Tibetans, too, may have encountered some aspects of the Indian Buddhist traditions in Khotan. Khotan was invaded by the Tibetans a little after the mid seventh century ᴄᴇ at a time when, in the reigns of Songtsen Gampo and his successors, Tibetan political and military power were expanding. Khotanese accounts of the time saw the arrival of the Tibetans as destructive of Buddhist institutions there, and although the Tibetan court had recently begun to adopt Buddhist culture it is likely that its influence had not yet reached the far-flung army commanders. However, soon afterwards it appears that Tibetan occupation had proved relatively benign to Khotan’s Buddhists, and for the next three centuries while Khotan was twice subject to Tibetan administration (rule by China, lasting from the late seventh to late eighth century ᴄᴇ, intervened between the two periods of Tibetan administration) the cultural ties between Tibet and Khotan grew stronger.⁶ Indeed, some scholars attribute considerable importance to Khotan in the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet. Khotanese monks, banished from Khotan during a period of rule hostile to Buddhism, seem to have been welcomed in Tibet in the early eighth century by the Chinese queen of Tridé Tsukten, father of Trisong Deutsen, and may have been responsible for the establishment of the first Buddhist monasteries in Tibet. For several centuries even after the collapse of the Tibetan imperial power in the mid ninth century, Tibetan and Khotanese monks and scholars were in frequent contact in Dunhuang and other cultural centers in Central Asia.⁷

Of the many oasis kingdoms on both sides of the Tarim Basin, Khotan was among the most prosperous and orderly, and sustained large communities of monks and nuns, as described by both Faxian and Xuanzang, the great Chinese monk travellers of the early fifth and seventh centuries, respectively. Later, wealth came from jade, washed down in the rivers from deposits in the mountains; Khotanese jade was highly valued in China.

That Liyül of “Sustained by the Earth Breast”⁸
Is not the Nepal on the border of India and Tibet,
Because there the features of Li, as described
By the Buddha himself, are not to be found.⁹

‍Even in the twentieth century, the renowned Tibetan traveler and scholar Gendun Chopel (1903–1951) found it necessary to point out to his countrymen that to identify Liyül with Nepal was wrong, and that the features of the country, as mentioned in the Kangyur texts, are those of Khotan.¹⁰ Dungkar’s dictionary devotes no less than two columns to a discussion of different scholars’ views on the subject; see Dungkar 2002, pp. 1956-7. See also Stein 1907, p. 153.

The Names Identifying Khotan

The standard Tibetan rendering of Khotan is li yul. It is not clear where the Tibetan rendering li might have come from, and at some periods of Tibetan history not all scholars seem to have been clear about the country to which that name referred, some assuming it sometimes or always meant Nepal (see above).

Another name by which Khotan is known in some Tibetan texts (e.g. Toh 257, see below) is kha sha, kha sa, kha za, or kha sha’i yul, Tibetan renderings which may correspond to Skt. khāṣya or khaśa or khasa as referring to a people (see Edgerton) or to the Indic name Kaṃsadeśa.                      

The name Khotan may have evolved from the variants Kustana and Gostana of the name of Aśoka’s son Kunāla in Khotan’s Buddhist founding myths (see above).

The Khotanese Language

Texts in Khotanese

Buddhist texts in Khotan until the mid fifth century ᴄᴇ seem to have been in the Indic Gāndhārī language, written in the Kharoṣṭhī script, and were not translated into the vernacular. A written script or language called Skt. khāsyalipi may be early Khotanese, i.e. Kharoṣṭhī.

See Negi qv kha sha’i yi ge:

khāśyalipiḥ (khāsyalipiḥ, khāṣyalipiḥ), lipiviśeṣaḥ — katamāṃ me bho upādhyāya lipiṃ śikṣāpayasi | brāhmīkharoṣṭīpuṣkarasārimaṅgalipim…daradalipiṃ khāṣya(khāsya)lipiṃ cīnalipim…| āsāṃ bho upādhyāya catuṣṣaṣṭilipīnām la.vi.66kha/88; dra. ཁ་ཤའི་ལུང་པ khaśadroṇiḥ ma.mū.199ka/214

From around the start of the sixth century, or possibly the mid fifth century, both texts and written communications in “Khotanese” became more prominent. This was a Middle Iranian form of Indo-European that developed from the vernacular of the region and was written in the Brāhmī and Gupta scripts used all over Northern India (but in forms specific to Central Asia). It was only at this time that Buddhist scriptures were actually translated into Khotanese.

The formal varieties of the Brāhmī scripts used for religious texts can be grouped into four stages of development, according to Sander: (1) Early Turkestan Brāhmī, type b (with two subtypes, one with knots, especially at the end of the verticals, and another without knots), “about the fifth century A.D.”; (2) Early South Turkestan Brāhmī, “end of the sixth to the seventh century”; (3) South Turkestan Brāhmī (the main type), “between the seventh and the ninth century”; and (4) Late South Turkestan Brāhmī, “tenth century.”¹¹

In the early centuries of the millennium, there may have been separate monastic communities in Khotan following Śrāvakayāna and Mahāyāna doctrine. A considerable range of Buddhist literature in Khotanese, mostly Mahāyāna texts and many represented only by fragmentary manuscripts, has been identified. Many such texts must have circulated in Tibet as Buddhism took root there, alongside texts in other Central Asian languages, Chinese, and increasingly—as the great imperial period of translations gathered pace—in Sanskrit.

Texts in Khotanese, found in Dunhuang and several other Central Asian sites, include the Aparimitāyurjñānasūtra (Toh 674 and Toh 675), The White Lotus of the Good Dharma or “Lotus Sūtra” (Saddharmapuṇḍarīka, Toh 113), and The Dhāraṇī of the Tathāgata Jñānolka (Jñānolka­dhāraṇī, Toh 522).

Canonical Texts Translated from Khotanese into Tibetan

A number of Kangyur texts are known to have been translated into Tibetan from Khotanese, while others may have been translated initially from Khotanese but subsequently retranslated or revised from Sanskrit manuscripts as they became available to Tibetans. The thirteenth century inventory of canonical translations compiled by the scholar Chomden Rikpai Raltri (bcom ldan rig pa’i ral gri) with the title Ornamenting Sunlight of the Teachings’ Spread (bstan pa rgyas pa rgyan gyi nyi ’od) lists twenty-one texts as having been translated from Khotanese, under the heading:

(p. 150) “Those that were translated from Khotanese were translated by the Khotanese Khenpo Surendrākaraprabha, the chief editor-lotsāwa Gelong Namkha, and others. Khotan is situated behind the chags po snow mountains,¹² and the [texts] translated from [Khotanese] are as follows:...”

Most of the works listed by Chomden Rigpai Raltri can be at least tentatively identified as matching the following extant Kangyur and Tengyur texts:

• The Questions of Vimalaprabhā (Vimalaprabhāparipṛcchā, Toh 168)
• The Prophecy on Mount Gośṛṅga (Gośṛṅgavyākaraṇa, Toh 357)
• “sbyangs pa’i yon tan bshad pa” [probably rnam grol lam las sbyangs pa’i yon tan bstan pa (Vimuktimārgadhutaguṇanirdeśa, Toh 306)]
• Pure Sustenance of Food (zas kyi ’tsho ba rnam par dag pa, Toh 206)
• The Sūtra on the Ringing Staff (’khar gsil gyi mdo, Toh 335)
• The Rite for the Protocols Associated with Carrying the Ringing Staff (’khar gsil ’chang ba’i kun spyod pa’i cho ga, Toh 335)
• The Supreme Samādhi (Samādhyagrottama, Toh 137)
• The Sūtra of Prince Arthasiddhi (Jinaputrārthasiddhisūtra, Toh 351)
• ‍Teaching the Ripening of Virtuous and Nonvirtuous Actions (dge ba dang mi dge ba’i las kyi rnam par smin pa bstan pa, Toh 355) or possibly another similar but distinct text, las kyi rnam par smin pa’i ’bras bu in Lhasa (H342) and Qianlong (Q1004) Kangyurs
• The Dhāraṇī of the Thousand-Armed, Thousand-Eyed Avalokiteśvara (spyan ras gzigs phyag stong spyan stong gzungs, Toh 691 and 897) or possibly another similar but distinct text, ’phags pa spyan ras gzigs dbang phyug phyag stong du sprul pa rgya chen po yong su rdzogs pa thogs pa med par thug rje chen po dang ldan pa’i gzungs in Lithang (J681) and Qianlong (Q368) Kangyurs
• Vasubandhu’s An Explanation of The Fundamental Exposition and Detailed Analysis of Dependent Arising (Pratītyasamutpādādi­vibhaṅga­nirdeśa, Toh 3995)
• Guṇamati’s Extensive Explanation of Teaching the Fundamental Exposition and Detailed Analysis of Dependent Arising (Pratītyasamutpādādi­vibhaṅga­nirdeśaṭīkā, Toh 3996)

Others in his list, however, are difficult to identify with any certainty:

• rta skad byang chub sems dpa’i mdo
• bsam gtan gyi mdo
• smon lam gyi mdo
• mo’u ’gal ma tshol ba’i mdo¹³ [The presumed theme of Maudgalyāyana seeking his mother, reborn in the preta realms, suggests a possible relationship to the Ullambana (or Yulanpen) sūtras in Chinese, Taishō 685 and 686, or similar narratives not always involving Maudgalyāyana himself in the Avadāna literature.]
• rta ’grin gnam sa bkod pa’i mdo
• dge’ ba bcu dang du blang pu’i(?) mdo
• snang brgyad rigs bzhi
• lang kar gshegs pa’i ti ka (in three bam po)

The following two works that appear (somewhat mysteriously) in the Epistles section of the Degé Tengyur are not mentioned by Chomden Rikral, but were also presumably translated from Khotanese. They are described briefly in the next section below and should no doubt be added as a supplement to Chomden’s list:

• The Prophecy of the Arhat Saṅghavardhana (*Arhatsaṅghavardhanavyākaraṇa, dgra bcom pa dge 'dun 'phel gyis lung bstan pa, Toh 4201)
• The Prophecy Concerning the Land of Khotan (*Kaṃsadeśavyākaraṇa, li’i yul lung bstan pa, Toh 4202)

Canonical Texts With Content Related to Khotan

• In The Questions of Vimalaprabhā (Vimalaprabhāparipṛcchā, Toh 168), the princess Vimalaprabhā, bodhisattva daughter of King Ajātaśatru of Magadha, who in the past was the powerful rakṣasī Husha, receives a detailed prophecy of her future lives as a series of important and powerful female figures in Khotan, including one as the formidable lady Rabngé, sister of the king of one neighboring country (Skardo), widow of the king of another (The Gold Country), Buddhist nun, and protectress of Khotan at the time of an invasion by the Tibetans. Other figures in Vimalaprabhā’s family, as well as Vaiśravaṇa and others, are prophesied in various supporting roles.
• In The Quintessence of the Sun (Sūryagarbha-mahāvaipulya, shin tu rgyas pa chen po’i sde nyi ma’i snying po, Toh 257), a passage of the text (12.30 et seq.) summarizes the story of the Buddha’s visit to Khotan to bless the landscape that is told in detail in The Prophecy on Mount Gośṛṅga (Gośṛṅgavyākaraṇa, Toh 357).
• In The Prophecy on Mount Gośṛṅga (Gośṛṅgavyākaraṇa, Toh 357), the Buddha, toward the end of his life, flies from Rajgṛha to Khotan, where he blesses the landscape, causes the lake covering the country to be drained away, and predicts the sites of stūpas and monasteries that will be founded as the Dharma takes root and spreads there.
• The Prophecy of the Arhat Saṅghavardhana (*Arhatsaṅghavardhanavyākaraṇa, dgra bcom pa dge 'dun 'phel gyis lung bstan pa, Toh 4201) is structured along the lines of the descriptions of the decline of the Dharma in India as told in a number of texts, but goes into considerable detail regarding the future expulsion of Buddhist monks from Khotan and the difficulties they will encounter as they travel through Tibet to India.
• The Prophecy Concerning the Land of Khotan (*Kaṃsadeśavyākaraṇa, li’i yul lung bstan pa, Toh 4202), contains material that partly overlaps the content of The Prophecy of the Arhat Saṅghavardhana, and also includes accounts of the rulers of Khotan and other historical details set out as prophecies.

Western Interest in Khotan and its Literature

The first scholar in the West to take an interest in Khotan seems to have been the nineteenth century French Sinologist, Abel Rémusat in 1820 with a study of Chinese texts about Khotan. W. Woodville Rockhill drew attention to the Tibetan texts on Khotan in his Life of the Buddha, published in 1884, while Édouard Chavannes and Sylvain Lévi published articles mentioning Khotanese texts in 1903 and 1905.

A few years earlier, in 1900, following the first discoveries of Kharoṣṭhī manuscripts on birch-bark in Kuchā and Khotan by other expeditions and the studies of them by Émile Senart and Rudolf Hoernle, the great explorer of Central Asia, Sir Aurel Stein, had already set out on his expedition to Chinese Turkestan. In 1907, Stein published a full account of his archaeological findings together with a wealth of geographical, historical, and linguistic observations, identifying and describing the sacred geography and architecture mentioned in this sūtra.¹⁴                          

Stein’s initial work on the Tibetan texts was subsequently developed further by Frederick Thomas, culminating in the publication in 1935 of complete English translations of The Prophecy on Mount Gośṛṅga (Toh 357) and of the other most closely associated texts mentioned above, The Questions of Vimalaprabhā (Toh 168), The Prophecy of the Arhat Saṅghavardhana (Toh 4201) and The Prophecy Concerning the Land of Khotan (Toh 4202), along with extracts from some other related works.¹⁵

More recently, in 1967, Ronald Emmerick published translations of the two parts of The Prophecy Concerning the Land of Khotan (Toh 4202). He has also published translations from Khotanese of works, and a guide to Khotanese literature. A useful article by Sam van Schaik published in 2016 summarizes studies of the Khotanese literature in general and on Khotanese works among the texts found in Dunhuang, including those by Karashima, Kumamoto, Skjaervø, van Schaik, and Zhang and Rong.

Jan Nattier, in Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline (1991), traces the development of the Buddhist “prophetic history” literature including a detailed account and analysis of the Khotanese texts mentioned here.

Bibliography

(see many articles in Indo-Iranian Journal)

Brough, John. “Legends of Khotan and Nepal,” in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 333–9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948.

Chomden Rigpai Raltri (bcom ldan rig pa'i ral gri). bstan pa rgyas pa rgyan gyi nyi ’od [Ornamenting Sunlight of the Teachings’ Spread]. (a) In gsung ’bum vol. 1. Lhasa: khams sprul bsod nams don grub, 2006. BDRC: MW00EGS1017426. (b) In gsung gsung thor bu vol. 2 pp. 3–158 (manuscript). BDRC MW1CZ1041. (c) See Schaeffer and van der Kuijp.

————. bslab bya gsum rgyan gyi me tog [Ornamenting Flowers of the Three Trainings]. In gsung ’bum vol. 1. Lhasa: khams sprul bsod nams don grub, 2006. BDRC: MW00EGS1017426.

Chopel, Gendun. Grains of Gold: Tales of a Cosmopolitan Traveler. Translated by Thupten Jinpa and Donald S. Lopez. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Emmerick, Ronald E. Tibetan Texts Concerning Khotan. London: Oxford University Press, 1967.

————. The Book of Zambasta, a Khotanese poem on Buddhism (London Oriental Series 21), Oxford University Press: London, 1968, pp. xxii + 455.

————. The Book of Zambasta: A Khotanese Poem on Buddhism. London: Oxford University Press. 1968.

————. The Sūtra of Golden Light, being a translation of the Suvarṇabhāsottamasūtra (Sacred Books of the Buddhists XXVII). London: Luzac and Company Ltd, 1970.                        

————. The Khotanese Śūraṅgamasamādhisūtra (London Oriental Series 23), Oxford University Press: London 1970.

————. A Guide to the Literature of Khotan. Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1992.

Herrmann-Pfandt, Adelheid. Die lHan kar ma: ein früher Katalog der ins Tibetische übersetzten buddhistischen Texte. Wien: Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2008.

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————. ————. Part 2 (Extra number to The Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. LXX, 1901). Calcutta, 1902.

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Kumamoto, Hiroshi. “The Khotanese in Dunhuang,” in Cina e Iran: Da Alessandro Magno alla Dinastia Tang, Orientalia Venetiana 5, pp. 79–101. Florence: Leo S Olschiki Editore, 1996.

————. “Textual Sources for Buddhism in Khotan,” in Buddhism across Boundaries: Chinese Buddhism and the Western Regions, pp. 345–360. Taipei: Fo Guang Shan Foundation for Buddhist & Culture Education, 1999.

————. “A St. Petersburg Bilingual Document and Problems of the Chronology of Khotan,” in Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology 3: pp. 149–56, 75–82. 2009.                                    

Maggi, Mauro. “Khotanese Literature.” Chapter 7 in Emmerick, Ronald E. and Maria Macuch (eds.), The Literature of Pre-Islamic Iran, companion vol. 1 to A History of Persian Literature. London: I. B. Tauris and Co Ltd., 2009.

Martini, Giuliana (a.k.a. Dhammadinnā). “Bodhisattva Texts, Ideologies and Rituals in Khotan in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries.” In de Chiara, Matteo, Mauro Maggi, and Giuliana Martini (eds.), Buddhism Among the Iranian Peoples of Central Asia, vol. 1 of Multilingualism and History of Knowledge. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2013.

Nattier, Jan. Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1991.

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Sander, L. “The earliest manuscripts from Central Asia and the Sarvāstivāda mission.” In Emmerick, R.E. and D. Weber (eds.), Corolla Iranica: papers in honour of Prof. Dr. David Neil MacKenzie on the occasion of his 65th birthday on April 8th, 1991. Frankfurt am Main, 1991.

————. “Remarks on the Formal Brāhmī of Gilgit, Bamīyān and Khotan.” In Jettmar, K. (eds.), Antiquities of Northern Pakistan: Reports and Studies. Vol. 1: Rock Inscriptions in the Indus Valley, pp. 107–130. Mainz, 1989.

Schaeffer, Kurtis and Leonard van der Kuijp. An Early Tibetan Survey of Buddhist Literature: The Bstan pa rgyas pa rgyan gyi nyi ’od of Bcom ldan ral gri. Harvard Oriental Series vol. 64. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Skjaervø, P.O. “Khotan: An Early Center of Buddhism in Chinese Turkestan,” in Buddhism across Boundaries: Chinese Buddhism and the Western Regions, pp. 265–344. Taipei: Fo Guang Shan Foundation for Buddhist & Culture Education, 1999.

————. Khotanese Manuscripts from Chinese Turkestan in The British Library. London: The British Library, 2002.

————. This Most Excellent Shine of Gold, King of Kings of Sutras. The Khotanese Suvarṇabhāsottamasūtra. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, 2004a.

————. “Iranians, Indians, Chinese and Tibetans: The Rulers and the Ruled of Khotan in the First Millenium,” in Susan Whitfield (ed.), The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith. London: The British Library, 2004b.

Stein, M. Aurel. Ancient Khotan: Detailed Report of Archaeological Explorations in Chinese Turkestan, vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907.

Thomas, Frederick W. Tibetan Literary Texts and Documents Concerning Chinese Turkestan, Part I. London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1935.

————. “An Old Name of the Khotan Country,” in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, April 1938, no. 2, pp. 281–2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938.

van Schaik, Sam. “Red Faced Barbarians, Benign Despots and Drunken Masters: Khotan as a Mirror to Tibet,” in Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, no. 36, pp. 45-68, October 2016.

Zhang, Guangda and Rong, Xinjiang. “On the Dating of the Khotanese Documents from the Area of Khotan,” in Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology 3: pp. 149–156, 2009.

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