Көне Куча патшалығы: Жібек Жолының солтүстік шетіндегі буддалық мемлекет

Ancient Buddhist kingdom on the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert

Kucha or Kuche (also: Kuçar, Kuchar; , Кучар; , t=[[wikt:庫車; ) was an ancient Buddhist kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the northern edge of what is now the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin and south of the Muzat River. The former area of Kucha now lies in present day Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang, China. Kuqa town is the county seat of Aksu Prefecture's Kuqa County. Its population was given as 74,632 in 1990.

The history of toponyms for modern Kucha remain somewhat problematic; however, it is clear that Kucha, Kuchar (in Turkic languages) and Kuché (modern Chinese), correspond to the Kushan of Indic scripts from late antiquity. While Chinese transcriptions of the Han or the Tang imply that Küchï was the original form of the name, Guzan or Küsan is attested in the Tibetan Annals (s. v.), dating from 687 CE. Old Uyghur and Old Mandarin transcriptions from the Mongol Empire support the forms Küsän / Güsän and Kuxian / Quxian respectively, instead of Küshän or Kushan. Another, cognate Chinese transliteration is Ku sien. Both names, as well as Kos, Kucha, Kujar etc., were used for modern Kucha. According to the Book of Han (completed in 111 CE), 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. The Kingdom of Kucha occupied a strategic position on the Northern Silk Road, which brought prosperity, and made Kucha a wealthy center of trade and culture.

During the Later Han (25–220 CE), Kucha, with the whole Tarim Basin, became a focus of rivalry between the Xiongnu to the north and the Han Chinese to the east. In 74 CE, Chinese troops started to take control of the Tarim Basin with the conquest of Turfan. In the first century CE, Kucha resisted the Chinese and allied itself with the Xiongnu and the Yuezhi against the Chinese general Ban Chao. Even the Kushan Empire of Kujula Kadphises sent an army to the Tarim Basin to support Kucha, but they retreated after minor encounters.

In 124, Kucha formally submitted to the Chinese court, and by 127 China had conquered the whole of the Tarim Basin. Kucha became a part of the Western protectorate of the Chinese Han Dynasty, with China's control of the Silk Road facilitating the exchange of art and the propagation of Buddhism from Central Asia. The Roman Maes Titianus visited the area in the 2nd century CE, as did numerous great Buddhist missionaries such as the Parthian An Shigao, the Yuezhis Lokaksema and Zhi Qian, or the Indian Zhú Shuòfú (竺朔佛). Around 150 CE, Chinese power in the western territories receded, and the Tarim Basin and its city states regained independence.

Kucha became very powerful and rich in the last quarter of the 4th century CE, about to take over most of the trade along the Silk Road at the expense of the Southern Silk Road, which lay along the southern edge of the Tarim Basin. There are fortified cities everywhere, their ramparts are three fold, inside there are thousands of Buddhist stupas and temples ( ) The royal palace is magnificent, glowing like a heavenly abode".|Jinshu, Book 97. Culture flourished, and Indian Sanskrit scriptures were being translated by the Kuchean monk and translator Kumarajiva (344 413 CE), himself the son of a man from Kashmir and a Kuchean mother.</small>

A specific style of music developed within the region and "Kuchean" music gained popularity as it spread along the trade lines of the Silk Road. Lively scenes of Kuchean music and dancing can be found in the Kizil Caves and are described in the writings of Xuanzang. "[T]he fair ladies and benefactresses of Kizil and Kumtura in their tight waisted bodices and voluminous skirts recall notwithstanding the Buddhic theme that at all the halting places along the Silk Road, in all the rich caravan towns of the Tarim, Kucha was renowned as a city of pleasures, and that as far as China men talked of its musicians, its dancing girls, and its courtesans." Kuchean music was very popular in Tang China, particularly the lute, which became known in Chinese as the pipa. For example, within the collection of the Guimet Museum, two Tang female musician figures represent the two prevailing traditions: one plays a Kuchean pipa and the other plays a Chinese jiegu (an Indian style drum). The music of Kucha, along with other early medieval music, was transmitted from China to Japan during the same period and is preserved there, somewhat transformed, as gagaku or Japanese court music.

Following its conquest by the Tang dynasty in the early 7th century, during Emperor Taizong's campaign against the Western Regions, the city of Kucha was regarded by Han Chinese as one of the Four Garrisons of Anxi: the "Pacified West", or even its capital. During a few decades of domination by the Tibetan Empire, in the late 7th century, Kucha was usually at least semi independent. In the 8th and 9th centuries, Uyghurs increasingly migrated into the area. After the destruction of the Uyghur Khaganate by Kyrgyz forces in 840, Kucha became an important center of the Uyghur kingdom of Qocho. The extensive ruins of the ancient capital and the Subashi Temple (Chinese Qiuci), which was abandoned in the 13th century, lie north of modern Kucha.

Francis Younghusband, who passed through the oasis in 1887 on his journey from Beijing to India, described the district as "probably" having some 60,000 inhabitants. The modern Chinese town was about with a 25 feet (8 m) high wall, with no bastions or protection to the gateways, but a ditch about 20 feet (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 city to the south east of the Chinese one, but most of the shops and houses were outside of it. About 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 is now part of Kuqa, Xinjiang. It is divided into the new city, which includes the People's Square and transportation center, and the old city, where the Friday market and vestiges of the past city wall and cemetery are located. Along with agriculture, the city also manufactures cement, carpets, and other household necessities in its local factories.

There are several significant archaeological sites in the region which were investigated by the third (1905–1907, led by Albert Grünwedel) and fourth (1913–1914, led by Albert von Le Coq) German Turfan expeditions. Those in the immediate vicinity include the cave site of Achik Ilek and Subashi.

Kucha was an important Buddhist center from Antiquity until the late Middle Ages. Buddhism was introduced to Kucha before the end of the 1st century, however it was not until the 4th century that the kingdom became a major center of Buddhism, primarily the Sarvastivada, but eventually also Mahayana Buddhism during the Uighur period. In this respect it differed from Khotan, a Mahayana dominated kingdom on the southern side of the desert. According to the 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. Kucha is well known as the home of the great fifth century translator monk Kumārajīva (344 413).

A monk from the royal family known as Boyan travelled to the Chinese capital, Luoyang, from 256 260. He translated six Buddhist texts into Chinese in 258 at China's famous White Horse Temple, including the Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra, an important sutra in Pure Land Buddhism.

Po Śrīmitra was another Kuchean monk who traveled to China from 307 312 and translated three Buddhist texts.

A second Kuchean Buddhist monk known as Po Yen also went to Liangzhou (modern Wuwei, Gansu, China) and is said to have been well respected, although he is not known to have translated any texts.

The language of Kucha, as evidenced by surviving manuscripts and inscriptions, was Kuśiññe (Kushine) also known as Tocharian B or West Tocharian, an Indo European language. Later, under the Uighur domination, the Kingdom of Kucha gradually became Turkic speaking. Kuśiññe was completely forgotten until the early 20th century, when inscriptions and documents in two related (but mutually unintelligible) languages were discovered at various sites in the Tarim Basin. Conversely, Tocharian A, or Ārśi was native to the region of Turpan (known later as Turfan) and Agni (Qarašähär; Karashar), although the Kuśiññe language also seems to have been spoken there. While written in a Central Asian Brahmi script used typically for Indo Iranian languages, the Tocharian languages (as they became known by modern scholars) belong to the centum group of Indo European languages, which are otherwise native to Southern and Western Europe. The precise dating of known Tocharian texts is contested, but they were written around the 6th to 8th centuries CE (although Tocharian speakers must have arrived in the region much earlier). Both languages became extinct before circa 1000 CE. Scholars are still trying to piece together a fuller picture of these languages, their origins, history and connections, etc.

The kingdom bordered Aksu and Kashgar to the west and Karasahr and Turpan to the east. Across the Taklamakan Desert to the south was Khotan.

The Kizil Caves lie about northwest of Kucha and were included within the rich fourth century kingdom of Kucha. The caves claim origins from the royal family of ancient Kucha, specifically a local legend involving Princess Zaoerhan, the daughter of the King of Kucha. While out hunting, the princess met and fell in love with a local mason. When the mason approached the king to ask for permission to marry the princess, the king was appalled and vehemently against the union. He told the young man he would not grant permission unless the mason carved 1000 caves into the local hills. Determined, the mason went to the hills and began carving in order to prove himself to the king. After three years and carving 999 caves, he died from the exhaustion of the work. The distraught princess found his body, and grieved herself to death, and now, her tears are said to be current waterfalls that cascade down some of the cave's rock faces.

From around the third or fourth century Kucha began the manufacture of Wu Zhu (五銖) cash coins inspired by the diminutive and devalued Wu Zhu's of the post Han dynasty era in Chinese history. It is very likely that the cash coins produced in Kucha predate the Kaiyuan Tongbao (開元通寳) and that the native production of coins stopped sometime after the year 621 when the Wu Zhu cash coins were discontinued in China proper. The coinage of Kucha includes the "Han Qiu bilingual Wu Zhu coin" (漢龜二體五銖錢, hàn qiū èr tǐ wǔ zhū qián) which has a yet undeciphered text belonging to a language spoken in Kucha.

630: Xuanzang visited the kingdom.