Hotan

Coordinates: 37°07′N 79°55′E / 37.117°N 79.917°E / 37.117; 79.917
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Hotan
خوتەن شەھىرى (
License plate prefix
新R
WebsiteHotan Government Website (in Chinese)
Hotan
Uyghur name
Hanyu Pinyin
Yútián
Bopomofoㄩˊ   ㄊㄧㄢˊ
Gwoyeu RomatzyhYutyan
Wade–GilesYü²-tʻien²
IPA[y̌.tʰjɛ̌n]

Hotan or Khotan (see also § Etymology) is a major oasis town in southwestern Xinjiang, an autonomous region in Northwestern China. The city proper of Hotan broke off from the larger Hotan County to become an administrative area in its own right in August 1984. It is the seat of Hotan Prefecture.

With a population of 408,900 (2018 census),

Hindutash and Ilchi passes. The town, located southeast of Yarkant County and populated almost exclusively by Uyghurs, is a minor agricultural center. An important station on the southern branch of the historic Silk Road, Hotan has always depended on two strong rivers, the Karakash River and the White Jade River, to provide the water needed to survive on the southwestern edge of the vast Taklamakan Desert. The White Jade River still provides water and irrigation for the town and oasis.[5][6]

Etymology

Hotan (or Khotan) and its surrounding area were originally known as Godana in ancient Sanskrit cosmological texts.[7] The Chinese transcribed the name as 于窴, pronounced Gudana in Middle Chinese (Yutian in modern Standard Chinese); the pronunciation eventually morphed into Khotan. In the 7th century, the Chinese Buddhist monk and scholar Xuanzang attempted to remedy this lexical change. Xuanzang, who was well-versed in Sanskrit, proposed that the traditional name was in fact Kustana (गौस्तन) and asserted it meant "breast of the earth". However, this was likely borrowed from the Tibetan name for the region, Gosthana, which means "land of cows". It is therefore most likely that the original name of Hotan was Sanskritic in origin, a consequence of ancient Indian settlement in the region.[8][9]

An alternative etymology is proposed by Harold Walter Bailey, an expert in the Khotanese language. He believes the oldest indigenous name to be Hvatana.[10]

Hotan was known to 19th-century European explorers as Ilchi.

The official Uyghur-to-Latin transliteration, and therefore English spelling, of the modern city's name is "Hotan" according to the Register of Chinese Geographic Places.

Hanyu pinyin romanization Hetian has also been used on some maps and by some airports. The city's former Chinese name was written with a different character for "tian" (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin
: Tián).

History

Kanishka's Empire (2nd century AD) including Khotan
Bronze coin of Kujula Kadphises found in Khotan.

The oasis of Hotan is strategically located at the junction of the southern (and most ancient) branch of the Silk Road 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, east of the city of Hotan, there is an extensive series of cemeteries scattered over an area about 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) wide and 23 km (14 mi) long. The excavated sites range from about 300 BCE to 100 CE. The excavated graves have produced a number of fabrics of felt, wool, silk and cotton and even a fine bit of tapestry, the Sampul tapestry, showing the face of Caucasoid man which was made of threads of 24 shades of color. The tapestry had been cut up and fashioned into trousers worn by one of the deceased. An Anthropological study of 56 individuals showed a primarily Caucasoid population.[12][13] A study in 2010 showed that an Eastern Eurasian lineage common in Siberia dominates the mitochondrial DNA of the mummies from the Xiaohe Cemetery. Their Y chromosome is distributed throughout Eastern Europe, South Asia, Central Asia, and Siberia.[14]

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[15] and early Tang dynasties) when China was interested in control of the Western Regions, the accounts of several Chinese pilgrim monks,[16] a few Buddhist histories of Hotan that have survived in Classical Tibetan and a large number of documents in the Iranian Saka language 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 Mogao Caves near Dunhuang.

Indo-Greek Khotan

In the Hellenistic period, there was an Indo-Greek colony in Khotan.[17]

Buddhist Khotan