Tocharian language contact

I was asked by my friend and colleague Victor Mair (University of Pennsylvania) to come up with my 'safe list' of loans from and into Tocharian. This is a very interesting and challenging topic, which I will continue working upon in a couple of coming posts. First, I will start with the most tricky one: Tocharian loan contacts with Chinese.
Establishing Tocharian loans from and into Chinese are particularly complex for two reasons: first, the reconstruction of Chinese phonology at various stages in the Chinese prehistory, which is connected to many uncertainties and a large amount of debate, and second, the reconstruction of Tocharian phonology, which is particularly tricky and complex. The fundamental question is: How can we be certain that a specific word was borrowed at a certain stage from one reconstructed language to another? The prehistory of both languages can be stratified into various stages, Pre-Proto and Proto-Chinese, Old Chinese (Early and Late) Middle Chinese, and Pre-Proto- and Proto-Tocharian, Common Tocharian, Pre-A and Pre-B, and Tocharian A and B. Beyond that, we have the proto-languages Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Sino-Tibetan, which can be further stratified into stages on their way to Proto-Chinese and Proto-Tocharian. 
How can we know that a word, that obviously looks as if it was borrowed from Indo-European, is borrowed from Tocharian? The answer is that we have to show that specific Tocharian sound changes have taken place in the specific borrowed lexeme. These changes also have to be identified in the target language from the corresponding period. The process is very tricky, and the result is very few certain loans, more uncertain loans, and a huge number of uncertain loans.

Tocharian loans from Old Chinese (before 2nd ct BCE)
Toch. AB klu ‘rice’ was borrowed from Old Chinese: Mod. Ch. dào, Mid. Ch. *dawX, Old Chin. *C-luu-? ‘rice, rice-paddy’ (GSR 1078). In Middle Chinese, the initial cluster OChin. *gl- was simplified to d-. 
Toch. B rapaññe ‘of the last month of the year’ (LP 12 a2 rapaññe meṃne ikäṃ-wine ‘on the second day of the month rapaññe’), an adjective formed on a noun *rāp, from Old Chinese: Mod. Ch. là, Mid. Ch. *lap, Old Ch. *raap (GSR 637j) ‘winter sacrifice’. It is likely that an earlier meaning of the Chinese word is reflected in Tocharian.
Toch. A ri B rīye 'town' < Common Toch. *riye matches the Old Chinese reconstruction of Mod. Ch. lĭ, Mid. Ch. *liX, Old Ch. *r̯ǝ-? (GSR 978a) ‘walled city’. The word may also be a Tocharian loan in Old Chinese.
Further loans include  Toch. A truṅk Toch. B troṅk 'cave' 

Tocharian loans from Early Middle Chinese (possibly 3-4th ct ACE)
TA ṣoṣtäṅk ‘tax collector, banker’ (Skt. śreṣṭhin-) corresponds to Niya ṣoṭhaṃga ‘tax collector’, Bactr. σωταγγο < *šoštaṅgV. A possible source is Mod. Ch. shōucáng, Mid. Ch. *syuw+dzang, Old. Ch. *xiw-N-s-(h)raŋ (GSR 1103a+727g´) ‘receive, accept, gather’ + ‘conceal, store’.
TA ṣukṣ ‘(smaller) village’, TB kwaṣo* ‘village’. Parallel Mod. Ch. sù, Mid. Ch. *sjuwk, Old Ch. *suk (GSR 1029a) ‘lodge, mansion’. Itō & Takashima (1996:401) reconstruct Old Ch. *sjәkw-s with a final *-s (that has a function of localisation and production of nomina actionis etc.).
Toch. A āṅk* ‘seal, stamp’, Mod. Ch. yìn, Mid. Ch. *ʔjinH, Old Ch. *ʔin-s (GSR 1251f), *ʔi̯əɳ (Takashima) ‘seal, stamp’.

Further loans include
Toch. B cāk, tau  '(dry measures)', Toch. B cāne 'money'. Toch. B śakuse 'brandy', Toch. B ṣaṅk '(measure of volume)', TA yāmutsi TB yāmuttsi 'waterfowl' < 'parrot', Toch. B ṣitsok 'millet alcohol', Toch. B ṣipāṅkiñc 'abacus', Toch. A Toch B cok 'lamp', Toch. A lyäk Toch. B lyak 'thief', Toch. A < Toch. B tseṃ 'blue, Toch. A nkiñc Toch. B ñkante 'silver'.

These words give important indications of the impact of the Chinese culture on Tocharian. The track will be continued further on.

Sources/References
Carling, Gerd. Proto-Tocharian, Common Tocharian, and Tocharian – on the value of linguistic connections in a reconstructed language. In: Jones-Bley, Karlene, Huld, Martin E., Volpe, Angela Vella,  Dexter, Miriam Robbins Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference. Journal of Indo-European Studies. Monograph Series (Institute for the Study of Man) 50, 47-70.
Kim, Ronald. (1999). Observations on the absolute and relative chronology of Tocharian loanwords and sound changes. Tocharian and Indo-European studies, 8, p. 111–138.
Lubotsky, Alexander, & Starostin, Sergei. (2003). Turkic and Chinese loan words in Tocharian.
Židek, Jan. (2017). Tocharian Loanwords in Chinese [Dissertation]. Praha: Univerzita Karlova.