Description of Written Sources on The Trade and Economic Relations of Tokharistan

This article analyzes written sources related to the trade and economic relations of Tokharistan in the early medieval period from the perspective of source studies. The author examines various groups of sources that reflect the history and economic life of Tokharistan, including Chinese dynastic chronicles and Buddhist travel accounts, Arab-Persian historical and geographical works, local and regional written traditions (Sogdian, Turkic, Armenian, and Byzantine), as well as Indian and Tibetan sources. The article provides a scholarly analysis of information contained in these sources regarding the geographical location of Tokharistan, its political structure, urban network, transit trade routes, and economic resources. Special attention is given to issues related to toponyms, ethnonyms, distance measurements, and problems of transcription found in historical texts. The study concludes that during the early medieval period Tokharistan functioned as an important transit region located at the crossroads of international trade routes connecting Central Asia, India, and Iran. The author emphasizes that a comparative source-based analysis of different groups of sources is of significant scholarly importance for reconstructing the trade and economic relations of Tokharistan.

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