A Linguistic Crossroads on the River
On the high right bank of the Amu Darya river, the waterway that once formed the border of empires, lies the archaeological site of Ayritom. Located 18 kilometers east of Termez in modern Uzbekistan, this settlement was a bustling outpost of the Kushan Empire between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE. Excavations since the 1930s have revealed a large Buddhist temple and monastery complex, indicating its importance as a religious center. The true scientific value of Ayritom, however, is in its architecture and but in the linguistic evidence unearthed here. Inscriptions and documents demonstrate the concurrent use of three distinct scripts: Bactrian, Brahmi, and Kharosthi.
The presence of these writing systems shows a remarkably cosmopolitan society. This was not simply a place where multiple languages were spoken, but one where a literate administrative and religious class used different scripts for different purposes. The epigraphic evidence from Ayritom and the surrounding region shows a layering of language for administration, religion, and commerce, managed by a multilingual population.
The Three Scripts of Ayritom
The Kushan Empire was a mixture of cultures, and its language use reflects this. The primary administrative language was Bactrian, an Eastern Iranian language. Uniquely among Iranian languages, Bactrian was written using the Greek alphabet, a legacy of Alexander the Great's conquests centuries earlier. The Kushans adapted the Greek script, even adding a new letter, "sho" (Ϸ), to represent the /ʃ/ sound common in Bactrian.
Alongside the official script, two major Indian writing systems were in use, primarily for religious purposes. Kharosthi, an script written from right to left, was derived from the Aramaic alphabet used by the preceding Achaemenid Persian Empire. It was the primary script for writing Gandhari Prakrit, the language of many of the earliest surviving Buddhist manuscripts. The discovery of Kharosthi inscriptions at Ayritom connects the site directly to the Gandharan Buddhist traditions that flourished under Kushan patronage.
The third script, Brahmi, is the ancestor of nearly all modern scripts of the Indian subcontinent. Like Kharosthi, it was used for writing Prakrit and Sanskrit. The use of both Brahmi and Kharosthi at Buddhist sites in the region points to a sophisticated religious community drawing from multiple Indian literary traditions. The combined evidence suggests a frontier society where an official could draft an order in Bactrian using Greek letters, a monk could study a sutra written in Kharosthi, and a scholar might consult a text written in Brahmi.