Considering the many different peoples who lived and travelled
the length of the Silk Road, it is hardly surprising that written
materials have survived in a large variety of languages and scripts.
Apart from Chinese, the main scripts used in Central Asia are
either derived from Aramaic, the administrative script used throughout
the Achaemenid empire (c.550-330 BC), or are different forms of
the Indian Brahmi script.
The Sogdians, the Uighur Turks and the Mongolians all used an
adaptation of Aramaic. Other Aramaic scripts in use were the Syriac
script used by the Nestorian Christians, and the Manichaean script
introduced by the prophet Mani himself, used for Middle Persian,
Parthian, Sogdian and Turkic Manichaean texts.
The Turks also developed a special Runic script possibly as a
deliberate reaction against the more usual Uighur script. There
are two solitary examples of Persian in Pahlavi script, and one
example of Judaeo-Persian (Persian in Hebrew letters) dating from
the eighth century. With the advent of Islam in Central Asia, the
Perso-Arabic script became widespread.
The Kharosthi script, used for the Middle Indian language Gandhari,
also owes its origin to Aramaic. Unlike other Indian languages,
it was written from right to left. The earliest examples, written
on birch-bark, probably date from the first century AD. In the
third and fourth centuries we find many examples written on wood
and leather from the kingdom of Kroraina.
Brahmi script was used for writing Sanskrit, Prakrit, Tocharian
and Khotanese texts. The Tibetan script was a development of Brahmi.
Brahmi was occasionally adapted for other non-Indo-Aryan languages
such as Sogdian, Tocharian, Turkish and Mongolian and Chinese.
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