Kucha

Kucha or Kuche was an ancient Buddhist kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin and south of the Muzat River.The area lies in present-day Aksu Prefecture, Xinjiang, China; Kuqa town is the county seat of that prefecture's Kuqa County. Its population was given as 74,632 in 1990.Etymology of KuchaChinese transcriptions of the Han or the Tang also infer an original form Küchï, but the form Guzan, representing, is attested in seventh century Old Tibetan . Mongol Empire-period Uighur and Chinese transcriptions support the form Küsän/Güsän/Kuxian/Quxian rather than Küshän or Kushan . However, transcriptions of the name 'Kushan' in Indic scripts from late Antiquity include the spelling Guṣân, and are apparently reflected in at least one Khotanese-Tibetan transcription. The history of the toponyms corresponding to modern 'Kushan' and 'Kucha' remain somewhat problematic.