People
Tanchire
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Tanchire, set far to the east of Bactria, is the map's name for the Tocharians, a Central Asian people whom the geographer Ptolemy called a great nation. They first lived on the rims of the Taklamakan desert in the Tarim basin, then moved west. In the second century BC they overran the Greek kingdom of Bactria and pressed the Parthians along the Amu Darya; the Roman historian Justin tells how the Parthian king Artabanus the First fell fighting them around 124 BC. They may be the Yuezhi of Chinese sources, though scholars disagree.