Along the northern rim of the Tarim Basin, modern Aksu occupies the site of an old oasis kingdom remembered in Buddhist Sanskrit as Bharuka and by the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang as Baluka.
By Pooja Bhatia
Modern Aksu lies along the northern edge of the Tarim Basin, between Kashgar and Kucha. Today it is known principally as an important city of Xinjiang, but its historical geography reaches far deeper into the world of the Silk Roads.
For centuries, Aksu stood on one of the great overland corridors linking China, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Caravans moving along the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert depended upon settlements such as Aksu for water, food, shelter and trade. Buddhist monks travelled through the same region. Languages mixed, texts were translated and geographical names changed as one cultural world encountered another.
One of those older names was Bharuka.
Bharat Nanda, in Beyond the Himalayas: Rediscovering India’s Forgotten Geography, draws attention to Bharuka while reconstructing the forgotten network of oasis kingdoms beyond the Himalayas. The book associates the name with Aksu and places the oasis within the larger historical corridor connecting Kashmir and the Indian world with Kucha, Kashgar and the Tarim Basin. At the same time, the discussion encourages careful examination of the textual and linguistic evidence behind such old place names.
In this case, there is significant independent support for the association.
UNESCO’s documentation of the Silk Road routes connecting India with Central Asia identifies A-k’o-su, or Aksu, with the Chinese forms Wen-su and Po-lu-chia and explicitly gives the Sanskrit name as Bharuka. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre)
This makes Bharuka an especially valuable example of forgotten geography: an old Indic name can be connected to a modern location through independent historical material rather than linguistic speculation alone.
The Oasis Between Kashgar and Kucha
Aksu’s importance begins with its position.
The Taklamakan Desert occupies the centre of the Tarim Basin, making direct movement across its interior extremely difficult. The main historical routes therefore followed chains of oases around the desert margins.
On the northern branch, a traveller heading east from Kashgar would eventually reach the Aksu region before continuing towards Kucha and then farther towards Karashahr and Turpan.
This placed Aksu at an important intermediate point.
It may never have possessed the fame of Kucha or Khotan, but Silk Road civilisation depended as much upon such intermediate settlements as upon celebrated centres.
A caravan could not travel indefinitely.
Animals required water.
Travellers required grain.
Merchants needed markets and secure places to rest.
Information about road conditions, political disturbances and weather had to be exchanged before the next stage of the journey.
Aksu supplied these necessities.
In that sense, the oasis represented the infrastructure of civilisation.
Bharuka in Buddhist Sanskrit
The name Bharuka is important because it connects Aksu directly with Buddhist Sanskrit geographical traditions.
UNESCO’s account of India’s Silk Road connections lists the principal oasis kingdoms through which routes passed after entering the Tarim Basin. Along the northern edge it identifies Aksu as A-k’o-su, Wen-su or Po-lu-chia, Sanskrit Bharuka, followed by Kucha and Agnidesa. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre)
This sequence is revealing.
Bharuka was not appearing in isolation in an Indian literary tradition. It belonged to a wider vocabulary through which the geography of Central Asia was recorded.
Kashgar appears as Sailadesa.
Khotan is identified through forms including Kustana or Godana.
Aksu appears as Bharuka.
Kucha survives in a recognisable form.
Karashahr appears as Agnidesa.
Taken together, these names demonstrate that the oasis world beyond the Himalayas entered Indian and Buddhist geographical knowledge in considerable detail.
India’s intellectual horizon did not end at the mountains.
The Chinese Names of the Same Place
As with many Silk Road locations, Aksu accumulated several names.
Chinese records knew an older kingdom in this region as Gumo, while later Buddhist-era sources preserve forms rendered as Baluka, Bolujia or Po-lu-chia.
The variations are not surprising.
Chinese scribes had to represent foreign names using Chinese characters. Sanskrit and local Central Asian pronunciations could therefore emerge in Chinese records in forms that look very different to a modern reader.
The Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang, who travelled through Central Asia in the seventh century on his journey between China and India, visited a kingdom usually rendered as Baluka or Po-lu-chia and described it as lying west of Kucha.
Modern historical discussion identifies this kingdom with the Aksu region.
The relationship between Bharuka and Baluka is therefore particularly interesting. The two forms are close enough to suggest that Sanskrit and Chinese Buddhist traditions were preserving versions of a related geographical name.
This is a much stronger type of evidence than simply finding two modern words with similar meanings.
Here there is an actual trail through historical texts.
Xuanzang’s Baluka
Xuanzang’s accounts are invaluable because he travelled physically through the regions he described.
He did not merely reproduce distant geographical legends.
When he reached the kingdom usually identified with Aksu, he described a Buddhist society containing numerous monasteries and more than a thousand monks. The monks belonged largely to the Sarvāstivāda tradition, one of the important schools of early Buddhism.
His account also suggests close cultural similarities with neighbouring Kucha, although the spoken language differed somewhat.
This is significant.
Aksu was not simply a commercial stop.
It belonged to the Buddhist cultural landscape of the northern Tarim Basin.
Monasteries stood alongside caravan routes.
Religious communities existed within trading towns.
Monks, merchants and travellers occupied the same geography.
The Silk Road was simultaneously commercial and intellectual.
Aksu and the Buddhist Corridor
To understand Bharuka fully, it must be placed alongside its neighbours.
Westward lay Kashgar.
Eastward lay Kucha.
Beyond Kucha stood Agni-desa and Turpan.
Together these oasis kingdoms formed a continuous corridor across the northern Tarim Basin.
Buddhism moved through this chain over centuries.
UNESCO’s description of the Chang’an–Tianshan Silk Roads corridor stresses that Buddhist sites and cave complexes along these routes document the eastward transmission of Buddhism from India through the Karakoram and Central Asia. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre)
The famous Kizil caves near Kucha provide some of the most dramatic surviving evidence. Their murals show Buddhist subjects alongside depictions of merchants, travellers and monks, demonstrating how closely religious life was connected with the commercial world of the Silk Roads. (UNESCO)
Aksu stood directly within this corridor.
Even if its surviving monuments are less famous, its geographical position meant that travellers moving between Kashgar and Kucha regularly passed through its wider region.
Bharuka was part of the road that made the great Buddhist centres possible.
The Importance of the Ordinary Oasis
Historical writing often gravitates towards spectacular places.
Kucha has its cave temples.
Khotan has its Buddhist manuscripts and jade.
Kashgar has its reputation as one of Central Asia’s legendary trading cities.
Aksu’s significance is quieter.
Yet this may make it even more useful for understanding how long-distance networks actually functioned.
Civilisation does not operate only through capitals.
It requires stopping places.
A traveller leaving Kashgar could not simply appear in Kucha.
Hundreds of kilometres had to be crossed.
Water had to be found.
Animals had to be fed.
Goods had to be protected.
Damaged equipment had to be repaired.
Aksu served this practical world.
The history of Bharuka therefore reminds us that the Silk Roads were supported by a chain of ordinary necessities.
India’s Connection With the Northern Route
UNESCO’s description of the Silk Road sites of India makes the larger geographical connection explicit.
Routes from northern India moved through Taxila, Bactria and other Central Asian centres before reaching the Tarim Basin. Other difficult routes climbed from Kashmir and neighbouring regions through the Pamirs towards Kashgar and Yarkand. From there travellers could join the northern or southern branches around the desert. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre)
This means that Bharuka belonged to a geographical system accessible from India.
The links were difficult but real.
Buddhist monks travelled them.
Merchants travelled them.
Texts travelled them.
And old geographical names travelled with them.
That is why the Sanskrit name should not be treated merely as linguistic decoration.
It is evidence that the place existed within an Indian Buddhist mental map of Central Asia.
What Does Bharuka Mean?
Here caution becomes necessary.
The historical association of Bharuka with Aksu is documented, but the precise origin or meaning of the word is less straightforward.
It would be tempting to search Sanskrit vocabulary for an attractive literal interpretation and then use that interpretation to explain the oasis.
That would be methodologically risky.
Foreign geographical names were often Sanskritised.
A Buddhist author encountering a Central Asian place name might reproduce it according to Sanskrit phonetics without the word necessarily having an original Sanskrit meaning.
The same phenomenon occurred in Chinese.
The form Po-lu-chia may preserve sounds rather than semantic meaning.
Historical geography therefore requires separating two questions:
Was Bharuka used as an Indic or Buddhist Sanskrit name associated with Aksu?
The evidence says yes.
Does the name necessarily originate as a meaningful Sanskrit description of Aksu?
That is a separate question and should not be assumed without stronger evidence.
Bharuka, Baluka and Aksu
The changing names tell the history of changing cultural worlds.
One layer preserves Bharuka.
Another records Baluka or Po-lu-chia.
Earlier Chinese geography records Gumo.
Later Turkic usage produces Aksu, usually interpreted from Turkic as “white water”.
None of these names needs to cancel the others.
Each represents another community encountering the same region.
The oasis survived.
The vocabulary changed.
This is one of the recurring lessons of Beyond the Himalayas. Bharat Nanda uses old names not merely to argue that places were once called something different, but to reveal the historical networks hidden by modern nomenclature. In the case of Bharuka, the older name points directly towards the Buddhist and Indian-connected geography of the northern Silk Road.
A Route of Languages
A traveller moving through ancient Aksu would have encountered a multilingual world.
The neighbouring kingdom of Kucha used the language scholars now call Tocharian B.
Chinese administrators and chroniclers recorded the region through Chinese.
Buddhist religious vocabulary contained Sanskrit and Prakrit elements.
Merchants moving from farther west could bring Iranian languages.
Later centuries saw the spread of Turkic speech.
A geographical name could therefore change several times without the settlement moving at all.
This linguistic diversity also helps explain why tracing ancient names is difficult.
Bharuka may become Baluka.
Baluka may appear as Po-lu-chia when represented through Chinese characters.
Modern historians must then reconstruct which ancient settlement those transcriptions describe.
In the case of Aksu, geography helps.
Xuanzang’s descriptions, distances and sequence of travel place Baluka in relation to Kucha and the northern Tarim route.
Text and landscape reinforce one another.
From Buddhist Oasis to Modern Aksu
Like many Central Asian centres, the religious and linguistic identity of Aksu changed over the centuries.
Buddhism declined.
Turkic peoples became increasingly dominant.
Islam spread through the region.
Older Buddhist terminology disappeared from everyday memory.
Eventually, Aksu became the name familiar to the modern world.
Yet Buddhist texts and historical scholarship preserved Bharuka and Baluka.
An old name that disappeared from the landscape remained alive in the archive.
That is often how forgotten geography survives.
How Strong Is the Bharuka Identification?
Compared with some of the more tentative names examined in this series, the Bharuka-Aksu connection rests on relatively solid published support.
UNESCO explicitly records Aksu with the Sanskrit form Bharuka. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre)
Historical traditions associated with Xuanzang place Baluka or Po-lu-chia in the Aksu region.
The geographical sequence corresponds with the northern Silk Road between Kashgar and Kucha.
Bharat Nanda’s Beyond the Himalayas brings the name into a contemporary discussion of India’s forgotten geographical connections with Central Asia.
What should remain cautious is not the broad identification, but claims about the exact linguistic origin and meaning of the name.
That distinction matters.
The Oasis Behind the Forgotten Name
Look at a modern map and the name is Aksu.
Look into Chinese history and Gumo appears.
Follow Xuanzang and one encounters Baluka or Po-lu-chia.
Enter Buddhist Sanskrit geography and the name Bharuka emerges.
The place has accumulated identities because it stood on a road travelled by different civilisations.
Its historical importance did not come from conquest alone or from monumental architecture.
It came from position.
Bharuka stood between great centres.
Caravans stopped there.
Monks passed through.
Buddhist institutions grew there.
Different languages described it.
And through this apparently ordinary oasis ran one strand of the enormous network that once connected India with Central Asia and China.
Modern geography remembers Aksu.
Buddhist Sanskrit remembers Bharuka.
Between those names lies the memory of a road.
That is forgotten geography.
Pooja Bhatia is a media analyst and law graduate with an interest in history and geopolitics.
