A Central Asian Buddhist term: remarks on Khotanese saña‑ and Tocharian B sāñ, A ṣāñ

The Khotanese masculine substantive saña- ‘artifice, expedient, means, method’ can- not be a loanword from the Gāndhārī feminine saṃña ‘perception, idea’ (< Sanskrit saṃjñā-), as has been recently suggested. Bilingual evidence for its meaning, its metri- cal use, and the contexts where it occurs show unambiguously that it differs formally and semantically from the Khotanese feminine saṃñā- ‘idea, notion, perception, etc.’, the actual loanword from Gāndhārī saṃña. Since the meaning of Tocharian B sāñ, ṣāñ and A ṣāñ ‘expedient, means’ agrees with that of Khotanese saña- ‘artifice etc.’, the old view should not be abandoned that the latter is a genuine Khotanese word < Iranian *sćandi̯ a- (to the root *sćand- ‘to appear, seem (good)’) and is the source of the corre- sponding loanwords in Tocharian.