Hotan, Wade-Giles romanization Ho-t’ien, conventional Khotan, the oasis town, southwestern Uy.gur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, far western China. Hotan forms a county-level city and is the administrative centre of the Hotan prefecture (diqu), which administers a string of counties based on the oases along the southern edge of the Takla Makan Desert.
The oasis of Hotan, the largest of these, includes Karakax (Moyu), to the northwest, and Luopu (Lop), to the east. The oasis is watered by the Karakax (Kalakashi) and Yurungkax (Yulongkashi) rivers, which flow from the high Kunlun Mountains to the south. They join in the north of the oasis to form the Hotan (Khotan) River, which discharges into the desert to the north. The rivers have their maximum flow during summer and are almost dry for much of the year.
Hotan first came into contact with China during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). During the Xi (Western) Han (206 BCE–25 CE), the explorer Zhang Qian twice served as an envoy to the western region (139 and 119 BCE), and on his second mission, he sent his deputy to Yutian (present-day Hotan). During the expeditions of the Dong (Eastern) Han (25–220 CE) into Central Asia, led by the general Ban Chao, Hotan was conquered for a time in the late 1st century CE. In those early times, the area was inhabited by an Aryan people known to the Chinese as the Vijaya, who spoke an Indo-European language and were much influenced by the culture of the northern sub-continent, especially Kashmir and Afghanistan. Their kingdom represented an important post on the Silk Road from China to the West (via the Pamirs) and also to India. It was both a major commercial center and one of the principal places through which Buddhism reached northern China. The Chinese again took Hotan when the expansionist policy of the Tang dynasty (618–907) took Chinese armies into the Tarim Basin in the 630s. Disputed by the Tibetans from the south for a while, the Tang government established the government general of Bisha (the Chinese transcription for Vijaya) there. This was destroyed at the time of the Chinese retreat from Central Asia after their defeat by the Arabs on the Talas River (now in Kazakhstan) in 752.
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