Shanshan (Chinese: 鄯善; pinyin: Shànshàn; Uyghur: پىچان, romanized: Pichan, lit. 'Piqan') was a kingdom located at the north-eastern end of the Taklamakan Desert near the great, but now mostly dry, salt lake known as Lop Nur.
The kingdom was originally an independent city-state, known in local Gandhari documents as Kroraïna (Krorayina, Kröran) – which is commonly rendered in Chinese as Loulan. The Western Han dynasty took direct control of the kingdom some time after 77 BCE, and it was later known in Chinese as Shanshan. The archaeologist J. P. Mallory has suggested that the name Shanshan may be derived from the name of another city in the area, Cherchen (later known in Chinese as Qiemo). A local variety of Gandhari was used in the kingdom for administrative, literary, and epigraphic purposes. Scholars such as Thomas Burrow have suggested the local population might have spoke a hypothetical Tocharian C, as evidenced by the loanwords in those Gandhari documents.
