The essays included in this special section are revised versions of the papers delivered during the panel “Indigenous Buddhist Culture of the Tocharians of Kucha” at the XXth Congress of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, held in Leipzig in August 2025. The panel was organized by the research center “Buddhist Murals of Kucha on the Northern Silk Road” at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities, University of Leipzig, Germany. The speakers, and thus the authors of the contributions, are members of the research center and its cooperating partner, the project “A Comprehensive Edition of Tocharian Manuscripts” (CEToM) of the University of Vienna. Both projects, although still in progress, have been ongoing for many years, so that some results can already be presented: the essays offer a glimpse into the current work, as well as the preliminary results. As far as the Leipzig project is concerned, it can already point to six published books and two more that will appear within the next few months. One of them, The Mural Sequence of the Buddha’s Life in Kizil Cave 110 (Staircase Cave) by Fang Wang 王芳, should be mentioned here as symptomatic of the project’s work. Analysis of the sources of the illustrations of the Buddha legend revealed that they consist of a whole variety of texts, with versions preserved in the travelogues of Chinese monks or little-known Chinese translations of lost Indian originals playing an important role and the expected versions of the Mūlasarvāstivāda texts by no means taking center stage. Just as the Buddha legend depicted in Kucha points to a distinct local version, other areas of Tocharian culture also reveal that the Kucha kingdom was an autarkic cultural entity whose strength derived from its position between multiple cultural hubs and expansive empires. The Kucha kingdom’s cultural autonomy is further underscored by its profound interest in Buddhist culture and its Indian context. The essays below will point to different facets of this uniqueness. In all the aspects presented here, whether ritual practices, mortuary customs, the local perception of Buddhism and Buddhist narratives, musical instruments, or artistic methods of representing narrative content, the uniqueness of the indigenous Tocharian culture is evident. To provide readers with some guidance, the facts based on current knowledge are presented below, along with a list of sources that tell us about the Kingdom of Kucha. It should be noted that these sources are Chinese and therefore provide a limited perspective on the situation. It must be emphasized here that the conclusions drawn, for example, from the origin of loan words incorporated into the Tocharian language or the similarities between the paintings and Indian prototypes, often tell us far more than the outside perspective of the historiographical sources. Nevertheless, in order to gain a more profound understanding of the significance of Tocharian culture in the region, it is imperative to utilize all available resources.