Tangut script (Western Xia)
Escritura tangut (Xixia)
- Date
- 1036 · confidence high
- Place
- Yinchuan, Ningxia, China
- Credited to
- Yeli Renrong, commissioned by Emperor Li Yuanhao
- People
- 👤 Yeli Renrong?–1042
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What it is
A logographic script of about 6,000 characters Chinese in look but with no counterpart in Chinese, created for the Western Xia empire. It served to translate the Buddhist canon and for administration.
It fell out of use after the Mongol conquest (1227) and was largely deciphered in the 20th century by Nevsky and others.
What it led to
- Tangut Buddhist canon printed by woodblock and movable type
- assertion of the Western Xia state's identity
- texts from Khara-Khoto rediscovered by Kozlov in 1908