Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Tangut script (Tangut: 𗼇𘝞; Chinese: 西夏文; pinyin: Xī Xià Wén; lit. 'Western Xia script') is a logographic writing system, formerly used for writing the extinct Tangut language of the Western Xia dynasty.
This list of Tangut books comprises a list of manuscript and xylograph texts that are written in the extinct Tangut language and Tangut script.These texts were mostly produced within the Western Xia dynasty (1038–1227) during the 12th and 13th centuries, and include Buddhist sutras and explanatory texts, dictionaries and other philological texts, as well as translations of Chinese books and ...
It is unclear how distinct the different ethnic groups were in the Xia state as intermarriage was never prohibited. Tangut, Chinese and Tibetan were all official languages. [117] A system of writing its language, based on Chinese and Khitan, was created in 1036, and many Chinese books were translated and then printed in this script.
Modern research into the Tangut languages began in the late 19th century and early 20th century when S. W. Bushell, Gabriel Devéria, and Georges Morisse separately published decipherments of a number of Tangut characters found on Western Xia coins, in a Chinese–Tangut bilingual inscription on a stele at Wuwei, Gansu, and in a copy of the Tangut translation of the Lotus Sutra.
Mid 14th century Tangut Buddhist text inscribed on the inner wall of the Cloud Platform at Juyongguan near Beijing. The earliest modern identification of the Tangut script occurred in 1804, when a Chinese scholar called Zhang Shu (Chinese: 張澍; pinyin: Zhāng Shù, 1781–1847) observed that the Chinese text of a Chinese-Tangut bilingual inscription on a stele known as the Liangzhou Stele ...
The Khitan large script and Khitan small script, which in turn influenced the Tangut script and Jurchen script, used characters that superficially resemble Chinese characters, but with the exception of a few loans were constructed using quite different principles. In particular the Khitan small script contained phonetic sub-elements arranged in ...
The Golden Light Sutra written in the Tangut script Praying Tangut man. The Tanguts were primarily Buddhists. Tangut Buddhism was influenced by external elements. The entire Chinese Buddhist canon was translated into the Tangut language over a span of 50 years and published around 1090 in about 3700 fascicles.
When opened up, the dimensions of the print area of each folio are 30.7 mm × 38.0 mm. The book title and page number are printed on the central fold of each folio, with the page numbers written in either Tangut or Chinese or a mixture of Tangut and Chinese. Each half-folio comprises ten vertical lines of 22 Tangut characters. [5]