Book Title: Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind
Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications
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OTHER IDEOGRAPHIC SCRIPTS
147
CENTRAL AND NORTHERN CHINA A few systems of non-Chinese writing are known to have existed in central and northern China. We may mention here the script of the K'itans or Khitans, of which only five symbols are known (Fig. 76, 3), and which was for two centuries the official script of the Liao-dynasty of that people. More important are the two scripts of the Tatar people, the Niu-chih, successors to the Khitans; the more ancient of the two was adopted in A.D. 1119 as the national script (Fig. 76, 5). This was revised in 1138 and called the "little" script (Fig. 76, 4). Tangut (or Si-Hia or Hsi-hsia) Script
From A.D. 982 to 1227, between China and Tibet on the latters' northern border, there stood a powerful kingdom which was swept away by the Mongols. Its name was Tangut or Si-Hia ("western Hia'') or Hsi-hsia. The language spoken by that population, and preserved for us by a Chinese philologist, is the only ancient Tibeto-Burmese language with which we are acquainted. The Si-Hia form of speech is now many centuries dead.
The Tangut king Chao Yuan-hao, otherwise Wei-i, who had married a Khitan princess, is reputed to have invented the Si-Hia character in 1037. It was written like the Chinese from top to bottom, and in columns from right to left.
The character was a highly evolved ideographic-syllabic system of writing. There are extant a few inscriptions (the earliest belonging to the eleventh century A.D.) and some manuscripts. The script was widely employed for over two centuries. Fig. 75 shows the syllabic signs of the writing, whereas Fig. 76, 2 is a specimen of a Chinese-Si-Hia glossary.
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