Tangut Script - Studies of The Unique Features
Tangut Script - Studies of The Unique Features
Tangut Script - Studies of The Unique Features
ARAKAWA Shintaro
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
0. Introduction
Tangut is the official language of the 西夏 Xixia dynasty which was located
in the Northwest area of China in 11 – 13 C. The language is known through
the documents written in the Tangut script promulgated when the dynasty
was established. After the fall of Xixia, Tangut language and script had been
used till the time of the 明 Ming period and probably, they died out after
then. The language belongs to Tibeto-Burman language group and has the
relationships to the minority languages in modern China. The Tangut script
is one of the “Pseudo-Chinese scripts” from the historical and geographical
views. In this presentation, we describe the features and studies of the
Tangut script.
1. Xixia
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Proceedings of the SCRIPTA 2016, Seoul, Oct. 8~10, 2016
The Xixia dynasty was founded in the 宋 Song period, and coexisted with
the Song, 遼 Liao and 金 Jin dynasties. The 党項 Dangxiang (Tanguts) ruler
李元昊 Li Yuanhao told the Song emperor that he called himself ‘The emperor
of the Great Xia’, and declared his independence from the Northern Song in
1038 AD. Even though they called their dynasty ‘Great Xia (大夏 Daxia)’, the
Song people called it ‘Western Xia (西夏 Xixia)’ and the dynasty is commonly
known as ‘Xixia’. In their own Tangut language, they sometimes called the
dynasty ‘the Great White and High State’.
A majority in the Xixia is the ‘Tangut’ from the word 党項 Dangxiang in
the Chinese history books. As the name of the language, it is called ‘Tangut’
in Russia and Western world and 西夏語‘Xixia yu’ in China or ‘Seika-go’ and
Japan. And they call themselves Mi or Mi nya (Mi means “human” and Nya
means “black”). In the historical records written in Tibetan, it remains as
‘Mi Nyak’.
During the 唐 Tang period, the Tangut people migrated from the 四
川・青海 Sichuan-Qinghai region into the Ordos region (located in a part of
the present-day Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region) and northern 陝西
Shanxi region. The Tangut is the northernmost tip of the Tibeto-Burman
language group.
The dynasty was based in present-day 寧夏 Ningxia Province, and ruled
a part of western 甘粛 Gansu Province, 陝西 Shanxi Province, the Inner
Mongolia Autonomous Region and 青海 Qinghai Province. It built the capital
in 興州 Xingzhou (known as 興慶府 Xingqingfu in the following period, and
then as 中興府 Zhongxingfu, present-day 銀川 Yinchuan city, Ningxia).
As Xixia was surrounded by various other lands, such as Song, Liao, Jin,
Tibet, and so on, the Xixia Dynasty set up twelve local military commands
called ‘監軍司 Jianjun Si (Military Police Boards)’ along its borders, in order
to fortify its defenses. One of these was set up in the downstream region of
the Black River (黒河 Heihe, Ejina River). It was called ‘黒水鎮燕軍司 Heishui
Zhenyan Junsi (the Heishui Military Police Board)’. Now the ruin is called 黒
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Tangut script – Studies of the unique features
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崑汲 1
zyIr 1nya: “water” ← “black”
Tangut has unique linguistic features, found in neither Old Tibetan nor
Old Burmese. These are ‘Agreement’ between personal pronouns and
pronominal suffixes and unique set of verb-prefixes which probably
originated from ‘directional marker’. See a sample sentence of the
‘Agreement’.
噴 罩 苻 区 瓦 嬉 噴
2
nga 1'a? 1lo 1han 1ca: 2ryor 2
nga
I 阿羅漢(Arhat) way get I (Suff. 1sg.)
I get the Arhat way.
In the sample sentence, the first character meaning “I, first person and
singular” appeared once again after the main verb (in the end of the
sentence).
In addition, the directional prefixes which express the direction of the
action precede the verbs in some cases. The same directional elements
remain in some minor languages in Tibeto-Burman. So, the grammar of
Tangut is a required subject for the studies on ancient Tibeto-Burman
languages.
Tangut scripts were established for writing the Tangut language. It has
been confirmed that approximately 6,000 such characters were produced.
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Tangut script – Studies of the unique features
As the type of script, similar to the Chinese script, one Tangut script
expresses one word (or one morpheme) and one syllable. Tangut script is a
logogram and it derives new scripts from other existing scripts in the same
way as Chinese script. Tangut script, however, has no “hieroglyphic” feature
like Chinese script. See the basic example below.
頼 “sun” 嚠“moon”
岐 1leu“one”,珎 1nyI’ “two”,教 1soq“three”,忙 1ldyIr“four”,
菱 1ngwI“five”,恍 1cheu’ “six”,葆 1sha:q“seven”,肛 1ya:r“eight”,
庠 1gwyI’ “nine”,紳 2’aq“ten”
刮“earth”,慥“dust” 襌“iron”,詛“knife”
The Tangut script can be divided into basic components such as the left part
and the right part, and its manner of composition, or 会意 huiyi (compound
ideographs) and 形 声 xingsheng (combining semantic and phonetic
components), are similar to Chinese characters. However, because there are
certain basic components which are not similar to Chinese, it is impossible
to understand the meaning of the Tangut script through a knowledge of
Chinese characters.
See the following samples; the element of 1) “water”, 2) “tree”, and 3)
phoneme.
1) 崑“water”,夫“wine”,溶“to flow”
2) 磴“tree”,禹“tea”,粭“pole”,簷“pine tree”
3) 械 gyu2 “three”,液 gyu2 “world”,崕 gyu1 “to cross”,加 gyu1 “canal”
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Proceedings of the SCRIPTA 2016, Seoul, Oct. 8~10, 2016
耋<mo>+安<ya>=臍<mya>
Derivation step by step
A 梠 2
ni: “to listen” B蜚 1
mo: “to listen”
C觴 1
mi: “to listen”
Around the Song period, various new ‘Pseudo-Chinese scripts’ were invented
in northern and north-western China, such as the Kitai, Xixia, and Jurchen
script. These were invented for the purpose of expressing the specific
languages of the Liao dynasty (916-1125), the Xixia dynasty (1038-1227),
and the Jin dynasty (1115-1234), respectively. These scripts, which were
similar to, but yet different from, the Chinese script, played an important
role in each culture.
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Tangut script – Studies of the unique features
Even though they are considered as Pseudo-Chinese scripts, they are actually
different systems. And the situations of the each material are quite different.
The Kitan script is divided to Kitan “Large” script and “Small” script
which have quite different forms and structure. The Kitan small script is
absolute phonetic letter like Hangul. Compare the samples of Pseudo-
Chinese scripts.
, , ,
From the samples above, we can see the direct influence from Chinese to
Kitan large and the indirect influence from Kitan large to Jurchen. On the
other hand, there is no similarity concerning form between Tangut, Kitan
small, and Chinese. The logograms such as Kitan large, Tangut, and Jurchen
are different from phonetic letters such as Kitan small. The Kitan small script
looks like Chinese script but actually, it is phonetic alphabet ordered as
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Proceedings of the SCRIPTA 2016, Seoul, Oct. 8~10, 2016
same characters with Chinese but it has the concept of “radical” like Chinese.
Tangut “radical” elements are not hieroglyphic but logogram.
Roughly to say, the system of these scripts are below.
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Tangut script – Studies of the unique features
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Proceedings of the SCRIPTA 2016, Seoul, Oct. 8~10, 2016
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Tangut script – Studies of the unique features
together with the Tangut documents of some other universities and research
institutes.
After the collapse of USSR, the materials kept in Russia are being
opened to the public a step at a time. In addition, Chinese publishers have
published the collections in Russia, UK, China, France, and Japan. See the
samples of the large volumes. The presenter edited the Xixia Documents
Collected in Japan as the co-editor.
Even though the Tangut script was forgot completely, it was re-discovered
and deciphered by modern linguists. In 1870, Wylie introduced the script to
Europe but he mistook it as Jurchen script. In 1989, Deveria identified it
Tangut script rightly. It is recorded that before then, a Chinese 張澍 Zhang
Shu recognized the script on the stone in 涼州 Liangzhou was Tangut script
in 1804. Of course, they just identified it as Tangut script but did not
understand the contents.
The classical Chinese phonology and the modern linguistics have
contributed to the reconstruction of Tangut. Here, we show the outline of
the modern studies on Tangut phonology.
The sources are divided into the “inner materials” and “outer materials”.
Whereas the inner materials are the rhyme dictionaries and phonetic tables
written in Tangut, the outer materials are phonetic transcriptions between
Tangut and Chinese, Tibetan and Sanskrit.
There were interesting and various sources for phonological studies in
numerous kinds of documents written with Tangut and other scripts. In the
early stage of reconstruction of Tangut sound, the scholars took up the
phonetic transcriptions between Tangut and other languages, such as
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Proceedings of the SCRIPTA 2016, Seoul, Oct. 8~10, 2016
In the 1960s, Nishida (1964, 66) and Sofronov (1968) discovered the
system of Tangut rhyme dictionaries and they reconstructed the Tangut
phonemes systematically. They used the 反切 fan-qie of Tangut based on the
Chinese classical phonology. The studies covered the sounds of most of all
the Tangut characters. To the 1980, the Tangut rhyme dictionaries such as
文海 Wen-hai and 同音 Tong-yin were refined and translated into Chinese
(Shi et al. 1983 and Li 1986). Furthermore, Nishida and Sofronov revised
their reconstructions partly (Nisida 1981-83, 89, 2012 and Sofronov 1972,
80).
In the 1990s, the re-discovery of 文海宝韻 Wen-hai bao-yun was the
epoch (Kychanov 1995, Shi 1999). And the catalogue of the Tangut
documents, including Wen-hai bao-yun was published (Shi, Wei and
Kychanov 1997) and it contributed to the phonological studies. Based on the
previous works, Gong’s reconstruction of Tangut sounds and his system of
transcription are being the mainstream (Gong 2003). Recently, the studies
on the cognates between Tangut and Tibeto-Burman languages are popular.
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Tangut script – Studies of the unique features
The studies of Tangut script consist of three parts, namely 形・音・義 Xing
Yin Yi “form”, “sound”, and “meaning”. The second and third are treated in
phonetics/phonology and morphology /lexicology /syntax in linguistics. On
the other hand, modern linguists do not establish the proper methodology
of the studies on the form and structure of script. In fact, however, the
description on the forms of Tangut characters exists in the rhyme
dictionaries similar to Chinese. See the sample.
禹 磴哦楔挺 “tea”: the top of “tree” is head part and the whole of
“medicine” is lower part.
Although the description was important source which reflects the opinion
by Tangut people, it is not enough to analyze the form of each character,
since it described with only four characters.
In 20th century, “the decipherment of Tangut script” includes the
analysis of the structure of the Tangut script. The classical one is『西夏国書
類編』Xixiaguoshuluipian(1915)by 羅福成 Luo Fucheng, in which the
radicals of Tangut were already identified and listed.
A series of theoretical studies on Tangut script were done by the late
Prof. 西田龍雄 Nishida Tatsuo. The famous publications are 『西夏語の研
究』Seikago-no kenkyuu in 1964, 66 and 『西夏文字』Seika moji in 1967, 80
which include the system and structure of Tangut script. And he continued
to study and introduce the features of Tangut script to the end of his life (e.
g. 1996, 1998, 2001).
First, the unique derivational patterns of Tangut script from his studies
will be introduced. The followings are “symmetric” characters: derived by
changing parts from left to right.
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假 2
dzwo: “human” VS 俘 ne:' “heart”
1
崑 1
zyIr “water” VS 崛 zyu “fish”
2
Next, the latest views by Prof. Nishida on the relationship between the
grammar of Tangut and Tangut script will be introduced. He named the “pair
characters”. The concept is that the words with the same (or similar)
meaning are expressed by two Tangut characters. The inflection and
derivation in the Tangut language are described by scripts.
The other one of most excellent scholars on Tangut script is the late Prof.
Gong Hwangchern (龔煌城) in the Academia Sinica, Taipei. Based on the
wide knowledge about Chinese classical phonology and the languages of
Tibeto-Burman language group, he contributed the phonological studies of
Tangut so much. He made the base of reconstruction forms of Tangut sound
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Tangut script – Studies of the unique features
and it has been used as the standard for Tangut studies. On the other hand,
he published many articles on the studies of the “form” of Tangut script now.
He showed the classification of the Tangut script formation in 1981, the
influence from the shapes of Chinese script to Tangut script in 1982, the
derivational formation of Tangut script in 1984. And in 1991, he made a
generalization of his ideas, including several derivations. See the following
samples.
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Proceedings of the SCRIPTA 2016, Seoul, Oct. 8~10, 2016
As the topic of Tangut studies, in 1990’s, after the fall of USSR, the Tangut
materials preserved in Russia have been opened and published as catalogues.
After 2000’s, the topics are the increase in the number of Chinese scholars,
the organization of several academic societies of Tangut study, and the
practical use of Tangut fonts on PC. Now the practical Tangut font sets have
enabled scholars to establish the large-scale corpus of Tangut texts. And the
discussion on the standardization of Tangut fonts (Unicode) is progressing
between the scholars in various countries.
In Japan, Dr. 小高裕次 Kotaka Yuji, Dr. 中嶋幹起 Nakajima Motoki et
al. developed Tangut font set personally. And the presenter supervised the
development of Tangut fonts by the private company (今昔文字鏡 Konjyaku
Mojikyo). Here, we will see the fonts and input method.
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Tangut script – Studies of the unique features
From ancient to now, Asia is an important area for the studies on scripts,
since there are many kinds and types of scripts. Needless to say, the most
famous system is Chinese script as the logogram and the derived scripts such
as Hiragana and Chu-nom were developed from it. And Chinese script made
the pseudo-Chinese scripts such as Tangut and Kitan. The Chinese script is
surrounded with the different-type scripts. For example, Indic such as
Tibetan and Hpags-pa, Syrian such as Uyghur and Mongolian, Alphabet such
as Latin and Cyrillic, and the unique group such as Hangul and Tomba.
From the view point on the establishment of scripts, there are several
different types including “official” scripts which were made by the emperor
(Tangut, Hangul, and so on) and “private” scripts which were made by the
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Proceedings of the SCRIPTA 2016, Seoul, Oct. 8~10, 2016
public (Hiragana, Chu-nom, and so on). The latter was recognized as the
script more inferior to Chinese.
Even though Tangut script is a dead script, it shows the unique features
and play an important role in the studies of Asian script in the future.
References
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Tangut script – Studies of the unique features
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