What 𘬷 means
It represents one sound in Khitan writing.
Two or more sound signs usually form a compact block representing a word of one or more syllables.
Why create this script?
It gave Khitan a phonetic way to write its language. Around 925, the Liao royal Yelü Diela is traditionally credited with creating it, reportedly inspired by Uyghur writing, though their scripts look different. It served alongside the Khitan large script, based on Chinese characters, and Chinese writing. A 2017 scholarly chronology lists a 1053 tomb epitaph (a carved memorial) as the oldest surviving dated small-script monument; most surviving texts are funerary. Jurchens kept using it under Jin after Liao fell; the Jin court abolished it in 1191. Jurchen scripts drew on both Khitan systems.
Part of the collection
Who writes 𘬷
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Questions people ask
1Why does 𘬷 show as a box on some devices?
It is recent: Unicode added it in version 13.0 (2020), and phones and computers whose fonts are older than that have nothing to draw it with. The character itself is still correct and copies correctly.
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How to type or find 𘬷
- Search it as
- khitan small script · khitan glyph · qidan xiaozi · 契丹小字
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𘬷\18B37Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.