Khitan small script character 18B9F

One reconstruction reads it as to2; that value is not settled. Daniel Kane’s 2009 index gives this character no reading; Yingzhe Wu and Juha Janhunen’s 2010 list gives to2. That spelling, with Latin letters and a number, is a scholarly sound transcription, not the English word “to.”

Khitan small script can write whole words with one sign, while sound signs usually join into clusters of two or more to spell a word. If to2 is correct, 𘮟 supplies a sound; the surrounding inscription shows how it functions.

How did Khitan small script develop?

It was made to write Khitan, though its rollout date is debated. Traditional accounts credit Yelü Diela, younger brother of the founding emperor of the Khitan-led Liao dynasty, with devising it around 925. They say he drew on the historical Uyghur writing system, though the two look little alike. The earliest securely dated surviving small-script inscription is a stone epitaph from 1051. A 2026 study argues the script was systematized and widely introduced later, under Emperor Shengzong, pointing to a Khitan letter the Goryeo court could not read in 1011.

Alongside the large script, it served across the Liao, Western Liao (Qara Khitai), and Jin periods; surviving examples include official monuments and stone epitaphs. The Jurchens, a neighboring people who later founded Jin, modeled their scripts partly on Khitan writing. Jin rulers ordered Khitan writing abolished in 1191.