Khitan Small Script Character-18BBD

It is a b-like sound sign, not a full word. Modern scholars usually transcribe its reconstructed value as b, a Latin-letter convention. In bas(a) (“again”) and baka (“son”), 𘮽 supplies the initial b-like sound.

Depending on the word, the same graph may represent /b/, a b-plus-vowel unit, or a vowel-b-vowel sequence. Khitan Small Script mixes whole-word signs with sound signs; sound signs combine into compact word blocks.

Why does Khitan writing look different in print?

Historical texts ran vertically; scholarly transcriptions can run horizontally. Traditional writing arranged sound signs into compact word blocks in vertical columns. Some research editions show one character after another on a horizontal line.

Traditional histories credit Yelü Diela with devising the script around 924 or 925 to write Khitan. Its forms drew on Chinese characters, while its sound system drew on Uyghur writing. A 2026 study argues it was systematized for wider use later under Liao Emperor Shengzong; the oldest securely dated surviving example is the 1051 tomb inscription for Wugulin Taishi.

Under the Liao, Khitan Small and Large Scripts appeared alongside Chinese in official writing and on monuments. Jurchen rulers kept using Khitan writing after the Liao fell, then modeled their own scripts on it; the Jin court ended official Khitan-script use in 1191. Scholars identified small-script funerary inscriptions in 1922.