Khitan character 18BD5

𘯕 is a Khitan sound sign, not a complete word. It usually joins other sound signs into clusters that spell words. Scholars reconstruct its sound near da, but its exact romanized reading remains debated.

Text symbol

What 𘯕 means

One scholarly reading gives it as da3.

A Khitan index lists it as glyph 214. A 2020 analysis suggests da2 may fit better. These Latin-letter readings approximate Khitan sounds, not English meanings. The spelling daluer includes the sign in a Khitan word meaning “seventh” in a masculine grammatical form.

Yelü Diela developed the small script around 925 to write Khitan, alongside a distinct Khitan Large Script for the same language. Tradition links its design to Uyghur writing, though the two scripts show few similarities. Known dated texts span 1053 to 1175; surviving examples are chiefly stone epitaphs—memorials carved for the dead. Khitan scripts continued into the Jin era and were abolished by imperial order in 1191.

Part of the collection

𘬣

Khitan Small Script

Who writes 𘯕

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Questions people ask

Why does 𘯕 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.