Khitan Small Script Character 18BF2

It marks a Khitan sound, but its exact reading is debated.

Khitan small script wrote the Khitan language with sound-signs (phonograms) and some whole-word signs (logograms). Because a phonogram is part of a word, 𘯲 is best understood within a spelling, not as a word with a direct English gloss.

A 2010 encoding proposal transcribed this character as car. Here car is scholarly sound notation, not the English word.

When did Khitan small script begin?

Tradition gives about 925; a 2026 study questions when it took hold.

The traditional account credits Yelü Diela, younger brother of Liao founder Abaoji, with creating the small script to write Khitan. It says he drew inspiration from Uyghur writing, a script used by Uyghur communities, though few visual similarities are known.

The surviving inscription record begins in the 11th century and extends into the 12th, often on stone epitaphs. A 2026 reassessment points to a report from 1011 in which officials at Goryeo, a Korean kingdom, could not read a Khitan letter; it argues the small script may have been standardized later. It was one of two Khitan writing systems: the large script was its counterpart. Later Jurchen writing drew on Khitan models, and the small script continued under Western Liao and Jin.

Does 𘯲 mean “stone”?

Only in a disputed reading of a longer spelling.

A 2021 study examines the sequence 𘯲𘯺 in inscriptions. Earlier scholarship reads it as the personal name Chala; the study instead suggests čala, “stone,” and links it to Mongolian čilaγun, also “stone.” This interpretation belongs to the sequence in its context, not to 𘯲 on its own.