What 𘰁 means
Its official label is an index, not a reading.
Yelü Diela devised it about 925 to write Khitan. Its forms drew on Chinese characters; Uyghur influence is reported, though visible similarities are few. The Jurchens, later founders of Jin, adapted Khitan writing.
A 2017 chronology lists a tomb inscription from 1053 as the earliest dated monument. The Jin court abolished Khitan writing in 1191; a 1922 discovery at a Liao mausoleum renewed scholarly study.
How do Khitan small-script signs form words?
Word signs can stand alone; sound signs form clusters for words.
Historical inscriptions ran in vertical columns, read from right to left. Scholarly transcriptions may be horizontal, which flattens the original layout.
Part of the collection
Who writes 𘰁
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Questions people ask
1Why does 𘰁 show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
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How to type or find 𘰁
- Search it as
- khitan script · khitan writing · kitan script · qidan script
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𘰁\18C01Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.