Khitan Small Script Character 18C0E

Its proposed sound value depends on the reconstruction. Daniel Kane's 2009 graph index gives lí; Masami Ōtake's 2017 study gives uľ for the matching graph. These are competing scholarly reconstructions of Khitan, not readings you can infer from the isolated glyph.

How does 𘰎 spell “hare”?

It supplies one sound in a three-sign spelling. The sequence 𘬦𘰎𘯺 is used for “hare”: Kane's index transcribes it as tau-lí-a, while Ōtake writes taw-uľ-aa. Khitan sound signs combine in word-sized clusters, so the reading depends on all three signs.

Khitan Small Script was written in vertical columns read from top to bottom, with columns running right to left. Its phonograms form word-sized clusters; a horizontal character-by-character rendering can flatten those groups and hide how the signs work together.

When was Khitan Small Script created?

Tradition dates its creation to around 925. Khitan Small Script wrote Khitan alongside Khitan Large Script in the Liao realm and later successor states. Traditional accounts connect its design with Yelü Diela and inspiration from Uyghur writing, although the scripts have few similarities.

The earliest securely dated surviving small-script inscription is a 1051 epitaph. A 2026 study argues that the script was systematized and widely adopted under Emperor Shengzong, rather than completed by Emperor Taizu. Surviving texts appear especially in funerary epitaphs and monuments.