Khitan Small Script Character 18C80

𘲀 has the reconstructed reading “ul” in Khitan small script. It is one piece of a Khitan word spelling, not a full translation. A surviving Khitan word for “winter” includes it.

Text symbol

What 𘲀 means

It is a phonetic element in Khitan word spellings.

Scholars reconstruct “ul” as this sign’s sound. Khitan small script joins phonetic signs into clusters, so “ul” names one sign’s sound rather than translating a whole word.

When was Khitan small script created?

Traditional histories date it to about 925.

They credit Yelü Diela. The earliest securely dated surviving inscription is from 1051, so the oldest evidence is later than the traditional creation date. The script wrote Khitan under Liao and Jin rule, chiefly in funerary epitaphs, or stone inscriptions for the dead. Khitan people also used a distinct large script; an imperial edict ended Khitan-script use in 1191. A Liao mausoleum inscription found in 1922 brought the small script into modern study.

Part of the collection

𘬣

Khitan Small Script

Who writes 𘲀

Loading…

Questions people ask

Why does 𘲀 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.