Tangut Component 255

This is a structural piece of Tangut writing, not a whole word.

Scholars use Tangut components to split larger characters into parts for description, analysis, and dictionary lookup. A radical is a component chosen as an index heading. Component sets and radical systems vary among dictionaries, so 255 identifies this item in Unicode; it is not a universal radical number.

Created around 1036 under Western Xia’s first emperor, the Tangut script was used to write the Tangut language. Western Xia was a state in what is now northwestern China. Although Tangut writing resembles Chinese characters, the scripts are unrelated. Tangut texts survive in official and private records, Buddhist books and sutras, inscriptions, and manuscripts. After Western Xia fell, use continued through the Yuan and Ming dynasties, and the script was obsolete by the end of Ming. It was rediscovered in the late 19th century and largely deciphered through N. A. Nevsky’s work in the early 20th century.