Tangut Component-343

It is a structural part used to analyze Tangut characters, not a word. Scholars use Tangut components to describe characters and organize dictionary entries; they can also write an Ideographic Description Sequence (IDS), a recipe showing how character parts fit together. Some dictionaries call a component a “radical,” meaning a heading used to sort entries.

Different dictionaries use different component systems; Unicode brings together pieces identified in several Tangut dictionaries and publications. So “343” names this encoded component, not a universal entry in an old Tangut dictionary.

The Tangut script was created under the first emperor of Western Xia, a state in present-day northwestern China, around 1036 CE to write Tangut, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken from about the 11th through the 16th centuries. Distinct from Chinese writing, it appears in official, private, and religious texts, including Buddhist sutras, inscriptions, and manuscripts. After the Mongol conquest of Western Xia, the script continued under later Chinese dynasties—the Yuan and Ming—then became obsolete by the end of the Ming dynasty. Scholars rediscovered it in the late 19th century; Russian scholar Nikolai Nevsky helped decipher it in the early 20th century.

Why do similar Tangut components look different?

Check whether the main strokes connect. A Tangut correction paper from 2020 records historical forms of Component 343 with a dot instead of an extended diagonal. It distinguishes them from a similar component whose upper and lower parts stay separate and whose upper part has an extra dot. Some characters were corrected between the two assignments, so compare the stroke construction rather than the overall outline alone.