Tangut Character 17189

It is a Tangut character glossed “drive.”

A Tangut dictionary catalogs it as character 3459 and glosses it “drive.” One scholarly reconstruction gives its reading as kio; a separate Tangut pronunciation table gives ko. These are scholarly reconstructions for an extinct language, not a modern reading you can infer from the character’s shape.

Why was the Tangut script made?

For the Western Xia state and its Buddhist canon.

The Tangut script was created around 1036 under Emperor Li Yuanhao as part of building the Western Xia (Xixia) state. It served official documents and a Tangut version of the Buddhist Canon—a collection of Buddhist scriptures—as well as translations of Chinese classics, military works, and literature. Its design drew on Chinese writing and on the Khitan, a neighboring people with their own state script, but Tangut remained a distinct system for writing the Tangut language.

A manuscript dated 1070/1071 may be the earliest known surviving dated Tangut writing. After the Western Xia fell, surviving use shifted toward religious inscriptions. The Baoding dhāraṇī pillars—stone pillars inscribed with Buddhist sacred texts—date to 1502 and are the latest datable Tangut materials known.