Tangut Ideograph 1748A

𗒊 means “dirt” in scholarly reconstruction of Tangut.

Its reconstructed reading is written niəj; the asterisk marks it as a reconstruction, not a recorded contemporary pronunciation.

In 1036, Western Xia ruler Li Yuanhao ordered the Tangut script as part of state-building; one aim was a Tangut edition of the Buddhist canon. The earliest surviving Tangut document is an official record dated 1072. Tangut books also include Buddhist works, translations from Chinese and Tibetan, and literature.

Is 𗒊 a Chinese character?

No. 𗒊 is Tangut writing, influenced by Chinese character forms.

The Tangut script writes the Tangut language. It was inspired by Chinese characters in their visual form and in how graphs are composed, but 𗒊 is not a character in the Chinese Han script.

A documented breakdown places 𘡊 above 𘪰 inside 𗒊. The mid-12th-century Sea of Characters is a Tangut rhyming dictionary, a book that groups words by sound; it analyzes 𘝣 (“turbid, muddy”) as 𗒊 with its top removed. That is the dictionary’s structural account, not proof of which character historically came first.

Did Tangut writing end with Western Xia?

No; Tangut remained in written use after Western Xia fell.

Western Xia fell in 1227. Tangut inscriptions from 1345 and 1348, and a stone column dated 1502, document later writing in the script.