Tangut Character 17558

It is a Tangut dictionary entry for a first-person pronoun. The Tangut dictionary entry 1247 maps to this glyph and is glossed “I.” That English gloss names a Tangut word; it does not make the character a ready-made English or Chinese pronoun.

The Tangut script was promulgated in 1036 to write Tangut and serve the Western Xia state’s official and cultural needs. Accounts differ: some credit Emperor Li Yuanhao with initiating the project and Yeli Renrong with developing it; others place its beginnings under Li Deming, Li Yuanhao’s father. 1036 is the script’s promulgation date; it does not establish when this individual character first appeared.

After Western Xia fell, Tangut writing continued in communities during the Yuan and Ming dynasties, later periods of Chinese rule, especially in Buddhist texts. A study discusses Tangut dhāraṇī pillars dated 1502—stone monuments inscribed with Buddhist ritual formulas—as evidence of this later writing. Today, scholars study Tangut through surviving texts.

Fonts can affect its visible form

𗕘’s code point identifies the character; a font draws its visible form. Tangut sources preserve variant shapes, and Unicode treats some historical variants as one encoded character. A font without Tangut coverage may show a missing-glyph box.