Tangut character 𗣁

It is glossed as the third of the Eight Trigrams. A 2008 Tangut–Chinese dictionary indexes 𗣁 as dictionary entry 3389 with that gloss. The Eight Trigrams are a set of eight figures made from three solid or broken lines. In the familiar sequence, the third is the fire trigram (☲). Unicode’s generated name identifies the encoded character; it does not translate it or give its Tangut pronunciation.

The Tangut script was created under the first Western Xia emperor around 1036 for state and cultural writing. Surviving texts include government records, Buddhist scriptures, secular works, and translations from Chinese and Tibetan. It continued into the Yuan and Ming periods and became obsolete by the end of the Ming dynasty. The date refers to creation of the script, not a known first appearance of 𗣁 itself.

If someone sends 𗣁 by itself, its dictionary gloss points to a trigram, but it does not reveal their reason for sending it. Read it as a Tangut text sample or specialist reference unless nearby Tangut text supplies more context.

Why does 𗣁 show as a square?

A font without Tangut coverage may show it as a box. Some default fonts lack Tangut glyphs. In that case, a square usually indicates a font gap, not a changed character.

To type U+178C1, use your system’s hexadecimal Unicode input tool, if available, then choose a font with Tangut coverage. A specialist Tangut input method may find characters by dictionary number or written components. The input method and the font solve different problems: one enters the character, the other displays it.