Tangut character 179A3

Alone, its dictionary gloss is “to surpass.”

The reconstructed reading is written njwi¹, a scholarly transcription rather than a modern pronunciation guide. The two-character word 𗀇𗦣 is glossed “can/be able” (verb) or “strong” (adjective); those meanings belong to the whole word, not to 𗦣 by itself.

Why was the Xixia script created?

It gave Western Xia a script for its own language. The Tangut (Xixia) script was created about 1036 under Li Yuanhao, first emperor of the Western Xia kingdom in what is now northwestern China.

The Tangut language was spoken there from about the 11th century until the 16th century. The script supported Western Xia’s distinct identity alongside the Song dynasty in China, and it is thought to have been created largely to produce a Tangut edition of the Buddhist Canon, a collection of Buddhist scriptures. Its makers followed the neighboring Khitan people, who had created two scripts about a century earlier.

After Western Xia fell to the Mongols, Tangut writing continued under the Yuan and Ming dynasties and was obsolete by the end of Ming. An undated manuscript from the Khara-khoto ruins in Inner Mongolia probably dates to the 12th or early 13th century. The script was rediscovered in the late 19th century and largely deciphered in the early 20th century, especially through N. A. Nevskij’s work.

Is 𗦣 a Chinese character?

No; it belongs to the Tangut script.

Tangut writing was influenced by Chinese forms and character-building principles, but it did not derive from Chinese writing. This glyph writes Tangut vocabulary, so its reading is not a Mandarin reading.