Tangut character 17B5A

Its word-level meaning depends on Tangut context. The Unicode name is algorithmic: it labels the encoded form rather than translating it. Tangut writing takes visual and compositional cues from Chinese characters, but it is a distinct script and was not derived from Han characters.

One scholarly reconstruction writes its Tangut reading as sjɨ²: an s sound followed by a high, unrounded central vowel [ɨ], with tone category 2. This is a reconstructed sound, not an English gloss.

Why was Tangut script created?

It served Western Xia state building and Tangut religious writing. Around 1036, Emperor Li Yuanhao ordered the Xixia script as part of building the Western Xia state. It was intended to provide a Tangut edition of the Buddhist canon and establish an identity distinct from Song China.

After the Mongols conquered Western Xia, Tangut writing continued under the Yuan and Ming dynasties, becoming obsolete by the end of the Ming dynasty. Surviving books include Buddhist scriptures, Chinese translations, Confucian works, military treatises, and literature. A Khara-Khoto manuscript fragment, probably from the 12th or early 13th century, preserves a Tangut translation of a Chinese dialogue between Tang emperor Taizong and his ministers. Scholars rediscovered Tangut in the late 19th century; work by Tangut scholar Nikolai Nevsky helped decipher it in the early 20th century.