Tangut Ideograph 17BFB

Its dictionary gloss is “knife.”

Li Fanwen’s Tangut–Chinese dictionary indexes it under “knife.” That is a word gloss, not a full sentence: surrounding Tangut writing supplies its grammatical role. The Unicode name identifies the character; it does not translate the word.

Why was the Tangut script created?

It let the Tangut state write its own language.

Created around 1036 under emperor Li Yuanhao, the script served state administration and cultural distinction from neighboring Song China. It was used for official records, private writing, Buddhist scriptures—a large collection of sacred texts—and translations of Chinese and Tibetan works. Surviving books also cover Confucian teaching, military subjects, reference works and literature.

Tangut writing continued after Western Xia fell under Yuan and Ming rule and became obsolete by the end of the Ming dynasty. Its forms were inspired by Chinese writing, but Tangut is a separate script, not descended from Chinese characters. Tangut rulers also followed neighboring Khitan states’ example of creating a state script; that institutional link connects the traditions, not the ancestry of individual characters.

Why does 𗯻 show as a box?

A missing Tangut font can leave a blank box.

Fonts determine which glyph shape appears. As of 2025, a browser could display Tangut with a web font even if another app on the same device needed an installed system font. Different Tangut fonts can draw different letterforms for the same encoded character.