Tangut Ideograph 17D9B

In the medieval Western Xia kingdom’s Tangut language, 𗶛 means “brother-in-law.” Li Yuanhao ordered Tangut writing around 1036 for government and state identity, following neighboring Khitans’ scripts from a century earlier; its forms drew on Chinese writing without descending from it. Tangut’s earliest securely dated text is from 1069 or 1070. The script carried Buddhist and secular writing beyond Western Xia’s 1227 fall into the 16th century.