Tangut character 17DAF

It is glossed as “equality” in a Tangut dictionary.

The English index to Li Fanwen’s 2008 dictionary lists the Tangut 0424 entry under “equality” and gives the reconstructed reading tjij, a scholarly estimate of how the word was pronounced.

The Tangut state of Western Xia created its script around 1036 under its first emperor to write Tangut and express a distinct state identity. It served government records and Buddhist works; a study identifies an official document sent to a military officer in Guazhou in 1072 as its earliest surviving example. After Western Xia fell, Tangut writing continued into the Yuan and Ming periods in Chinese translations, Confucian classics, military manuals and literature, before becoming obsolete.

Why does it look Chinese?

Its structure resembles Chinese writing, but it belongs to a separate script.

Tangut is a siniform script: its characters combine components in stacked or side-by-side arrangements that can look familiar to readers of Chinese characters. It is a separate writing system, not a Chinese character. Scholars have proposed Khitan influence on Tangut, but the relationship is debated; visual resemblance alone cannot show that 𗶯 was borrowed.

How can I enter 𗶯?

Unicode input enters the exact character; specialist RIME schemas offer another route.

Enter U+17DAF through a Unicode-capable system’s hexadecimal input method to produce this exact character.

RIME is an input-method framework with Tangut add-ons. Some let you enter a reconstructed reading such as tjij and then choose a character; others offer stroke or four-corner lookup. A separate setup called Tangut Cangjie is also documented.