Yi syllable hna

It marks a syllable, not a word. The Latin-letter label is hna; surrounding text shows the Yi word.

Older Yi writing, also called Cuan or Wei, varied regionally. A tradition credits Aki with devising it in the Tang dynasty, but this is uncertain. Some scholars consider inscriptions over a millennium old to be Yi writing; the earliest securely dated surviving example is a bronze bell from 1485. Paper texts survive from at least the late Ming and were copied by bimo, ritual specialists, for rites, genealogy, divination, cosmology, and medicine. The Liangshan syllabary standardizes traditional Yi writing; devised in 1974 and promulgated in 1980, it aimed to improve literacy.