Historical Development and Formational Characteristics of Sinographic Scripts—Part II: Northern Sinographic Scripts as Ideographic Systems

Between the tenth and fifteenth century CE, across the expansive region extending from northwest to northeast China, three regional regimes were successively established: the Liao, Western Xia, and Jin. Their dominant peoples were the Khitan, Tangut, and Jurchen, respectively. Despite their linguistic and ethnic differences, they maintained close politico-economic and cultural connections due to their shared northern geographical context. From the broader perspective of Chinese historical development, this period also constituted a phase of significant integration among the northern populations of China. Consequently, the socio-economic and cultural development of these three regimes exhibited numerous common characteristics, most notably the creation of indigenous Sinographic scripts under the influence of the Chinese script. Liao devised the Khitan Large Script and the Khitan Small Script, Western Xia created the Tangut script, and Jin created the Jurchen Large Script and the Jurchen Small Script. Of these, the Jurchen Small Script is now extinct, and the Khitan Small Script is a phonetic script (which will be discussed further later), while the other three scripts are ideographic. However, these three ideographic scripts fundamentally differed from the southern Sinographic scripts in the composition of their writing symbols. Given their analogous historico-cultural conditions of genesis and development, as well as similar structural attributes, this book categorizes them into a distinct type for discussion.