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Tangut Studies
Tangutology or Tangut studies is the study of the culture, history, art and language of the ancient Tangut people, especially as seen through the study of contemporaneous documents written by the Tangut people themselves. As the Tangut language was written in a unique and complex script and the spoken language became extinct, the cornerstone of Tangut studies has been the study of the Tangut language and the decipherment of the Tangut script. The Tangut people founded the Western Xia dynasty (1038–1227) in northwestern China, which was eventually overthrown by the Mongols. The Tangut script, which was devised in 1036, was widely used in printed books and on monumental inscriptions during the Western Xia period, as well as during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), but the language became extinct sometime during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The latest known examples of Tangut writing are Buddhist inscriptions dated 1502 on two dharani pillars from a temple in Baoding, Hebei. By th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tangut People
The Tangut people ( Tangut: , ''mjɨ nja̱'' or , ''mji dzjwo''; ; ; mn, Тангуд) were a Tibeto-Burman tribal union that founded and inhabited the Western Xia dynasty. The group initially lived under Tuyuhun authority, but later submitted to the Tang dynasty, prior to their establishment of the Western Xia. They spoke the Tangut language, which was previously believed to be one of the Qiangic languages or Yi languages that belong to the Tibeto-Burman family. Phylogenetic and historical linguistic accounts, however, reveal that Tangut belonged to the Gyalrongic languages. Language The Tangut language, otherwise known as ''Fan'', belongs to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Like many other Sino-Tibetan languages, it is a tonal language with predominantly mono-syllabic roots, but it shares certain grammatical traits central to the Tibeto-Burman branch. It is still debated as to whether Tangut belongs to the Yi or Qiangic subdivision of Tibe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cloud Platform At Juyongguan
The Cloud Platform at Juyongguan () is a mid-14th-century architectural feature situated in the Guangou Valley at the Juyongguan Pass of the Great Wall of China, in the Changping District of Beijing Municipality, about northwest of central Beijing. Although the structure looks like a gateway, it was originally the base for three white dagobas or stupas, with a passage through it, a type of structure known as a "crossing street tower" (). The platform is renowned for its Buddhist carvings and for its Buddhist inscriptions in six languages. The Cloud Platform was the 98th site included in the first batch of 180 Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level as designated by the State Council of China in April 1961. History The platform was built between 1342 and 1345, during the reign of Emperor Huizong of the Yuan Dynasty, by imperial command. It was part of the Buddhist Yongming Baoxiang Temple (), which was situated at the Juyongguan Pass northwes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gabriel Devéria
Jean-Gabriel Devéria (8 March 1844 – 12 July 1899), known as Gabriel Devéria, was a French diplomat and interpreter who worked for the French diplomatic service in China from the age of sixteen. He was also a noted sinologist and pioneer Tangutologist who published one of the first studies of the Tangut script in 1898. Biography Devéria was born in Paris on 8 March 1844 to a family of artists. His father was Achille Devéria (1800–1857), a renowned painter and lithographer, and his uncle was the Romantic painter Eugène Devéria (1805–1865). His mother Céleste, who married his father in 1829, was the daughter of a lithographic printer, Charles-Etienne Motte (1785–1836). He was one of six children, including Théodule Devéria (1831–1871), who became a photographer and Egyptologist. After the death of his father in 1857, when he only thirteen years old, his older brother Théodule took responsibility for his education. In February 1860, aged only sixteen, Gabr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liangzhou
Liangzhou District () is a district and the seat of the city of Wuwei, Gansu province of the People's Republic of China, bordering Inner Mongolia to the east. Geography Liangzhou District is located in east Hexi Corridor, north to the Qilian Mountains. It can be divided geographically in three main areas: Qilian Mountains in the southwest, Hexi Corridor in the middle, and desert in the northeast. Liangzhou District is an agricultural oasis located in the Shiyang River () catchment area. Administrative divisions Liangzhou District is divided to 9 subdistricts, 37 towns and 2 others. ;Subdistricts ;Towns ;Others * Jiuduntan Headquarters() * Dengmaying Lake Ecological Construction Headquarters() See also * List of administrative divisions of Gansu * Wang Wei (Tang dynasty) References Official website (Chinese) Liangzhou District Liangzhou District () is a district and the seat of the city of Wuwei, Gansu province of the People's Republic of China, bordering Inner Mong ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bushell's 1896 Decipherment Of Tangut Characters
Bushells is an Australian company that produces tea and coffee. History Bushell's was founded by Alfred Bushell in 1883, when he opened a tea shop in Queensland. His sons moved the enterprise to Sydney in 1899 and began selling tea commercially, founding Australia's first commercial tea seller. A Bushell tea factory was set up in Harrington Street Sydney and a coffee roasting department at Atherton Place in The Rocks. Members of the Bushell family acquired the heritage-listed Sydney house, Carthona, in 1940. In the 1980s the company diversified its coffee manufacturing under the Bushells Coffee brand. In 1998, as part of an acquisition of coffee brands from Unilever, FreshFood Services Pty Ltd purchased the Bushell's Coffee brand. The tea brand still remains with Unilever. The coffee continues to be produced at the Concord factory. FreshFood also purchased the New Zealand division of Bushells Coffee. FreshFood, the owner and operator of the Bushell's Coffee Factory at 16 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephen Wootton Bushell
Stephen Wootton Bushell CMG MD (28 July 1844 – 19 September 1908) was an English physician and amateur Orientalist who made important contributions to the study of Chinese ceramics, Chinese coins and the decipherment of the Tangut script. Biography Bushell was born in Ash-next-Sandwich in Kent, the second son of William Bushell and Sarah Frances Bushell (née Wooton). He was educated at Tunbridge Wells School and Chigwell School. His father owned a large farm, but as the second son he needed to seek a career outside farming, and so he studied medicine at Guy's Hospital Medical School), University of London, where he excelled, winning prizes and scholarships in Organic Chemistry and Materia Medica (scholarship and gold medal, 1864), Biology (scholarship, 1865), Geology and Palaeontology (first class honours, 1865), Medicine and Midwifery (first class honours, 1866), and Forensic Medicine (gold medal, 1866). After graduation in 1866, he worked as a house surgeon at Guy's Ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jurchen Script
The Jurchen script (Jurchen: ) was the writing system used to write the Jurchen language, the language of the Jurchen people who created the Jin Empire in northeastern China in the 12th–13th centuries. It was derived from the Khitan script, which in turn was derived from Chinese (Han characters). The script has only been decoded to a small extent. The Jurchen script is part of the Chinese family of scripts. History After the Jurchen rebelled against the Khitan Liao dynasty and established the new Jin dynasty in 1115, they were using the Khitan script.Kane (1989), p. 3. In 1119 or 1120, Wanyan Xiyin, the "chancellor" of the early Jin Empire, acting on the orders of the first emperor, Wanyan Aguda, invented the first Jurchen script, known as "the large script".Franke (1994), pp. 31–34. The second version, the so-called "small script", was promulgated in 1138 by the Xizong Emperor, and said to have been created by the emperor himself. According to the ''Jin Shi'', in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Wylie (missionary)
Alexander Wylie (Traditional Chinese: 偉烈亞力, Simplified Chinese: 伟烈亚力) (6 April 181510 February 1887), was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China. He is known for his translation work and scholarship during the late Qing Dynasty. Early life Wylie was born in London, and went to school at Drumlithie, Kincardineshire, and at Chelsea. While apprenticed to a cabinet-maker, Wylie picked up a Chinese grammar book written in Latin (the ''Notitia linguae sinicae'' by Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare). China After having mastered Latin, he went on to make such good progress in Chinese that, in 1846, James Legge engaged him to superintend the London Missionary Society's press in Shanghai. In this position, he acquired a wide knowledge of Chinese religion and civilisation, and especially of mathematics, enabling him to demonstrate in his paper ''Jottings on the Science of the Chinese'' that Sir George Horner's method (1819) of solving equations of all orders had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Uyghur Alphabet
The Old Uyghur alphabet was a Turkic script used for writing the Old Uyghur, a variety of Old Turkic spoken in Turpan and Gansu that is the ancestor of the modern Western Yugur language. The term "Old Uyghur" used for this alphabet is misleading because Qocho, the Uyghur (Yugur) kingdom created in 843, originally used the Old Turkic alphabet. The Uyghur adopted this "Old Uyghur" script from local inhabitants when they migrated into Turfan after 840. It was an adaptation of the Aramaic alphabet used for texts with Buddhist, Manichaean and Christian content for 700–800 years in Turpan. The last known manuscripts are dated to the 18th century. This was the prototype for the Mongolian and Manchu alphabets. The Old Uyghur alphabet was brought to Mongolia by Tata-tonga. The Old Uyghur script was used between the 8th and 17th centuries primarily in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia, located in present-day Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China. It is a cursive-joining alphabet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tibetan Script
The Tibetan script is a segmental writing system (''abugida'') of Indic origin used to write certain Tibetic languages, including Tibetan, Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Ladakhi, Jirel and Balti. It has also been used for some non-Tibetic languages in close cultural contact with Tibet, such as Thakali. The printed form is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday writing is called umê script. This writing system is used across the Himalayas, and Tibet. The script is closely linked to a broad ethnic Tibetan identity, spanning across areas in India, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet. The Tibetan script is of Brahmic origin from the Gupta script and is ancestral to scripts such as Meitei, Lepcha,Daniels, Peter T. and William Bright. ''The World's Writing Systems''. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Marchen and the multilingual ʼPhags-pa script. History According to Tibetan historiography, the Tibetan script was introduced by Thonmi Sambhota i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ʼPhags-pa Script
The Phags-pa script is an alphabet designed by the Tibetan monk and State Preceptor (later Imperial Preceptor) Drogön Chögyal Phagpa for Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuan dynasty, as a unified script for the written languages within the Yuan. The actual use of this script was limited to about a hundred years during the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty, and it fell out of use with the advent of the Ming dynasty. It was used to write and transcribe varieties of Chinese, the Tibetic languages, Mongolian, the Uyghur language, Sanskrit, Persian, and other neighboring languages during the Yuan era. For historical linguists, the documentation of its use provides clues about the changes in these languages. Its descendant systems include Horizontal square script, used to write Tibetan and Sanskrit. There is a theory that the Korean Hangul alphabet had a limited influence from Phags-pa (see Origin of Hangul). During the Pax Mongolica the script has even made numerous appearances in weste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lanydza Script
The Rañjanā script (Lantsa) is an abugida writing system which developed in the 11th centuryJwajalapa and until the mid-20th century was used in an area from Nepal to Tibet by the Newar people, the historic inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley, to write and . Nowadays it is also used in Buddhist monasteries in India; China, especially in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
