Phagspa script

The ’Phagspa script (Mongolian: дөрвөлжин үсэг dörvöljin üseg "square script"; Tibetan: hor gsar yig "new Mongolian script"; Chinese: 蒙古新字 měnggǔ xīnzì "new Mongolian script" or 蒙古篆字 měnggǔ zhuānzì "Mongolian seal script") was an abugida designed by the Tibetan Lama ’Phagspa for the emperor Kublai Khan during the Yuan Dynasty in China, as a unified script for all languages within the Mongolian Empire. It fell out of use after the empire was overturned by the Ming Dynasty. The vast documentation about its use gives modern linguists many clues about the changes of the Chinese languages and other Asian languages during the period.

History

The Uyghur-based Mongolian alphabet is not a perfect fit for the Mongol language, and it would be impractical to extend it to a language with a very different phonology like Chinese. Therefore, during the Yuan Dynasty (ca. 1269), Kublai Khan asked ’Phagspa to design a new alphabet for use by the whole empire. ’Phagspa extended his native Tibetan script (an Indic script) to encompass Mongol and Chinese. The resulting 38 letters have been known by several descriptive names, such as "square script" based on their shape, but today are primarily known as the ’Phagspa alphabet.

Comparison between letters of the ’Phagspa script and Korean Hangul

Despite its origin, the script was written vertically (top to bottom) like the previous Mongolian scripts. It did not receive wide acceptance and fell into disuse with the collapse of the Yuan dynasty in 1368. After this it was mainly used as a phonetic gloss for Mongolians learning Chinese characters. Scholars such as Gari Ledyard believe that in the meantime it was one of the sources for the Korean Hangul alphabet. It was also used as one of the scripts on Tibetan currency in the twentieth century.

Forms

The ’Phagspa script, with consonants arranged according to Chinese phonology. At the far left are vowels and medial consonants.
Top: Approximate values in Middle Chinese. (Values in parentheses were not used for Chinese.)
Second: Standard letter forms.
Third: Seal script forms. (A few letters, marked by hyphens, are not distinct from the preceding letter.)
Bottom: The "Tibetan" forms. (Several letters have alternate forms, separated here by a • bullet.)

Unlike the ancestral Tibetan script, all ’Phagspa letters are written in temporal order (that is, /CV/ is written CV for all vowels) and inline (that is, the vowels are not diacritics), but vowel letters still have distinct initial forms, suggesting that they are not quite full letters on par with consonants, and therefore that ’Phagspa should be classified as an abugida. As in Tibetan, short /a/ is not written except initially. The letters of a ’Phagspa syllable are linked together so that they form syllabic blocks.

’Phagspa was written in a variety of graphic forms. The standard form (top, at right) was blocky, but a "Tibetan" form (bottom) was even more so, consisting almost entirely of straight orthogonal lines and right angles. A "seal script" form, used for imperial seals and the like, was more elaborate, with squared sinusoidal lines and spirals. Korean records that state that hangul was based on an "Old Seal Script", 古篆, which internal evidence suggests is ’Phagspa. However, it is the simpler standard form that is the closer match.

Unicode

For the purpose of encoding in digital media, The Unicode Standard, starting with version 5.0,^[1] assigns codepoints U+A840 to U+A877 to the 56 Phags-Pa letters. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points.

See also

• Mongolian writing systems
• Mongolian script
• Soyombo script
• Brahmic family

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

’Phagspa script

• BabelStone: 'Phags-pa Script (with free fonts)
• Comparison of ’Phagspa characters and traditional Chinese vowels, a summary of documentations during the era.
• Omniglot: ’Phagspa alphabet
• Ancientscripts: hPhags-pa

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