The Mixed Homonymic Characters: Procedures for Primary Teaching as Recommended by the Tanguts

Abstract

The newly discovered Tangut xylograph Essential Selection of Mixed Homonyms Often-Transmitted is a primer designed to teach beginners over 2000 Tangut characters commonly used in Buddhist scriptures. Referring to various dictionaries and primers, the compilation approach of the booklet is modeled after the Chinese traditional primer entitled Mixed Characters, which was widely circulated at that time, but its notes focus on the interchangeability of homonymic characters in various manuscripts, rather than on providing phonetic or semantic explanations. The two prefaces of the book prove to be a unique material for showing how the Tanguts treated their own script, and how a Tangut teacher taught beginners to read and write such complex characters. Unfamiliar with the Chinese concept of radicals, the Tanguts regarded their characters as combinations of various components formed by simplest strokes and glyphs. They believed that it would be easier for students to learn Tangut characters by piecing the components together than trying to write full characters directly. Complete translations of the two prefaces to the book are presented for the first time in this paper.