Coins Bearing This Character, And Dating
From 1308 To 1354, Are Extant.
The forms of the Niuche and Khitan were
devised in imitation of Chinese writing, but are supposed to be syllabic.
Of the Khitan but one inscription was known, and no key.
"The Khitan had
two national scripts, the 'small characters' (hsiao tzu) and the 'large
characters' (ta tzu)." S. W. Bushell, Insc. in the Juchen and Allied
Scripts, Cong. des Orientalistes, Paris, 1897. - Die Sprache und Schrift
der Juchen von Dr. W. Grube, Leipzig, 1896, from a polyglot MS.
dictionary, discovered by Dr. F. Hirth and now kept in the Royal Library,
Berlin. - H. Y. and H. C.
Chinghiz and his first successors used the Uighur, and sometimes the
Chinese character. Of the Uighur character we give a specimen in Bk. IV.
It is of Syriac origin, undoubtedly introduced into Eastern Turkestan by
the early Nestorian missions, probably in the 8th or 9th century. The
oldest known example of this character so applied, the Kudatku Bilik, a
didactic poem in Uighur (a branch of Oriental Turkish), dating from A.D.
1069, was published by Prof. Vambery in 1870. A new edition of the
Kudatku Bilik was published at St. Petersburg, in 1891, by Dr. W.
Radloff. Vambery had a pleasing illustration of the origin of the Uighur
character, when he received a visit at Pesth from certain Nestorians of
Urumia on a begging tour. On being shown the original MS. of the Kudatku
Bilik, they read the character easily, whilst much to their astonishment
they could not understand a word of what was written.
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