Tangut
/ˈtaŋɡuːt
/noun (plural same or Tanguts)
1A member of a Tibetan people who established a kingdom in NW China and western Inner Mongolia from the late 10th to the mid 13th centuries.There, in 1081, he organised an advance against the Tanguts winning major victories and extending the control of the Sung dynasty over new regions....
- Buildings, historical records and nearly everything else the Tanguts had created, were destroyed.
- By the 1040s, the Song were sending the Tanguts a huge annual tribute of silk, silver and tea.
2 [mass noun] The extinct language of the Tangut.Among the Buddhist texts a number of unique compilations, not known either in Chinese or in Tibetan versions were recently discovered. Furthermore, the Buddhist canon, the Confucian classics, and a great number of indigenous texts written in Tangut have been preserved....
- However, it would not be until 1038 that the Tangut chieftain Li Yuanhao, Li Deming's son, who also ordered the creation of a Tangut writing system and the translation of Chinese classics into Tangut, named himself emperor of Da Xia, and demanded of the Song emperor recognition as an equal.
- Thus although in Chinese more than 90%; of the characters possess a phonetic element, this proportion is limited to about 10% in Tangut according to him.
adjective
Relating to the Tangut or their language.All forms of Chinese writing of the fourth to eleventh centuries and Tangut writing are ideographic....
- To the west of Jin was the Tangut empire which, in turn, was bordered by Tibet to the South-west.
- These images of the Tangut imperial patron extend the contexts in which East Asian imperial patrons have explicitly placed themselves, and suggest both deep personal as well as political motivations.
Origin
Apparently from Mongolian, from Chinese Dǎng Xiàng.