ANCIENT CHINESE GLYPHS VERIFICATION

In the future, the study of ancient ethnic writings should draw on the textual study methods applied in the study of the Han Chinese language and literature, focus on the contact, mutual influence, and mutual verification of the Han Chinese and ethnic minorities’ languages, and extensively collect and sort out the languages recorded in ancient ethnic scripts. Meanwhile, universities mainly designated for ethnic minorities in China usually focus on the study of ethnic minority languages rather than that of the ancient Han Chinese. Together with the Han Chinese writing system, these ancient ethnic writing systems constitute the Chinese family of scripts.Īt present, courses such as “Chinese Language and Literature” provided by China’s universities only cover the education and research of the Han Chinese characters and language, while the languages and writing systems of ethnic minorities are seldom involved. The Phags-pa script, used as an “official script” of the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368), was a variant of the Tibetan script.

There were also some scripts developed based on the Brahmī alphabet from ancient India, including the Tocharian, Khotan, Dai, and the Tibetan scripts. Several writing systems were further derived from the Sogdian script, such as the Huihu, Mongolian, Manchu, and Sibe scripts. Moreover, some ancient ethnic writing systems were derived from the overseas Aramaic alphabet, such as the Qulu script, Sogdian script, and the Turkic script.

Ancient chinese glyphs