ʼPhags-pa script


The ʼPhags-pa script is an alphabet designed by the Tibetan monk and State Preceptor Drogön Chögyal Phagpa for Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuan dynasty, as a unified script for the written languages within the Yuan. The actual use of this script was limited to about a hundred years during the Mongol Yuan dynasty, and it fell out of use with the advent of the Ming dynasty.
It was used to write and transcribe varieties of Chinese, the Tibetic languages, Mongolian, the Uyghur language, Sanskrit, Persian, and other neighboring languages during the Yuan era. For historical linguists, the documentation of its use provides clues about the changes in these languages.
Its descendant systems include Horizontal square script, used to write Tibetan and Sanskrit. There is a theory that the Korean Hangul alphabet was also partly inspired by ʼPhags-pa. During the Pax Mongolica the script has even made numerous appearances in western medieval art.

Nomenclature

ʼPhags-pa script: mongxol tshi, "Mongolian script";
дөрвөлжин үсэг dörvöljin üseg, "square script";
"new Mongolian script";
Yuan dynasty "new Mongolian script";
Modern "ʼPhags-pa script"

History

During the Mongol Empire, the Mongols wanted a universal script to write down the languages of the people they subjugated. The Uyghur-based Mongolian alphabet is not a perfect fit for the Middle 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, Kublai Khan asked the Tibetan monk ʼPhags-pa to design a new alphabet for use by the whole empire. ʼPhags-pa extended his native Tibetan alphabet to encompass Mongol and Chinese, evidently Central Plains Mandarin. 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 ʼPhags-pa alphabet.
Descending from Tibetan script it is part of the Brahmic family of scripts, which includes Devanagari and scripts used throughout Southeast Asia and Central Asia. It is unique among Brahmic scripts in that it is written top bottom, like how Chinese used to be written; and like the Manchu alphabet or later Mongolian alphabet.
Despite its origin, the script was written vertically like the previous Mongolian scripts. It did not receive wide acceptance and was not a popular script even among the elite Mongols themselves, although it was used as an official script of the Yuan dynasty until the early 1350s when the Red Turban Rebellion started. After this it was mainly used as a phonetic gloss for Mongolians learning Chinese characters. It was also used as one of the scripts on Tibetan currency in the twentieth century, as script for Tibetan seal inscriptions from the Middle Ages up to the 20th century and for inscriptions on the entrance doors of Tibetan monasteries.

Syllable formation

Although it is an alphabet, phagspa is written like a syllabary or abugida, with letters forming a single syllable glued or 'ligated' together.
Unlike the ancestral Tibetan script, all ʼPhags-pa letters are written in temporal order and in-line. However, vowel letters retain distinct initial forms, and short /a/ is not written except initially, making ʼPhags-pa transitional between an abugida, a syllabary, and a full alphabet. The letters of a ʼPhags-pa syllable are linked together so that they form syllabic blocks.

Typographic forms

ʼPhags-pa was written in a variety of graphic forms. The standard form was blocky, but a "Tibetan" form 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 state that hangul was based on an "Old Seal Script", which may be ʼPhags-pa and a reference to its Chinese name 蒙古篆字 měnggǔ zhuànzì. However, it is the simpler standard form of ʼPhags-pa that is the closer graphic match to hangul.

Letters

Following are the initials of the ʼPhags-pa script as presented in Menggu Ziyun. They are ordered according to the Chinese philological tradition of the 36 initials.
No.NamePhonetic
value		ʼPhags-pa
letter		ʼPhags-pa
Initial		Notes
1 jiàng-
2 qīkh-
3 qúnk-
4 yíng-
5 duānd-
6 tòuth-
7 dìngt-
8 nín-
9 zhīj-
10 chèch-
11 chéngc-
12 niángny-
13 bāngb-
14 pāngph-
15 bìngp-
16 míngm-
17 fēif-Normal form of the letter fa
18 fūf¹-Variant form of the letter fa
19 fèngf-Normal form of the letter fa
20 wēiw-Letter wa represents
21 jīngdz-
22 qīngtsh-
23 cóngts-
24 xīns-
25 xiéz-
26 zhàoj-
27 chuānch-
28 chuángc-
29 shěnsh¹-Variant form of the letter sha
30 chánsh-Normal form of the letter sha
31 xiǎoh-Normal form of the letter ha
32 xiáx-
32 xiáh¹-Variant form of the letter ha
33 yǐngʼ-glottal stop
33 yǐngy-Normal form of the letter ya
34 yù-null initial
34 yùy¹-Variant form of the letter ya
35 láil-
36 rìzh-

Unicode

ʼPhags-pa script was added to the Unicode Standard in July 2006 with the release of version 5.0.
The Unicode block for ʼPhags-pa is U+A840–U+A877:
U+A856 is transliterated using from the Latin Extended-D Unicode block.