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'Phags-pa
Type	Abugida
Spoken languages	Chinese Mongolian Sanskrit Tibetan Uyghur
Created by	Drogön Chögyal Phagpa
Time period	1269–c. 1360
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs  → Proto-Sinaitic   → Proto-Canaanite alphabet    → Phoenician alphabet     → Aramaic alphabet      → Brāhmī[a]       → Gupta        → Siddhaṃ         → Tibetan          → 'Phags-pa
Sister systems	Lepcha
Unicode range	U+A840–U+A87F
ISO 15924	Phag
[a] The Semitic origin of the Brahmic scripts is not universally agreed upon.
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The 'Phags-pa script (Mongolian: дөрвөлжин үсэг dörvöljin üseg "square script"; Tibetan: ཧོར་ཡིག་གསར་པ་ hor yig gsar pa "new Mongolian script" or Chinese: 蒙古新字 měnggǔ xīnzì "new Mongolian script") was an abugida designed by the Tibetan Lama Drogön Chögyal Phagpa for the emperor Kublai Khan during the Yuan Dynasty in China, as a unified script for all languages within the Yuan Dynasty, although the effort to promote this script was largely unsuccessful. It fell out of use after the dynasty was overturned by the Ming Dynasty. The vast documentation about its use gives modern linguists many clues about the changes of the Chinese languages and other Asian languages during the period.

[edit] History

The Uyghur-based Mongolian alphabet is not a perfect fit for the 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 (ca. 1269), Kublai Khan asked Phagpa to design a new alphabet for use by the whole empire. Phagpa extended his native Tibetan script (an Indic script) to encompass Mongol and Chinese. 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 'Phags-pa alphabet.

Comparison between letters of the 'Phags-pa script and Korean Hangul

Despite its origin, the script was written vertically (top to bottom) like the previous Mongolian scripts. It did not receive wide acceptance and fell into disuse with the collapse of the Yuan dynasty in 1368. After this it was mainly used as a phonetic gloss for Mongolians learning Chinese characters. Some scholars such as Gari Ledyard believe that in the meantime it was one of the sources for the Korean Hangul alphabet (it is noted in the records of the Hall of Worthies credited with the creation and development of Hangul that an unspecified language is among the templates examined by the Korean scholars; one of the possibilities is 'Phags-pa, as the Joseon libraries contained texts in 'Phags-pa and some Korean scholars of the time were well-versed in the script). It was also used as one of the scripts on Tibetan currency in the twentieth century.

[edit] Forms

The 'Phags-pa script, with consonants arranged according to Chinese phonology. At the far left are vowels and medial consonants.
Top: Approximate values in Middle Chinese. (Values in parentheses were not used for Chinese.)
Second: Standard letter forms.
Third: Seal script forms. (A few letters, marked by hyphens, are not distinct from the preceding letter.)
Bottom: The "Tibetan" forms. (Several letters have alternate forms, separated here by a • bullet.)

Unlike the ancestral Tibetan script, all 'Phags-pa letters are written in temporal order (that is, /CV/ is written CV for all vowels) and inline (that is, the vowels are not diacritics), but vowel letters still have distinct initial forms, suggesting that they are not quite full letters on par with consonants, and therefore that 'Phags-pa should be classified as an abugida. As in Tibetan, short /a/ is not written except initially. The letters of a 'Phags-pa syllable are linked together so that they form syllabic blocks.

'Phags-pa was written in a variety of graphic forms. The standard form (top, at right) was blocky, but a "Tibetan" form (bottom) was even more so, consisting almost entirely of straight orthogonal lines and right angles. A "seal script" form (Chinese 蒙古篆字 měnggǔ zhuānzì "Mongolian Seal Script"), used for imperial seals and the like, was more elaborate, with squared sinusoidal lines and spirals. Korean records that state that hangul was based on an "Old Seal Script", 古篆, which internal evidence suggests is 'Phags-pa. However, it is the simpler standard form that is the closer graphic match.

[edit] Unicode

For the purpose of encoding in digital media, The Unicode Standard, starting with version 5.0,^[1] assigns codepoints U+A840 to U+A877 to the 56 Phags-Pa letters. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points.

[edit] See also

• Mongolian writing systems
• Mongolian script
• Soyombo script
• Brahmic family

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: 'Phags-pa script

• BabelStone: Phags-pa Script (with free fonts)
• Omniglot: Phags-pa script
• Ancientscripts: hPhags-pa
• Mongolian characters after Kubli-Khan