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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
Child systems	possibly Hangul
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 ´Gro-mgon Chos-rgyal ´Phags-pa (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.

The script was a practical system that saw widespread use for almost a hundred years. The script unified all the many language groups in the Mongolian empire, including such unrelated language families as Chinese, Tibetan, Turkic and Mongolian.

[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 ´Phags-pa to design a new alphabet for use by the whole empire. ´Phags-pa 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.

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. 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.

[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. While Ledyard's theory of Hangul suggests the Korean script was based on 'Phags-pa, majority of linguists believe this is not the case. Geoffery Sampson addresses this issue aptly in his book 'Writing Systems':

"Gari Ledyard (1966), for instance, urges that Sejong basd Han'gul on the 'Phags-pa alphabet then used for Mongolian. But Ledyard argues this largely by interpreting a remark in the Hunmin Chong'um as deliberately cryptic reference to Mongolian writing, and this argument seems contrived. It may well be true that Sejong knew of 'Phags-pa and other phonographic scripts in use in East Asia, but those scripts were all segmental: they offer no precent for Han'gul."

[edit] See also

• Brahmic family
• Mongolian writing systems
• Origin of Hangul
• Menksoft IME alternative input method.

[edit] References

• Coblin, W. South. (2006). A Handbook of 'Phags-pa Chinese (ABC Dictionary Series). University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu. ISBN 978-0-8248-3000-7.
• Everding, Karl-Heinz (2006). Herrscherurkunden aus der Zeit des mongolischen Großreiches für tibetische Adelshäuser, Geistliche und Klöster. Teil 1: Diplomata Mongolica. Mittelmongolische Urkunden in ´Phags-pa-Schrift. Eidtion, Übersetzung, Analyse. Halle: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies. 
• Poppe, Nicholas (1983). The Mongolian Monuments in in hP´ags-pa Script. Second edition. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. 
• Schuh, Dieter (1981). Grundlagen tibetischer Siegelkunde. Eine Untersuchung über tibetische Siegelaufschriften in ´Phags-pa-Schrift. Sankt Augustin: VGH Wissenschaftsverlag. 
• Sampson, Geoffery (1985). Writing Systems. Great Britain: Anchor Brenton Ltd. 

[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] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Phagspa script

• BabelStone: Phags-pa Script (with free fonts)
• Omniglot: Phags-pa script
• Ancientscripts: hPhags-pa
• Mongolian characters after Kubli-Khan (Archived 2009-10-18)