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Sogdian alphabet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Sogdian | ||
|---|---|---|
| Type | Abjad | |
| Languages | Sogdian, Old Uyghur | |
| Time period | Late Antiquity | |
| Parent systems | Phoenician → Aramaic → Syriac → Sogdian |
|
| Child systems | Mongolian Orkhon script |
|
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
The Sogdian alphabet, also called the Old Uyghur alphabet is derived from Syriac, the descendant script of the Aramaic alphabet. It was originally used for the Sogdian language, which belongs to the Iranian family, but has since been used for Old Uyghur and other eastern Turkic languages. It was generally superseded by versions of the Arabic alphabet on the conversion of the Turkic peoples to Islam.
| History of the alphabet |
|---|
|
Middle Bronze Age 19th c. BCE
|
| Meroitic 3rd c. BCE |
| Ogham 4th c. |
| Hangul 1443 |
| Canadian Syllabics 1840 |
| Zhuyin 1913 |
| complete genealogy |
It is occasionally known as the sutra script, and is similar to the script of the ancient letters used in writing on papyri. Many Buddhist, Manichaean, Nestorian, and Zoroastrian texts as well as all secular material such as letters, legal documents, coin legends, and inscriptions were written in this script.
When used for the Sogdian language, this alphabet was usually written in horizontal lines from right to left. When used for Uyghur, it was normally in vertical direction from top to bottom, probably under Chinese influence, but with the first vertical line starting from the left side, not from the right as in Chinese, most probably because the right-to-left direction was used in horizontal writing. The Mongolian alphabet proper, being an adaptation of the Old Uyghur alphabet, still uses this kind of vertical writing, as does its remoter descendant Manchu.
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Khitan small script was developed in the mid-920s after a delegation from the Uyghur visited the capital of the Khitan empire at Shangjing. Abaoji, also known as Emperor Taizu, ordered the development of this second script, after the Khitan large script was developed earlier in the decade. [1] It seems likely, though it is uncertain, that the Sogdian alphabet influenced the formation of the Khitan small script to at least some degree.
- ^ [Mote, p. 42-43]
F.W. Mote (1999). Imperial China, 900-1800. Harvard University Press, 42-43. ISBN 0674012127.
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