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Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 1 January 2019 at 02:32
My first Tangut publication, "Musical Notation for Flute in Tangut Manuscripts", was published in 2012 (orientalstudies.ru/eng/images/pdf…), and a Chinese translation (西夏写本中的笛谱) published the same year in Tangut Research (cnki.com.cn/Journal/F-F4-X…)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 1 January 2019 at 19:32
Film by Ilia Stogoff made for the 200th anniversary of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts (Asiatic Museum) of the Russian Academy of Studies orientalstudies.ru/eng/index.php?… (the Tangut dictionary "Sea of Writing" 𘝞𗗚 shown)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 4 January 2019 at 13:22
I've just released a new version of my BabelStone Han font, with 820 additional CJK ideographs for a total of 37,031 encoded CJK ideographs, and over 50,000 characters in total. babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Han.html
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 5 January 2019 at 01:18
Report on excavations of the site of the capital of Rui state (芮国) and tombs of the Dukes of Rui from early Eastern Zhou — burial goods include bronze ritual vessels, sets of bronze bells, sets of stone chimes, as well as gold, jade and lacquer artefacts kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 5 January 2019 at 01:28
Brief report in English also available at kaogu.cssn.cn/ywb/news/new_d… (bronze vessel with inscription around the rim shown)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 5 January 2019 at 13:26
The inscription includes the characters "内(=芮)太子白" Prince Bai of Rui (on left) which are also found on a bronze vessel held at the Palace Museum in Beijing: 内(=芮)太子白作簠，其萬年子𖿣孫永用 dpm.org.cn/collection/bro…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 5 January 2019 at 13:30
(For Unicode geeks, that was the first twitter use of U+16FE3 OLD CHINESE ITERATION MARK which is coming in Unicode 12.0 in March this year.)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 5 January 2019 at 14:03
A very similar bronze li (鬲) vessel with an identical inscription referring to Prince Bai of Rui (芮太子白) was found at the Liangdaicun tombs (梁带村芮国墓地), 60km east of the Liujiawa site, in 2005.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 5 January 2019 at 16:17
Western Xia bronze hand mirror with a picture of an official and a deer, above which are the #Tangut characters 𘔭 [1dzen4] "money" (Chinese 錢) and 𘑨 [2wuq1] "to aid" (Chinese 祐) respectively. Photographed at the Xixia Museum in Yinchuan.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 5 January 2019 at 22:35
In Chinese the official and a deer (官鹿 [guān lù] "official deer") are a rebus for 官禄 [guān lù] "official salary".
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 6 January 2019 at 17:13
A very common design of bronze mirrors from the Jin dynasty (1115-1234) shows a pair of fish placed head-to-tail. At 43 cm in diameter, this example from Acheng in Heilongjiang is the largest one ever found. Photographed at the National Museum of China in Beijing.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 6 January 2019 at 17:21
I photographed this much smaller example of a Jin dynasty double fish bronze mirror at the Liao and Jin City Wall Museum in Beijing.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 6 January 2019 at 17:27
And I photographed this one at the Capital Museum in Beijing.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 6 January 2019 at 21:58
BabelMap beta for Unicode 12.0 is now available at babelstone.co.uk/Software/Downl…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 7 January 2019 at 13:57
I don't think I've ever seen 妄 written like that before. (@eisoch) twitter.com/incunabula/sta…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 7 January 2019 at 14:39
More information on the Jin dynasty (1115-1234) summer palace discovered at Taizicheng ("Prince's city") when preparing the area for use as a skiing venue for the 2022 Winter Olympics kaogu.cssn.cn/ywb/news/new_d…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 7 January 2019 at 14:52
The striations on the brick shown here are typical of Liao and Jin dynasty palace architecture, and are not found on bricks from later dynasties (or so I have been informed) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 7 January 2019 at 14:58
Here is a Liao or Jin dynasty striated brick at the site of the Liao Superior Capital (辽上京) at Lindong in Inner Mongolia.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 8 January 2019 at 10:29
Now also BabelPad beta for Unicode 12.0 babelstone.co.uk/Software/Downl…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 8 January 2019 at 12:47
New features and enhancements for BabelPad 12 are listed at babelstone.co.uk/Software/Babel…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 9 January 2019 at 01:32
Um, a polite reminder, "Always use “Unicode” as an adjective followed by an appropriate noun. Do not use “Unicode” alone as a noun." unicode.org/policies/logo_… twitter.com/unicode/status…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 9 January 2019 at 11:34
Report on the excavation of the site outside Lhasa where the 9th-century Karcung Pillar (嘎尔琼拉康石碑 = སྐར་ཅུང་ལག་ཁང་རྡོ་རིང) stood until it was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution in 1968. kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 9 January 2019 at 11:40
Fortunately, the inscription had been well studied by Hugh Richardson and others before it was destroyed. Here is Richardson's orderly copying the Karcung inscription in 1948. web.prm.ox.ac.uk/tibet/photo_20…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 9 January 2019 at 11:54
Fifteen fragments of the 9th-century Tibetan inscription were identified during the recent excavation of the Karcung Pillar site, including this fragment comprising the left part of lines 13-16 of the original 57-line inscription.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 9 January 2019 at 12:17
Transcription of the Tibetan text of the above fragment:
བརྩན་གྱྀ་རིང་ལ། །བྲག་མ[ར་གྱྀ་བསམ་ཡས་ལས་སྩོགས་]
པ།དབུང་མཐར་གཙུག་[ལག་ཁང་བརྩྀགས་སྟེ། །དཀོན་]
མཆོག་གསུམ་གྱྀ་རྟེན་བཙུ[གས་པ་དང། །ལྷ་བཙན་པོ།ཁྲི།]
ལྡེ་སྲོང་བརྩན་གྱྀ་རིང་ལ་ཡང[་། །སྐར་ཅུང་གཙུག་ལག་ཁང་]
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 9 January 2019 at 12:21
... building temples at the centre and on the borders, Bsam-yas in Brag-mar and so on; and in the time of the divine btsan-po Khri Lde-srong-brtsan also, shrines of the Three Jewels were established by such acts as building the temple of Skar-cung and so on.
(Richardson trans.)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 10 January 2019 at 20:28
Translation taken from H. E. Richardson's "A Corpus of Early Tibetan Inscriptions" (1985) pp. 75-77 which can be downloaded from epdf.tips/a-corpus-of-ea…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 10 January 2019 at 20:34
Richardson's photographs of the Karcung Pillar and its inscription can be seen at the Tibetan Album (British photography in Central Tibet 1920-1950) site tibet.prm.ox.ac.uk/thumbnails_reg… ... the top two lines on this photo are the bottom two lines of the fragment shown above.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 10 January 2019 at 20:38
Finally, a colour photograph from a different angle of the scene of Richardson's orderly copying the inscription shown earlier. tibet.prm.ox.ac.uk/photo_BMR.6.8.…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 11 January 2019 at 12:07
Tangut title on top left is 𗼑𗎾𗵫 "moon comet star". The donor's name is given at the bottom left as 𘓞𗄈𗇋𗥚𗳩[?][?] but I can't make out the last two characters which are the given name of someone with the family name 𗥚𗳩 Ziq-o (in Miyake transcription). twitter.com/JeffreyKotyk/s…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 11 January 2019 at 12:44
I just assume that everyone sees Tangut text in my tweets with no problem, but I suspect almost no-one does because neither twitter nor browsers allow the user to specify default fonts to use for individual scripts (IE does, but it only knows about Unicode 3.0 from 20 years ago).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 11 January 2019 at 12:48
The only way I can get it to work in Chrome is to set the "standard font" to Tangut Yinchuan in Settings > Customise fonts, and then Chrome falls back to Tangut Yinchuan for anything it does not know what to do with (this does not actually impair my general browsing experience).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 11 January 2019 at 12:53
Chrome's Advanced font settings extension is a complete and utter waste of time. It does allow you to map fonts to Unicode scripts (including Tangut), but it only applies the font if the text has no explicit font set and is language-tagged which is never the case ever anywhere.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 11 January 2019 at 13:51
This is the page of the Sea of Writing (文海) shown above. It is the most important source for Tangut lexicography, but has never been published as a high quality colour facsimile, which is a shame as in some places the text is hard to read or illegible in existing reproductions.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 11 January 2019 at 19:40
Western Xia painting of a Garuda (Tangut 𗡝𗜪𗓽 ka lew lo) from Khara-Khoto at the Hermitage Museum hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/her…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 12 January 2019 at 13:11
Anyone care to identify and explain the various objects scattered at the feet of the purported Tangut emperor in this painting from Khara-Khoto at the Hermitage? Including coral branch, rhinoceros horn, pair of flaming pearls? hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/her…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 13 January 2019 at 00:32
Ketu, called the Pearl Star (𗊏𗵫) in Tangut. The Tangut version is depicted with green skin and a hideous appearance, completely different from the other East Asian depictions, and lacking their distinctive iconography. twitter.com/JeffreyKotyk/s…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 13 January 2019 at 00:37
Here is another very similar example of the Pearl Star Ketu in a Tangut painting from Khara-Khoto hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/her…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 17 January 2019 at 23:51
China want to get the images used in Ersu astrological texts such as this added into Unicode (unicode.org/wg2/docs/n4901…) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 17 January 2019 at 23:58
... but there is little chance that they will be accepted for encoding as characters because they really are pictures not text. On the other hand, if emoji why not these?
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 18 January 2019 at 00:20
I'm not sure that astrological almanacs such as these are unique to the Ersu people, as I have seen similar Tibetan and Mongolian examples which use at least some of the same pictures/symbols.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 18 January 2019 at 01:31
The first text shown above laid out in full.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 18 January 2019 at 01:45
Close up of the monthly almanacs for half of the 4th month and half of the 6th month, with explanations written in Tibetan.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 18 January 2019 at 01:50
Ersu sacred printing sticks.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 18 January 2019 at 01:54
Close-up view of some of the printing sticks, showing a variety of chorten (stupas), as well as some deities and animals.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 18 January 2019 at 02:05
Close-up view of the largest printing stick, which combines several different symbolic or pictographic elements: sun, moon, seven stars, and a goat I think.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 18 January 2019 at 12:05
Pottery coin mould for 大泉五十 big 50 coins excavated from the site of a mint dating to the reign of Wang Mang (9-23) in Nanyang, Henan kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 18 January 2019 at 12:32
The reverse side of the above printing block shows a wind horse with wish-fulfilling flaming jewel on its back.
(All photos in this thread have now been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons at commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:… and commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:…)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 18 January 2019 at 13:33
Incidentally, the name of the Muya or Minyak people appears to be cognate with the endonym of the Tangut people (𗼎𗾧 mɪ ni̯aɯ, transcribed as Míyào 彌藥 in modern Chinese), and both are called Minyag མི་ཉག in Tibetan.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 18 January 2019 at 23:09
L2/19-058 "Mongolian ad-hoc report" is just a photo of a whiteboard — perhaps the shortest yet most intriguing UTC document I've ever seen unicode.org/L2/L2019/19058…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 23 January 2019 at 10:10
First Unicode Emoji submission for 2019 is for a "Cooking Pot" (saucepan) ... which is required to symbolize cooking because the existing emoji actually called COOKING 🍳 cannot be used to represent cooking because the egg in the pan is confusing (!) unicode.org/L2/L2019/19060…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 23 January 2019 at 10:17
At typical text size the proposed Cooking Pot emoji will look like this. Is this really an improvement on 🍳 or more obviously a representation of cooking?
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 23 January 2019 at 10:22
If we need a cooking pot, then why not add emoji for a wok and a bamboo steamer and a host of other cooking implements that are used throughout the world?
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 23 January 2019 at 11:33
Professor Tashpolat Tiyip is a renowned geographer and was president of Xinjiang University from 2010 to March 2017, when he was arrested for being "two faced", and subsequently sentenced to death for "separatism" (reprieved for 2 years) at a secret trial. livingotherwise.com/2019/01/22/dea…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 23 January 2019 at 11:42
The list of university presidents on the Xinjiang University web site from 2017 (Tashpolat Tiyip listed 2010-), 2018 (unexplained gap between December 2010 and March 2017) and 2019 (stops at December 2010) xju.edu.cn/xxgk/lrxz.htm
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 23 January 2019 at 11:46
The header of this web page in 2017 and now ... notice any difference?
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 23 January 2019 at 12:15
Xinjiang University has done a very thorough job of airbrushing Tashpolat Tiyip out its web site.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 23 January 2019 at 16:22
The Unicode Emoji Subcommittee has received a proposal for a Tibetan Flag emoji, and wants vendors to let it know whether they should accept it or not unicode.org/L2/L2019/19019… ... what is the likelihood that Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. will dare to support the Tibetan flag?
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 23 January 2019 at 16:33
There already is a valid Unicode sequence for the flag of the Tibetan Autonomous Region of China (CN-XZ = 🏴), but Chinese provinces and regions explicitly do not have flags. Hijacking that sequence for the flag of the Tibetan Government in Exile would not be right.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 23 January 2019 at 20:23
Of course the Unicode Consortium has no intention of adding a Tibetan flag emoji (or emoji sequence), and are only making the existence of the proposal public so they can shift the blame for rejecting it to the vendors.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 24 January 2019 at 23:46
The group photo of Tangutologists at the Université dArtois in Arras on 23 November 2018, with @vauzhao standing in the wrong place!
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 26 January 2019 at 00:39
New photo of the jade fragment with Khitan Small Script inscription that I discussed on my blog last year babelstone.co.uk/Blog/2018/11/y…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 26 January 2019 at 00:49
The photo comes from a list of the most important archaeological discoveries in Liaoning during 2018 kknews.cc/zh-cn/culture/…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 26 January 2019 at 16:29
Pleased that my photograph of the Caxton leaf at Reading University was useful for @erik_kwakkel in his blog post on the Oldest Surviving Printed Advertisement in English (London, 1477) medievalbooks.nl/2019/01/24/the…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 28 January 2019 at 13:26
Dan Yerushalmi translates a Tibetan account of the flooding incident during the Mongolian siege of the Tangut capital in 1210, as given in the biography of Tishirepa (ཏི་ཤྲི་རས་པ) by his Tangut disciple Repakarpo (མི་ཉག་རས་པ་དཀར་པོ) tibeto-logic.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-fl…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 28 January 2019 at 13:47
Repakarpo's biography (བླ་མ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་འགྲོ་བའི་མགོན་པོ་ཏི་ཤྲི་རས་པའི་རྣམ་པར་ཐར་པ) is in Vol. 7 of lo pan rnam thar phyogs bsgrigs (ལོ་པན་རྣམ་ཐར་ཕྱོགས་བསྒྲིགས) "Complete collection of biographies of translators and scholars" published by China Culture Publishing House in 2018.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 30 January 2019 at 12:38
Foxy friends in my back garden enjoying the sunshine on a frosty morning.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 31 January 2019 at 19:25
Submission for a Placard emoji. Placard emoji?! Does anyone really need a placard emoji? unicode.org/L2/L2019/19061…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 16 February 2019 at 22:44
At the British Library on Monday examining "The Cornish British Vocabulary" by William Hals (1655–1737) — photo by @Evertype
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 18 February 2019 at 19:52
This week I am in France for a few days, and today I attempted to do a round trip train journey from Lyon to Paris and back (2 hours each way by TGV) in order to consult a Tangut manuscript at the Musée Guimet ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 18 February 2019 at 19:59
... but today was the day that the TGV service between Lyon and Paris went into meltdown, and I was forced to abandon my train at Mâcon (see platform selfie) when it became evident that it would not reach Paris until at least 16:30 (over four hours after scheduled arrival time).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 18 February 2019 at 20:31
But still, I managed to spend a very pleasant afternoon exploring Vieux Lyon with @april_nishi
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 18 February 2019 at 20:59
#OTD in #Lyon 75 years ago: "Ici le 18 février 1944 Bernard Guy, Sergent F.F.I. a été tué par la milice en tentant de s'évader. Passant, Souviens toi!"
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 19 February 2019 at 22:36
The Claudius Tablet discovered in Lyon in 1528 gives the text of a speech by Emperor Claudius (born in Lugdunum in 10 BC) in 48 AD. Only half of the original tablet survives, but it is huge (1.40 × 1.93 m, 222 kg).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 19 February 2019 at 22:46
The left and right surviving parts of the Claudius Tablet.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 19 February 2019 at 22:51
Detail of the text of the Claudius Tablet, which was initially engraved in wax, then moulded and cast in bronze.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 19 February 2019 at 23:09
Ci-gît un nid-de-poule 2011–2017 (à Lyon)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 19 February 2019 at 23:21
Mysterious Gallo-Roman bronze dodecahedrons at the Musée gallo-romain de Lyon-Fourvière.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 21 February 2019 at 15:09
The "Xenia" mural, a Roman wall painting c. 50–70 AD discovered in Lyon in 1988, with trompe-l'œil depiction of presents given by guests to the master of the house.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 21 February 2019 at 15:13
Detail of the Xenia wall painting, showing a jug, a white napkin, a large knife, and a dead hare in the foreground, and a cockerel and two pieces of fruit in the background.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 21 February 2019 at 22:43
Copy of the Claudius Tablet inscription from "Musée de Lyon: Inscriptions antiques" tome 1 (1888) [facing p. 70].
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 22 February 2019 at 14:57
View of the astronomical clock in the Cathédrale Saint-Jean in Lyon.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 22 February 2019 at 15:03
The clock was originally constructed in the 14th century (first recorded 1383), but was severely damaged in 1562, and reconstructed in 1660-1661.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 22 February 2019 at 15:05
Details of the main clock face and the right side face.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 22 February 2019 at 18:58
Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age (c. 700 BC) processional chariot discovered at la Côte-Saint-André (Isère) in 1888. The procession of the flaming bucket in the chariot is thought to have been associated with the worship of the sun.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 24 February 2019 at 18:07
During my recent visit to the wonderful Musée Gallo-Romain in Lyon, I noticed that a particular feature of many of the Roman funerary inscriptions at the museum is an engraved ascia (stonemason's axe or adze).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 24 February 2019 at 18:14
The ascia symbol is typically placed between the letters D M (Dis Manibus) at the top of the inscription, and the inscription typically ends with the formula 𝑠𝑢𝑏 𝑎𝑠𝑐𝑖𝑎 𝑑𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑡 ("dedicated under the axe"), as in this example.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 24 February 2019 at 18:28
In some inscriptions there are a pair of mirrored ascia symbols, either at the top or one on each side of the inscription, as in this memorial inscription for Q. Acceptius Venustus that was discovered in 1870.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 24 February 2019 at 18:35
This the epigraphic transcription of the above inscription in "Inscriptions antiques du musée de la ville de Lyon" tome 2 (1889).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 24 February 2019 at 19:05
Vol. 1 of "Inscriptions antiques du musée de la ville de Lyon" (1888) represented the ascia symbol in transcription by the word 𝑎𝑠𝑐𝑖𝑎, but they had special sorts cut for the left-facing and right-facing ascia symbol for use in vols. 2–5 (1889–1893).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 24 February 2019 at 19:19
The occurrence of the ascia symbol and the 𝑠𝑢𝑏 𝑎𝑠𝑐𝑖𝑎 𝑑𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑣𝑖𝑡 (or related) formula is largely restricted to funerary monuments from Gaul, especially the area around Lyon, dating from the mid 1st century to the early 4th century.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 24 February 2019 at 19:51
Over 150 examples of funerary inscriptions with the ascia symbol have been found in the vicinity of Lyon, but they have occasionally been found as far as Britain, such as this tombstone for Titus Valerius Pudens found in Lincoln in 1849 britishmuseum.org/research/colle…
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Sunday, 24 February 2019 at 20:27
Or this fragment of a funerary inscription for Lucius Cunctus Muciens found in Colchester in 1821, with an ascia symbol between the D and M (Dis Manibus), now in the Fitzwilliam Museum data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/65555
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 24 February 2019 at 20:30
Since the early 18th century there has debate about the meaning and significance of the ascia symbol and associated formula. In 1955 Jérôme Carcopino suggested that the ascia was a coded Christian symbol used by the large Christian community of Lugdunum (Lyon) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 24 February 2019 at 20:32
... This Roman funerary portrait sculpture at the Musée de Châteauroux shows the deceased clutching an ascia in the same way that a cross may be in later Christian sculptures.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 25 February 2019 at 11:47
Today I learned (h/t @CraigClunas) that the John Rylands Library (Manchester University) holds Qing dynasty copies of the Sanskrit and Tibetan inscriptions at the Cloud Platform at Juyong Pass. Very important if they predate Bonaparte's 1895 rubbings. luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 25 February 2019 at 11:53
Johannes S. Lotze notes that "The JRL should hold three volumes in total. ... However, when I ordered these three volumes, on 28 June 2018, only two arrived, together with this remark on the slip: “could only see 2 vols”" ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 25 February 2019 at 11:58
The Juyong Pass inscriptions (babelstone.co.uk/BabelDiary/201…) are in six languages/scripts (Sanskrit/Lantsa, Tibetan, Mongolian/Phags-pa, Uyghur, Tangut Chinese), so I really hope that the missing third volume is still somewhere in the library, and it is the Tangut volume !
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 25 February 2019 at 23:14
Selection of Roman terracotta oil lamps from Lyon at the Musée Gallo-Romain with pictures of various gladiators — Gotta catch 'em all!
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 26 February 2019 at 01:27
Gravestone at the Musée Gallo-Romain in Lyon for Aurelius Leons, a letter engraver, who died aged 18 years, 7 months and 5 days. This is claimed to be the only surviving Roman funerary monument which explicitly records the deceased's occupation as a letter engraver.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 26 February 2019 at 01:39
Unfortunately the inscription is not in good condition, so here is a transcription from "Inscriptions antiques de musée de la ville de Lyon" tome 3 (1890) p. 59.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 26 February 2019 at 20:28
This is the last photo I took at the Musée Gallo-Romain in Lyon a week ago, just as the battery on my camera died. The Roman Christian gravestones were almost the last room in the museum, and it is a shame I only managed to get this one photo.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 26 February 2019 at 20:53
Here is the transcription in "Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule antérieures au VIIIe siècle" (1856) v. 1 pp. 67–68: "In this tomb rests in Christ, Bellausus, who died at the age of 42 on the nones of July" — what a beautiful typeface !! (can anyone identify it for me?)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 26 February 2019 at 21:05
A pair of doves is the defining symbolism of Roman Christian tombstones from Gaul, and over fifty examples have been found in the region of Lyon. They are so common that dove type pieces were cut for "Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule antérieures au VIIIe siècle" (1856).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 26 February 2019 at 22:14
The pair of doves are often placed on either side of a traditional Christian symbol such as a cross or a chi rho symbol, as in the above examples, and in these drawings from "Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule antérieures au VIIIe siècle" vol. 1 (1856) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 26 February 2019 at 22:39
... the doves frequently have an olive branch in their beaks, and are sometimes perched on a tree ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 27 February 2019 at 13:27
... sometimes the doves are placed on either side of a tree, in one case pecking at the leaves ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 27 February 2019 at 13:39
... sometimes the doves are shown with vine leaves or in one case pecking at grapes on a vine ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 27 February 2019 at 17:14
... sometimes the doves seem to be feeding from a vase or a chalice placed between them ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 27 February 2019 at 21:09
... (here are transcriptions of a couple of the previous inscriptions showing the typographical representation of the vase/chalice) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 27 February 2019 at 21:26
... (I forgot to show an example of the typographical representation of the doves holding a branch in their mouth) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 27 February 2019 at 21:37
... in these two examples the pair of doves have mutated into peacocks (I am sorry to report that the transcription omits the peacocks) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 28 February 2019 at 09:25
... finally here are a couple of fish swimming with a pair of doves.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 28 February 2019 at 14:47
Video of Prof. Andrey Zabiyako's Summer 2018 expedition to the rock art and Jurchen inscriptions on the River Arkhara. twitter.com/cosmicore/stat…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 28 February 2019 at 16:19
I am very pleased that @library_carlyr has been able to locate the missing 3rd volume, which turns out to comprise four fascicles in a single case, covering the other four languages/scripts (Mongolian/Phags-pa, Old Uyghur, Tangut, Chinese) at the Cloud Platform at Juyong Pass ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 28 February 2019 at 16:22
... @library_carlyr took some photos of the four books in the 3rd volume, which she has very kindly allowed me to share on twitter ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 28 February 2019 at 16:32
This insert is a diagram of the layout of the inscriptions in six scripts/languages (Nüchïh = Jurchen is actually Tangut). We know that Alexander Wylie and Joseph Edkins were the two Western missionary-scholars who visited Juyong Pass and made copies of the inscriptions ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 28 February 2019 at 16:40
... Wylie always wrote Uyghur as "Ouigour", whereas Edkins always wrote it as "Wigur", so as Uyghur is written as "Wigur" on this diagram we can be fairly confident that it was created by Edkins, probably around 1863–1867.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 1 March 2019 at 10:14
I released BabelStone Han v. 12.0.0 (babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Han.html). Mostly updates for forthcoming #Unicode12 release, including coloured circles, squares and hearts, small kana extensions, and variation sequences for East Asian punctuation positional variants (@ken_lunde)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 1 March 2019 at 10:27
Also includes two punctuation marks for ancient Chinese texts proposed by myself and @eisoch unicode.org/L2/L2017/17310…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 1 March 2019 at 10:40
Although I referred to the "3rd volume", as @cosmicore has pointed out (twitter.com/cosmicore/stat…) this is not strictly correct as the "3rd volume" is a case containing 4 thread-bound volumes, so @TheJohnRylands actually holds all six volumes of the set of Juyongguan inscriptions.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 2 March 2019 at 17:25
I'll post pictures of the four scripts/languages kindly supplied by @library_carlyr over the next few days. To start with, here is the first page of the volume covering the Chinese inscriptions, which corresponds to lines 1-2 of the large character inscription on the west wall.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 2 March 2019 at 17:37
This is the corresponding transcription given by Nishida Tatsuo in "Chü-Yung-Kuan: The Buddhist Arch of the Fourteenth Century A.D. at the Pass of the Great Wall Northwest of Peking" (Kyōto: 1957; Murata Jirō ed.) p.200.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 2 March 2019 at 18:18
Only the 1st character at the top of the 2nd line (野) survives in the 1957 rubbing and Nishida's transcription, but in the JRL hand copy the first three characters of the 2nd line are reproduced (野阿建) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 2 March 2019 at 19:33
... which reflects the state of the inscription shown in the rubbings in Prince Roland Bonaparte's "Documents de l'époque Mongole des XIII et XIV siècles" (Paris, 1895).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 2 March 2019 at 22:32
The rubbings of the complete inscriptions on both walls given in Bonaparte 1895 Plates II and III (original 6.18 × 2.38 m and 6.30 × 2.55 m) were made by Édouard Chavannes who donated them to the Musée Guimet. The other rubbings (Plates IV–VIII) were made by G. Devéria.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 3 March 2019 at 10:35
This is the last page of the Chinese volume, corresponding to lines 18-21 of the small character inscription on the east wall (i.e. the end of the Record of Merits for Constructing the Pagoda 造塔功德記) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 3 March 2019 at 10:44
... and this is the corresponding transcription by Nishida in Murata 1957, which although it has plenty of missing characters is actually more complete than the earlier JRL copy ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 3 March 2019 at 10:49
... this is because the very poor quality of the lower part of this section of the inscription makes it difficult to recognise some of the characters (Devéria's rubbing in Bonaparte 1895 shown).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 4 March 2019 at 10:56
This is the first page of the volume of inscriptions in the Phags-pa script, corresponding to the start (line 1 + beginning of line 2) of the Sanskrit inscription in large Phags-pa script on the west wall. It reads top-to-bottom running from left to right (same as Mongolian) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 4 March 2019 at 11:15
... this is Nishida Tatsuo's transcription in Murata 1957 p. 157. There are a couple of mistakes in the JRL copy where it is unclear in the original (ꡋꡋ for ꡋ ꡏ at start of l. 1; ꡐꡟꡋ for ꡐꡞꡋ), but on the whole it seems to be an accurate transcription in a good hand ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 4 March 2019 at 11:34
... the JRL copy preserves text that was later lost; e.g. it shows the incomplete syllable ꡖ [-'a] (for ꡝꡖ ā) at start of l. 2 before ꡗꡟꡋ [yun], which is not seen in either the Bonaparte/Chavannes 1895 or Murata 1957 rubbings, and is not given in Nishida's transcription.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 5 March 2019 at 18:44
The next image is the last page of the Phags-pa volume, comprising a single line of Mongolian written in Phags-pa script, corresponding to the last line of the small character Phags-pa inscription on the east wall:
ꡆꡘ ꡅꡞꡏ ꡎꡟ ꡗꡋ ꡉꡟ ꡗꡞꡋ ꡁꡦꡡꡘ ꡁꡞ ꡁꡦꡊ ꡎꡦꡘ ꡠ
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 5 March 2019 at 19:48
Transcription: ǰar čʽim bu yan tʽu yin kʽėor kʽi kʽėd bėr e ≈ Mongolian ᠵᠠᠷᠴᠢᠮ ᠪᠤᠶᠠᠨᠲᠤ ᠶᠢᠨ ᠬᠥᠷᠦᠭ ᠬᠡᠳ ᠪᠡᠷᠡ (Phags-pa Mongolian kʽėor kʽi [körki] corresponds to Classical Mongolian körüg "picture, painting, image").
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 5 March 2019 at 19:54
Here is Devéria's rubbing of the small character Phags-pa inscription on the east wall given in Bonaparte 1895 (the last line is the short line on the right).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 5 March 2019 at 21:44
BabelPad and BabelMap for Unicode 12.0 have now been released babelstone.co.uk/Software/ (lots of updates to BabelPad but I ran out of time for a couple important new features).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 6 March 2019 at 01:13
Here's a bonus picture of the penultimate page of the Phags-pa volume, covering the two preceding lines of the inscription (the 2nd and 3rd lines from the right in the rubbing in the previous tweet).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 6 March 2019 at 15:57
This is the first page of the Tangut volume, corresponding to the surviving two-thirds of the first line of the Tathāgata-hṛdaya-dhāraṇī-sūtra in large Tangut characters on the west wall:
□□□□□□□□𗏵𘅄𗬂𘈪𗏤𘕜𗫂𘀍𗕘𗙫𗏵𗶴𗦆𗞞𗏵𗐱𗅒𗬔𘀍𘅄
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 6 March 2019 at 15:59
I accidentally broke this thread. It continues here: twitter.com/BabelStone/sta…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 6 March 2019 at 16:09
Here is the rubbing of the entire inscription in large Tangut characters on the west wall from Murata 1957. The text in the previous tweet is the column on the far right (Tangut reads top-to-bottom in columns running right to left, the same as Chinese).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 7 March 2019 at 16:43
This is the last page of the Tangut volume, corresponding to the last 3⅓ lines of the transcription in small Tangut characters on the east wall of the Sanskrit Dharani-Sutra of the Victorious Buddha-Crown.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 7 March 2019 at 16:51
The copying of the [at that time unknown] Tangut characters is reasonably good, and the text is mostly legible without needing to refer to the rubbing of the original inscription (Devéria's rubbing from Bonaparte 1895 shown).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 8 March 2019 at 11:43
"Revitalising Naxi dongba as a ‘pictographic’ vernacular script" by Duncan J Poupard academia.edu/38495582/Revit… @Evertype
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 8 March 2019 at 11:48
Unfortunately Poupard's recent review of the Naxi dongba repertoire under ballot (unicode.org/L2/L2019/19071…), whilst useful, undermines the stability of a repertoire agreed by consensus over several years of meetings, and gives the UTC an excuse push back against the encoding.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 8 March 2019 at 12:01
Obligatory link to my tweet from 2017 when @Evertype and myself were meeting with the Chinese Naxi experts in Hohhot to finalise the stable repertoire for modern usage twitter.com/BabelStone/sta…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 11 March 2019 at 00:08
I've already added another new feature which I find rather useful. BabelPad 12.0.0.2 now supports drag-and-drop between instances of BabelPad and between BabelPad and other applications.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 11 March 2019 at 01:48
The draft Unicode data for version 12.1 (unicode.org/Public/12.1.0/…) includes an entry for U+32FF which gives a fake name and decomposition mapping (左右) for the as yet unknown new Japanese era name (tba April 1st).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 11 March 2019 at 01:52
Personally, I think that is high irresponsible as there are bound to be some early bird implementers who add the name and mappings into their software from the draft data, unaware that it is just a placeholder, and for years to come we'll see Sayuu era popping up in odd places.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 11 March 2019 at 01:58
And if you don't believe me, I've just added "SQUARE ERA NAME SAYUU" to my BabelPad/Map codebase as a placeholder. Hopefully I'll remember to change it before release ... but I bet there'll be code monkeys out there who don't.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 13 March 2019 at 00:36
Praetermissa in Archivum A: Est libellus pro Institutione eorum qui primò addiscunt scribere linguam Chinensem, continens varia Exemplaria rariores Scripturae tam quadratae quam cursivae. Anglicè: A China Copy-booke. serica.blog/2019/03/12/pra…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 14 March 2019 at 10:03
More than a thousand of the 5,200 bamboo slips discovered in the tomb of the Han dynasty Marquis of Haihun 海昏侯 (Emperor for 27 days in 74 BCE) have been identified as a text on the board game of Liubo 六博 kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 14 March 2019 at 10:09
It's not really new news, as it was already reported in 2016 that some of the bamboo slips seemed to be related to Liubo, but now the extent of the Liubo text has been revealed m.news.cctv.com/2016/11/06/ART…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 15 March 2019 at 19:04
Finally we come to the 4th volume, with copies of the inscriptions in the Old Uighur script (parent of the Mongolian script). This page corresponds to the large Uighur inscription on the west wall, starting about ½ way down the 2nd line and ending near the bottom of the 3rd line.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 15 March 2019 at 19:29
The Uighur inscription is not very easy to read, but that does not explain why the JRL copy leaves a couple of words blank at the top of the 3rd line even though in the Bonaparte 1895 rubbing they are clearer than some of the following words which are present in the copy.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 15 March 2019 at 20:29
And this page corresponds to the bottom ⅓ of the 8th line to the top ⅓ of the 12th line of the small Uighur inscription on the east wall (presumably the last ⅔ of the last line are over the page) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 15 March 2019 at 20:42
... the Uighur copy is the least careful and most error-filled copy of all the scripts. The section marked in red is blank even though it is clear in both Bonaparte and Murata rubbings; whereas the section marked in blue is a duplicate of the start of the following line ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 15 March 2019 at 20:50
... and the copying of the Uighur text is also very poor. Here is just a single example from line 9, where the copyist has mistaken the punctuation mark ᠅ for the letter SA, and so joined two unconnected words into a single imaginary word.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 16 March 2019 at 13:01
I'm trying to think of something nice to say about the Noto Serif Tangut font, but I can't. It's really ugly, and very un-Tangutlike.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 16 March 2019 at 13:18
To be fair, I doubt that I could have done any better. The main reason why I have never attempted to create my own Tangut font is that I was afraid that it would end up looking something like this.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 16 March 2019 at 13:31
The dark underbelly of #Tangut society ... a manuscript contract for the private sale of household slaves (Institute of Oriental Manuscripts Inv. No. 4579 from Kharakhoto).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 16 March 2019 at 13:41
This is one of three slave contracts from Kharakhoto studied by Shi Jinbo 史金波 in a 2014 paper (gscass.cn/upload/201706/…). I am in absolute awe of Prof. Shi's ability to read cursive Tangut, made even more illegible by the bleed-through of text on the other side of the paper.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 16 March 2019 at 13:59
The sale is for two slaves, a woman named as "May Dog" (𗏁𗼑𗘂 = 五月犬) and her child, for a price of 50 bushels of mixed grain. These are the names and marks of the sellers (four members of the same family) and the witnesses and the contract writer.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 16 March 2019 at 14:11
Slaves do not have family names, and in most cases their name includes the epithet "dog". Inv. No. 5949-29 for the sale of six slaves for the 450 strings of iron cash, includes "Bitch Flourishing" 𗘂𗿦𗯿 [犬婦盛], "Bitch Precious" 𗘂𗿦𘏨 [犬婦寶], and "Growing Dog" 𘞵𗘂 [增犬].
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 16 March 2019 at 23:51
The marks (画押) written under the names of the sellers and witness are not easy to distinguish clearly in this photo, but at least one of them is identical to a Tangut "tamga" shown by Terentiev-Katansky in his 1981 book.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 17 March 2019 at 00:25
Here's a fragment of a Tangut legal document on @idp_uk which shows the signature marks more clearly (three different marks along the bottom) idp.bl.uk/database/oo_lo…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 17 March 2019 at 00:40
And this rather lovely signature mark sitting all by itself is basically the same as Terentiev-Katansky example #1 shown above idp.bl.uk/database/oo_lo… ... someone really needs to make a detailed study of these marks!
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 17 March 2019 at 11:32
Tangut cursive script is extremely difficult for the modern student to learn (we have no masters to teach us), and I am still a beginner. Maybe when @tkasasagi has completed her fantastic work with AI recognition of kuzushiji she can turn her attention to cursive Tangut!
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 17 March 2019 at 11:36
These are the first five names at the end of the contract discussed in this tweet, with the cursive characters glossed on the right (roles in orange, names in red). I hasten to add that the identification of the cursive characters is by Shi Jinbo, not me! twitter.com/BabelStone/sta…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 17 March 2019 at 11:43
This example is made extra difficult by the extensive bleed-through of text from the other side of the paper (a colour photograph would be better). Anyway, here's the Tangut text:
𘝞𗃮𘃡𗇋𗼨𘂋𘟔𗵆𘟣
𗃮𗖚𘎆𗼨𘂋𘟔？？
𗃮𗖚𘎆𗼨[𘂋]𘟣𘄄𗯿
𗄻𘓐𗰔𗣠？？𗫉
𗄻𘓐𗒩𗣀？？
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 17 March 2019 at 19:02
Photograph of the great Tangutologist N. A. Nevsky with his Japanese wife Isoko Mantani-Nevsky and daughter Elena (1928-2017). Nevsky and Iso were murdered during the Great Purge in November 1937, but his death was not confirmed until two decades later. Photo via @vauzhao
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 18 March 2019 at 22:37
The Tangut manuscript discussed here (twitter.com/BabelStone/sta…) & here (twitter.com/BabelStone/sta…) is interesting in so many ways; and one unexpected point of interest turns out to be the writing on the other side of the paper which so annoyingly disrupts our reading of the text ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 18 March 2019 at 22:51
As far as I know, the other side of this manuscript has not been published, but we can read it well enough by mirroring the photo. What we see is a row of larger-sized characters running along the top of the page (green), and each character repeated 13 times underneath (red) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 18 March 2019 at 23:06
The 18 characters running along the top of the page [𘛯𗑐𗒉𗯒𘂋𗃞𗗿𗴂𗧇𗿿𗏥𘎧𗰞𗦗𗰦] come from a Tangut poetic text comprising 1,000 different characters called "Grains of Gold Placed in the Palm" 𗵒𗭧𘃎𘐏𘝞 which was frequently used for elementary writing practice ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 18 March 2019 at 23:16
... not calligraphy, but blindly copying the 1,000 characters of the text multiple times in order to memorise how to write the characters ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 18 March 2019 at 23:42
... its so happens that one of my hobbies is collecting fragments of "Grains of Gold" writing practice pieces, which I have put on display in this blog post, so this is a welcome and important addition to my collection. babelstone.co.uk/Blog/2015/05/g…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 19 March 2019 at 00:33
Incidentally the Tangut character in the column of characters marked in red above is 𘂋 which is the second character in the clan name of the first two signatories of the contract (seen mirrored on the left of the mirrored image).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 19 March 2019 at 01:46
If you want to explore the Tangut Grains of Gold further, I have made an index to the translation and detailed explication of the first 520 characters of the text made by @MarcMiyake (under the title the Golden Guide). babelstone.co.uk/Tangut/Golden-…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 19 March 2019 at 13:56
How to excavate a 5,000 year old grave kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 19 March 2019 at 17:56
What I forgot to mention, is that this manuscript is important because it allows us to accurately date the writing exercise. The contract is dated 24th day of 3rd month of 6th year of Tianqing era (i.e. 21st April 1199 in the Julian calendar), ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 19 March 2019 at 18:01
... and as it would not have been reused for writing practice until at least a few years later, and as we can assume it predates the annihilation of the Western Xia in 1227, the writing practice must date to the between 1200+ and 1227 ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 19 March 2019 at 18:06
... moreover, as all the other practice pieces in the Stein Collection at the British Library have the same layout and style as this piece, we can infer that they all date to the last couple of decades of the Western Xia. QED
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 19 March 2019 at 21:12
Discovery at Anyang (Henan) of a Jin dynasty brick mural tomb for four monks dated 1159. sohu.com/a/300787080_26…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 19 March 2019 at 21:21
The memorial stone set up by Honglun 洪論, abbot of the Manjushri Temple of Hongfu Monastery 洪福寺文殊院 (rubbing shown) indicates that the tomb was originally built underneath a pagoda (often the case for high monks) that has long since vanished.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 19 March 2019 at 21:34
Detail of the tomb mural showing a boy looking out through a door (童子启门图).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 19 March 2019 at 21:43
Another section of the mural shows a woman holding a baby buying medicine from a monk sitting in dispensary, with a sign "Medicine Store" (藥鋪) hanging above his head.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 20 March 2019 at 08:57
Here's another scene from the mural, showing a man holding up a rather large fish on a stick and two people carrying a pot of soup to feed the monks (寺院施粥图).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 20 March 2019 at 10:05
Looking into the main chamber of the tomb through a mock wooden doorway kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 10:51
大金重遷祖塔誌 沙門 善篪 撰
夫無生而生無滅而滅唯達者之能明洎乎生也色
身有家舍之所依洎乎滅也遺形有墳隴之所藏此
其世間不易之道自古不無矣相之洪福寺文殊院
始自大宋慶曆中以遠祖 捐公等同會一塔葬之
於城西開元寺之旁時以 大金天會四年戊申
巨兵攻圍城壁因乃廢焉噫萬物無不皆有其數乎
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 10:54
主僧洪論以正隆四年己卯三月初五日奉其靈骨
改葬於西陵鄉孫平村豎之以支提植之以松柏使
後世之徙不忘其歸敬自 捐至 新今已四世耳
新公將逝而有遺言故附之於塔邊 新公乃論之
師也論乃竭其力盡其心以辦兹緣人莫不欽歎之
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 10:55
一日命予作銘以記之予既確辞不免聊以成言銘曰
故墳随數壞 新塔以時興 孝道人簽議
真猷萬世稱 院 主 僧 洪論
并弟監院僧 ？？覺 立石
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 11:33
The following is my rough attempt at a translation of the above memorial tablet. Corrections and improvements welcome!
1. Record of the Relocation of the Patriarch's Pagoda during the Great Jin. Written by the monk Shenchi (2nd character of his name is not certain).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 11:34
2. As to being without birth yet there is birth, being without extinction yet there is extinction, only an enlightened one can understand this.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 11:35
3. Arriving at birth, the carnal body has a house and family to depend on; arriving at extinction, the mortal remains have a grave to be stored in. This is the unchanging way of the world, since antiquity it has never not been like this!
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 11:45
4. The Manjushri Temple of Hongfu Monastery in Xiangzhou (=Anyang) was founded during the Qingli era [1041-1048] of the Great Song. Because the patriarch Master Juan and others used to meet up in a certain pagoda, they buried him next to Kaiyuan Temple in the east of the city.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 12:11
5. In 4th year of the Tianhui era of the Great Jin, on a wushen day (=7 March 1126?), a great [Jurchen] army besieged the city walls, and so [the temple] was abandoned.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 12:14
6. On the 5th day of the 3rd month of the 4th year (jimao year) of the Zhenglong era [26 March 1159 in the Julian calendar] the head monk Honglun took his remains and reburied them at Sunping village in Xiling district, where he erected memorials (caitya) and planted pine trees.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 12:39
7. From [Master] Juan up to [Master] Xin there have already been four generations [of masters]. When he was close to death Master Xin left final instructions, so he is also buried (附=附葬) next to the pagoda.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 12:57
8. Master Xin was the teacher of Honglun, so Honglun exerted all his effort and put his whole heart into it in order to arrange this, therefore there is no-one who does not admire him!
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 12:59
9. One day Honglun commanded me to write an epitaph as a record. As I agreed to do so, I cannot avoid putting together a few words:
The old tomb naturally decays,
A new pagoda in time arises.
Filial way all men agree with,
The true plan is acclaimed by all generations.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 13:04
10. The abbot Honglun and his brother the monastic supervisor [...][...][jue?] set up this stone.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 21 March 2019 at 14:09
The tomb comprises a single chamber with an entranceway at the south, and alcoves on the north, east and west sides (see top picture in thread). Four pottery urns containing bone and ash were found in the alcoves. These are presumed to be the cremated remains of four high monks.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 22 March 2019 at 21:08
When I was attending a Tangut colloquium in France last November (twitter.com/BabelStone/sta…) Prof. Arakawa Shintarō kindly gave me a copy of his 2016 study on Tangut cursive characters, which includes this very useful appendix by Ono Hiroko (小野裕子) listing 60 characters.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 22 March 2019 at 21:13
The pages are available for reference here:
babelstone.co.uk/Tangut/Images/…
babelstone.co.uk/Tangut/Images/…
babelstone.co.uk/Tangut/Images/…
babelstone.co.uk/Tangut/Images/…
babelstone.co.uk/Tangut/Images/…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 23 March 2019 at 02:20
I cannot believe they actually put "© Wikimedia Commons" on the picture rather than the name of the photographer. Do they not understand how copyright works? Or that #Wikimedia Commons is just a repository for PD and freely-licensed media? commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Naum… twitter.com/Medievalists/s…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 25 March 2019 at 09:16
Class action suit against Getty Images for fraudulently claiming ownership of copyrights in public domain images and selling fictitious copyright licenses for public domain images courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 26 March 2019 at 23:20
To belatedly celebrate #TolkienReadingDay how about subscribing to a new edition of The Hobbit in Breton to be published by @Evertype? facebook.com/evertypepubs/p…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 27 March 2019 at 09:32
Chicken eggs found in 2,500 year old tomb at Liyang in Jiangsu. Why? "Because little chicks hatch from eggs, and they symbolise the endless cycle of birth and countless generations of descendants ... or maybe the dead person just really loved eating eggs." kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 28 March 2019 at 10:22
Discovery of a pair of Song dynasty tombs in Chongqing, with superb Buddhist engravings kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 28 March 2019 at 10:40
.@dmatsui1217 discusses the Uighur Buddhist Buyan-Qaya and his father Yïγmïš-Qaya, both from Suzhou (modern Jiuquan in Gansu), who left their marks at the Mogao and Yulin caves. academia.edu/38650396/Dai_M…
Picture shows "I, Buyan-Qaya" in Phags-pa scipt: ꡏꡦꡋ ꡎꡟ ꡗꡦꡋ ꡢ ꡗꡦ
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 28 March 2019 at 11:08
This is the current state of the north wall of the corridor to Mogao Cave #217 shown in the above picture (from Les grottes de Touen-Houang Plate 366). The Uighur script inscription by Buyan-Qaya is gone, but luckily the Phags-pa inscription has survived. e-dunhuang.com/cave/10.0001/0…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 28 March 2019 at 11:35
Fragment of a Chinese bronze mirror unearthed in Kyrgyzstan, with interweaving lines of a poem by an unknown Tang dynasty lady zeno.ru/showphoto.php?…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 28 March 2019 at 11:54
The poem is a tour de force known as the Panjiantu 盤鑒圖 (Map on a Hanging Mirror) which was reputedly composed during the Tang dynasty by an unknown lady poet. It later acquired a preface by the poet Wang Bo 王勃 (650–676). readers365.com/quweigushi/02.…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 28 March 2019 at 12:04
This is the poem, with the characters on the Kyrgyzstan bronze mirror fragment highlighted.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 28 March 2019 at 14:27
The British Library’s unique copy of the 1592-1593 Amakusa edition of Feiqe no monogatari [Heike monogatari], Esopo no fabulas [Isoho monogatari] and Qincuxu [Kinkushū] in Portuguese romanization is now available online dglb01.ninjal.ac.jp/BL_amakusa/en.…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 28 March 2019 at 22:43
Here is the mirror fragment superimposed on the reconstruction made by La Vansa on Zeno. The fragment is c. 9.0 × 9.0 cm, so the whole mirror would be about 30 cm in diameter.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 29 March 2019 at 19:08
Really stupid scheme to enable anything or anyone that has a Wikidate ID (currently over 55 million data items) to be representable as an emoji using Unicode tag sequences. For example, my personal emoji would be represented by the tag sequence <Q4758888> unicode.org/L2/L2019/19082…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 29 March 2019 at 19:25
It seems like a cunning plan to deflect complaints about the lack of particular emoji from the Unicode Consortium to Wikimedia.
Food lover: Why no custard and banana pizza emoji?
Unicode: Not our fault, go ask Wikidata to add a data item for it.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 29 March 2019 at 19:32
This scheme (completely unbelievable only a few years ago) is proposed by Mark Davis, founding father of Unicode and lifetime president of the Unicode Consortium — how is it possible that they have strayed so far from the original ideals of the Unicode Standard?!
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 29 March 2019 at 19:48
Interesting and compelling discussion by @CharlotteBuff on Why There Should Not Be a Transgender Flag Emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19084… (tl;dr there are an open-ended number of cultures and communities that want recognition and the cachet of an emoji flag)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 29 March 2019 at 19:49
Lots of great quotes which underline how little the people in charge of emoji understand how people want to use emoji: "The consensus among the general public appears to be that an emoji is not representative of me unless it equals myself in every possible aspect precisely".
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 29 March 2019 at 20:01
Smileys under consideration for Unicode 13.0 (March 2020) unicode.org/L2/L2019/19085… — of course they will satisfy no-one, either because they are not exactly what the emoji user has in mind or because they will be rendered differently on different platforms.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 29 March 2019 at 20:05
*Wikidata* ID wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 29 March 2019 at 23:40
Recent emoji proposals (𝋭/⧜):
Boomerang emoji unicode.org/L2/L2018/18331…
Bubble tea emoji unicode.org/L2/L2018/18341…
Worm emoji unicode.org/L2/L2018/18343…
(resuming this series at December 2018 after I gave up in despair)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 29 March 2019 at 23:45
Recent emoji proposals (𝋮/⧜):
Cooking Pot emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19060…
Placard emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19061…
Piñata emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19062…
(clearing the January/February emoji backlog)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 29 March 2019 at 23:48
Recent emoji proposals (𝋯/⧜):
Accordion emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19087…
Sewing needle emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19088…
(and back to today)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 30 March 2019 at 19:03
Thanks to @gar3t for pointing out that there is a complete bronze mirror with the same design at the Saint Louis Art Museum slam.org/collection/obj…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 31 March 2019 at 11:53
Mochi, my lovely hamster!
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 1 April 2019 at 21:11
BabelMap beta for Unicode 12.1 is now available for download from babelstone.co.uk/Software/Babel… (BabelPad beta will be available later today)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 1 April 2019 at 21:15
This version of BabelMap now supports drag-and-dropping from the character grid to another application.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 2 April 2019 at 00:20
BabelPad beta for Unicode 12.1 is now also available for download from babelstone.co.uk/Software/Babel…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 2 April 2019 at 09:28
I went to Lyon for two days in February, and came back with three Unicode proposals: Latin Letter Reversed Half H (unicode.org/L2/L2019/19092…); Roman Ascia symbols (unicode.org/L2/L2019/19091…); and Rho Cross and Rho Cross + Chi Rho with alpha and omega symbols (unicode.org/L2/L2019/19093…)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 3 April 2019 at 12:12
115 Western Zhou period tombs of the Guo (虢) state found near Sanmenxia in Henan kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 3 April 2019 at 12:19
... including this inscription on a bronze vessel, which confused me for a while because it is placed immediately below a sentence discussing a bronze inscription from M34 reading "昜㛣作宝鼎子子孙孙永宝用享". It actually reads "虢季氏子虎父作[寶]鼎子子孫[孫]永寶用".
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 3 April 2019 at 13:58
This ding vessel was made for Guo-Ji Zihu 虢季子虎, whose ancestor Guo-Ji Zibo 虢季子白 cast one of the most famous Western Zhou inscribed bronzes, during the 1st month of the 12th year of King Xuan of Zhou (816 BCE), before the clan migrated to the east. chnmuseum.cn/Default.aspx?T…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 3 April 2019 at 14:16
Recent emoji proposals (𝋰/⧜):
Long Drum emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19095…
Cockroach emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19095…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 3 April 2019 at 14:34
Current arthropod emoji: (🐛)🐜🐝🐞🕷🦂🦋🦗🦀🦐🦟🦞
Other potential arthropod emoji: praying mantis, stick insect, locust, woodlouse, head louse, flea, tarantula, caterpillar, centipede, millipede, earwig, mite, trilobite, sea scorpion ... how does cockroach rate against these?
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 5 April 2019 at 19:27
Today's acquisition for my Tangut Library is this volume from Ostasiatische Zeitschrift October 1917 / March 1918, which includes Anna Bernhardi's "Buddhistische Bilder aus der Glanzzeit der Tanguten" which I think must be the first ever article on Tangut art.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 5 April 2019 at 19:53
Bernhardi's article includes illustrations from the Tangut translation of the Lotus Sutra held at the Berlin State Library. These are important because the Berlin volumes were lost during WWII (one of the lost volumes was rediscovered in 2017 babelstone.co.uk/Blog/2018/04/r…) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 5 April 2019 at 19:54
The illustration for the first volume extends over six pages, and is titled 𗤓𗹙𗤻𗑗𗖰𗚩𘂫𘍦 [妙法蓮華經變相] "Transformation tableau for the Lotus Sūtra of the Wonderful Dharma"
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 5 April 2019 at 20:34
The other volumes all have a double-page illustration at the start. This one is from Vol. 3, and is titled 𘕕𗡪𘂫𘍦 [第三變相] "Transformation tableau No. 3".
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 5 April 2019 at 22:07
These are the illustrations for vols. 2, 6 and 8 of the Tangut Lotus Sutra held at the Musée Guimet in Paris (as you can see they are drawn in gold ink). The illustrations for each volume are similar in layout but different in detail.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 6 April 2019 at 22:11
Bernhardi's explanations of the illustrations to the Tangut Lotus Sutra is absolutely astounding. She translates almost perfectly the 25 Tangut captions on the illustration for vol. 1 (her only mistake is for 𗷅𗡝𗢳 "Śākya Buddha" which she gives as Pak-ka-Put = Bhagavat Buddha).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 7 April 2019 at 12:33
酔後失禮謝書 (Or.8210/S.2200)
昨日多飲，酔甚過度。麁踈言詞，都不醒覺。朝來見諸人説，方知其由，無地容身，慚悚尤積。本緣小噐，到次滿盈，(深反仄，深反仄)。伏望仁明，不賜罪責。續當面謝，先狀諮申。伏惟監察。不宣，謹狀。 twitter.com/BL_MadeDigital…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 7 April 2019 at 12:43
Yuling Pan and Dániel Z. Kádár, "Politeness in Historical and Contemporary Chinese" (2011) pp. 54–55:
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 7 April 2019 at 13:34
The first three characters of the second column, written 深及庂 are a mistake for 深反庂 (cf. Or.8210/S.4761) = 深反仄 meaning "惶恐不安". The three dots to the side indicate that the three-character phrase is repeated, so "I'm terribly sorry! I'm terribly sorry!"
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 8 April 2019 at 22:42
Recent emoji proposals (𝋱/⧜):
Matryoshka emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19096…
Wood emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19097…
Mirror emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19098…
Person Looking in Mirror emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19099…
(because the UTC is "reining it in while we can, as much as we can")
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 9 April 2019 at 22:14
Recent emoji proposals (𝋲/⧜):
Hut emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19102…
Teapot emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19103…
Flip-flop / Strap Sandal emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19104…
Bucket / Pail emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19105…
(Coming in thick and fast ... 12 proposals in 12 days)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 10 April 2019 at 11:32
Archaeologists receive their trowels in a ceremony to start the new excavation of the chariot and horse pit at the mausoleum for Duke Jing of Qin (d. 537 BCE). The pit was discovered in 1977 and partially excavated in 2003. It is believed to contain 3 sets of horses and chariots.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 10 April 2019 at 11:35
Oh, I forgot to link the article: kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
"Shaped like an inverted pyramid, the tomb [of Duke Jing of Qin] is as deep as an eight-story building and is the size of a palace. It is the largest tomb ever excavated in China." (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Jing…)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 13 April 2019 at 19:41
My hamster Mochi eating a pumpkin seed.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 23 April 2019 at 23:37
Recent emoji proposals (𝋳/⧜):
Window emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19108…
Two People Hugging emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19109…
Beaver emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19110…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 23 April 2019 at 23:45
Recent emoji proposals (፳/⧜):
Mouse Trap emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19144…
Rock emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19145…
Olive emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19146…
Beetle emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19148…
Knot emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19152…
Roller Skate emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19151…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 23 April 2019 at 23:50
Recent emoji proposals (㉑/⧜):
Seal emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19155…
Tooth Brush emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19153…
Tamale emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19154…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 23 April 2019 at 23:52
Recent emoji proposals (㉒/⧜):
Lung emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19149…
Heart emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19150…
Slightly Smiling Face with Tear emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19147…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 23 April 2019 at 23:57
A few documents on Mongolian encoding issues for consideration by the Unicode Technical Committee unicode.org/L2/L-curdoc.htm
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 24 April 2019 at 07:57
Recent emoji proposals (㉓/⧜):
Latin Cornbread emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19156…
Blueberries emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19157…
Plunger emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19158…
"What do you want?" pinched fingers emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19159…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 25 April 2019 at 15:43
Carving of a domestic silkworm in the process of spinning silk, made from the tusk of a wild boar, discovered at the Shuanghuaishu site in Henan dating to the late Yangshao period, about 5,300-4,800 years ago. kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 26 April 2019 at 15:32
Dan discusses a previously unknown 8th-century Tibetan stone inscription reported to be sited at the Traduntse Temple (པྲ་དུན་རྩེ་གཙུག་ལག་ཁང) in southwest Tibet. tibeto-logic.blogspot.com/2019/04/stone-…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 26 April 2019 at 17:40
The inscription is interesting in that it mentions the annexation of the territory of Zhang-zhung (ཞང་ཞུང་སྡེ) to the Tibetan kingdom, ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 26 April 2019 at 17:43
... and also uses the Zhang-zhung word "dang ra" (དང་ར) meaning "lake" to refer to the "soul lake" (བླ་མཚོ) "having a halter of turquoise" (གཡུ་མཐུར་ཅན), i.e. the Dangra Yutso Lake (དྭངས་རྭ་གཡུ་མཚོ) 250 km northeast of the temple.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 26 April 2019 at 19:26
Amazing Kuzushiji Character Prediction tool by @tkasasagi tkasasagi.com/en/
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 29 April 2019 at 18:08
From exactly 50 years ago, Chairman Mao and Lin Biao at the 1st Plenary Session of the 9th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, on a tin plaque with Tibetan inscription published by the Nationalities Press (Minzu chubanshe) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 29 April 2019 at 18:25
... I got it when I was in Lhasa in March 1985. It was one of half a dozen Cultural Revolution era plaques that had been cemented to the wall of the Ramoche Temple (ར་མོ་ཆེ་དགོན་པ = 小昭寺) for many years, and now lay unwanted after having recently been removed ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 29 April 2019 at 18:27
... The main Tibetan inscription reads རླབས་ཆེན་གཙོ་འཛིན་མའོ་ཀྲུའུ་ཞི་ཁྲི་ལོར་བརྟན་པ་ཤོག! ཁྲི་ལོར་བརྟན་པ་ཤོག! ཁྲི་ལོ་ནས་ཁྲི་ལོར་བརྟན་པ་ཤོག! "Long Live, Long Live, Long Live the Great Leader Chairman Mao !" [伟大的领袖毛主席万岁! 万岁! 万万岁!] ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 29 April 2019 at 18:28
... and the second two lines of Tibetan read "The Great Leader Chairman Mao and his closest comrade at arms Comrade Lin Biao at the 1st Plenary Session of the 9th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China" (held in April 1969).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 1 May 2019 at 14:32
It's been sitting in a quiet corner of my study for the last few years, and when I took it down to look at the other day I found that unfortunately the Tibetan text has all faded a pale pink.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 1 May 2019 at 20:10
I've just released two new fonts that support all second stage simplified forms (二简字), including all derived simplifications listed in the 1977 draft plan babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Erjian.h…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 4 May 2019 at 10:30
Mars (𗜐𗵫) with Scorpio (𘓺𘊓), and the 3rd lunar mansion (𘞱𗵫 = "Under Constellation") on his left. #Tangut twitter.com/JeffreyKotyk/s…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 4 May 2019 at 17:33
Tangut seal imprint for the "Head Supervisor of Grain Measurement" 𘑐𘅞𗥦[𘏿] on a fragment from the Stein Collection at @idp_uk idp.bl.uk/database/oo_lo…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 4 May 2019 at 17:47
The Tangut term 𘑐𘅞𗥦𘏿, which literally means "measure-face head-supervisor", occurs at least 8 times in the "Law Code for the Celestial Prosperity Era" (天盛改舊新定律令), where Kychanov translates it as "Старшего весовщика-мерщика". I have no idea what "face" is doing here!
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 5 May 2019 at 21:47
"Chinese Bronze Mirrors: A Compendium of Random Findings" by Y. V. Oborin and S. L. Savosin describes 840 mirrors and fragments discovered in Russia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Electronic edition (Moscow, 2017) available for download from zeno.ru/showphoto.php?…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 6 May 2019 at 13:34
Today's exciting (for me) #Tangut discovery in the Stein Collection at @idp_uk is a tiny fragment of the very rare "A edition" of the Tangut Homophones (𗙏𘙰 = 同音) idp.bl.uk/database/oo_lo… (outlined in red)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 6 May 2019 at 13:39
Homophones survives in "A" and "B" editions. There are multiple copies of the B edition at the IOM in Russia, and many fragments of the B edition elsewhere (nearly 80 fragments in the British Library), but only a single incomplete copy of the A edition is preserved in the IOM ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 6 May 2019 at 13:50
... and before today only a single small fragment of the A edition of Homophones was known in any other collection (idp.bl.uk/database/oo_lo… also at the BL).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 6 May 2019 at 14:04
The fragment I noticed today is hidden amongst several unrelated Tangut fragments that were previously described simply as fragments of "Buddhist sutra". It is actually from Homophones Ed. A folio 25A cols. 5-6 babelstone.co.uk/Tangut/Tongyin…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 8 May 2019 at 09:07
Brief report on the discovery of the late Western Han tombs of the Marquis of Yichun (宜春侯) and his wife in Xi'an, excavated last April kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 8 May 2019 at 09:15
A brick with part of an ink inscription reading 此五十二...宜春侯...椁馀□ "this fifty-two ... Marquis of Yichun ... coffin, remnant [?]" identifies the occupant. Final character looks like {⿰扌⿱土旱} but it has not been identified — perhaps twitter sinologists can explain it?
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 11 May 2019 at 13:22
Why does this twisted tale of burnt tails keep getting repeated as if it were true? ft.com/content/7408cc… (Gabriel Ronay tells this story in his 1978 book "The Tartar Khan's Englishman" [p. 116])
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 11 May 2019 at 13:30
Where is Volohai even? The only mention I can find of such a place is in this story, and the earliest version of the story with Volohai and Tanguts seems to be "Incendiary Cats and Birds in Warfare" by Robert Davis in his 1947 "Breathing in Irrespirable Atmospheres" (p. 32).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 11 May 2019 at 13:34
The earliest version of the story in English seems to be in Henry Hoyle Howorth's 1876 "History of the Mongols" (v. 1 pp. 56-57) where there are *10,000* swallows and a 1,000 cats; no mention of Volohai or the name of the besieged city; and the besieged are Jurchens not Tanguts.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 11 May 2019 at 13:45
Howorth's source is the "Chronicles of Sagang Sechen" translated by Schmidt in 1829. The same story with the same details (Jurchens, 10,000 swallows, no Volohai) is also translated by Charles Bawden in his 2013 "Mongolian Literature Anthology" (p. 27).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 11 May 2019 at 13:51
So is the version of the story with 1,000 swallows, Tanguts and Volohai a random corruption of the original story by Western authors, or is there a separate early Mongolian or Chinese source for it?
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 11 May 2019 at 22:40
Further investigation indicates that Volohai is Woluohai 斡羅孩 or Wulahai 兀剌海 (Uraqai in Mongolian), which is recorded as the first Tangut fortress taken by Genghis Khan, but without the aid of any burning cats or swallows.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 13 May 2019 at 18:50
Outside of Farnham Castle (shell wall built in late 12th-century around the Norman keep built in 1138) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 13 May 2019 at 18:57
... Inside of Farnham Castle (deep shaft dug from the top of the keep beneath a lost Norman tower down to ground level where a well was dug even deeper)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 14 May 2019 at 11:33
After nearly three years I finally get round to writing up an account of my visit to Kharakhoto with @cosmicore in August 2016. babelstone.co.uk/BabelDiary/201…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 20 May 2019 at 14:29
Two days later and and 1,500 km east we arrive at the site of the Liao Superior Capital, where I encounter two pagodas, a genuine Khitan epitaph, a fake Khitan dharani pillar, and a hoard of dharani pillars and stone cinerary coffins in a bicycle shed. babelstone.co.uk/BabelDiary/201…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 22 May 2019 at 10:34
And I have just finished writing up my 2017 revisit to Lindong North Pagoda babelstone.co.uk/BabelDiary/201… ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 22 May 2019 at 10:45
... and my 2017 revisit to the site of the Liao Superior Capital (遼上京遺址) babelstone.co.uk/BabelDiary/201… where I encounter a replica statue of Guanyin in the wild, and catch a glimpse of the genuine statue in a closed area of the museum.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 23 May 2019 at 10:20
And now here is my account of my visits to the White Pagoda at Hohhot in 2017, where I looked for ancient graffiti in Chinese, Phags-pa, Uyghur, Syriac and Jurchen babelstone.co.uk/BabelDiary/201…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 24 May 2019 at 20:53
And ten days later I visit another White Pagoda near the tombs of three Liao dynasty emperors babelstone.co.uk/BabelDiary/201…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 25 May 2019 at 16:18
I finally complete my backlog of travel diary entries for 2016 and 2017 with a visit to an enigmatic stone building babelstone.co.uk/BabelDiary/201…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 30 May 2019 at 10:08
Stone mould for a bronze fishhook (铜鱼钩石范) among ten stone moulds for spearheads etc. found at a 1st millennium BCE site in Yunnan kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 2 June 2019 at 18:31
Little egret in the River Wey today, and then the same bird two hours later in a different stretch of the river.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 16 June 2019 at 23:32
Arrived at airbnb in Bellevue WA with @Evertype for #WG2_68 in Redmond next week.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 17 June 2019 at 06:18
Snoqualmie Falls, in the heart of Twin Peaks country.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 17 June 2019 at 16:15
Steeling myself for #WG2_68 at Microsoft campus this morning with a stiff black coffee and a slice of cherry pie ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 19 June 2019 at 18:07
Proudly showing off my #taito and #biang badges at #WG2_68 courtesy of @ken_lunde (taito is a UK-submitted CJK ideograph and both characters are in CJK Ext. G which will be coming to Unicode soon).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 20 June 2019 at 04:35
Recent emoji proposals (㉔/⧜):
Biting Lip emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19219…
Diaper emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19215…
Bison emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19187…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 26 June 2019 at 11:15
This is a really bad argument for not encoding new Hangul letters used in DPRK between 1948 and 1954 unicode.org/L2/L2019/19233… — the only valid encoding criteria is whether they were used in newspapers, books or other publications that we should be able to digitally preserve.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 26 June 2019 at 11:19
2nd Stage simplified Chinese characters 二简字 (babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Erjian.h…) were only officially used from December 1977 to July 1978, but the "Table 1" characters were used in newspapers etc. so were accepted for encoding, and will be in CK Ext. G as part of Unicode 13.0 in 2020.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 26 June 2019 at 11:33
Recent emoji proposals (/):
Troll emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19232…
@Evertype and myself had to drag this one kicking and screaming through the emoji subcommittee and on to the Unicode document registry!
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 26 June 2019 at 12:05
BabelStone Troll colour font with PUA mappings (E000) available from babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Troll.ht…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 26 June 2019 at 13:21
The Biting Lip emoji proposal (unicode.org/L2/L2019/19219…) is a perfect example of how ludicrous the criteria for emoji encoding are. Proposers are asked to provide statistics on the relative frequency of words or phrases associated with the proposed emoji ... 1/3
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 26 June 2019 at 13:25
... rather than addressing the issue of whether the emoji is required or would be used. So the Biting Lip proposal compares the relative frequency of the words "biting lip" and "drooling face" as evidence that a biting lip emoji is far more needed than drooling face 🤤 emoji. 2/3
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 26 June 2019 at 13:30
But this is meaningless because people almost never need to write the words "drooling face", yet 🤤 is one of the top emoji on twitter. And just because people say "I keep on biting my lips" does not mean that they want or need a corresponding emoji. 3/3
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 26 June 2019 at 13:32
The statistics that the Emoji Subcommittee have so much faith in are just so much pseudo-scientific bunkum! {insert appropriate emoji here} 4/3
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 27 June 2019 at 14:36
New release of BabelPad with many new features and enhancements babelstone.co.uk/Software/Babel…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 27 June 2019 at 14:39
... including new tools for calculating frequency of words, user-specified strings, and grapheme clusters in the current document; an option to customize collation elements when sorting using the Unicode Collation Algorithm; and just for fun a pan-Unicode Caesar cipher function.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 1 July 2019 at 09:28
Undisturbed Song/Jin dynasty husband-and-wife brick tomb in good condition, with Jin dynasty epitaph, discovered in Yuanqu County, Shanxi hkcna.hk/content/2019/0…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 1 July 2019 at 09:47
Some more pictures from sohu.com/a/320887868_10…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 3 July 2019 at 16:12
Thousands of miniature five-tier towers (gorintō 五輪塔) discovered in boxes at the Entsuji Temple on Mount Koya in Japan mainichi.jp/english/articl…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 3 July 2019 at 16:17
Close-up view of one of the gorintō, with Sanskrit letters written on each of the five levels (representing the five elements: earth, water, fire, wind and air), and a tiny piece of Buddhist scripture that was stored in the base of the tower.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 4 July 2019 at 16:29
Pictures of the Song dynasty brick tomb discovered at Longxi County Gansu during road building yesterday xw.qq.com/partner/wcsbzs…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 4 July 2019 at 16:48
A couple of phone videos available here xw.qq.com/partner/vivosc…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 4 July 2019 at 17:19
Just like the Song/Jin dynasty tomb discovered last month in Shanxi, this is an octagonal brick tomb with an imitation wooden structure
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 5 July 2019 at 09:12
"The Unicode Gang" in 2009 unicode.org/history/photoa… #UnicodeGang
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 5 July 2019 at 09:21
10 years later and some have gone and others have taken their place, but six of the original 2009 #UnicodeGang were at #WG2_68 last month:
Lee Collins (pictured), @Evertype, Asmus Freytag, Lisa Moore, Michel Suignard, and Ken Whistler (but I forgot to take a group photo of them)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 5 July 2019 at 09:24
Lisa Moore at #WG2_66 (September 2017 in Hohhot) with @lianghai #UnicodeGang
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 5 July 2019 at 09:28
Mike Ksar, Michel Suignard and @Evertype at #WG2_63 (September 2014 in Colombo) #UnicodeGang
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 8 July 2019 at 20:42
BBC News - Wuhan protests: Incinerator plan sparks mass unrest bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-chi…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 9 July 2019 at 09:12
Yuan dynasty brick tomb with wall paintings discovered in Jinan Shandong. Mural is helpfully inscribed with the date 大元國至元二十二年 "22nd year of the Zhiyuan era of the Great Yuan State" = 1285 kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 9 July 2019 at 09:27
The tomb was discovered last week (3 July) when digging a drainage channel, and there is only a small gap into the tomb, which is why the photos are not so great. kswchina.com/ksgzj/59377.ht…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 11 July 2019 at 10:31
Yuan dynasty tomb with wall paintings discovered at Shuozhou in Shanxi last month. Inscription on a brick indicates that the tomb is for Zhang Delin and his wife Madam Wang (祖耶耶张得林娘娘王氏) art.ifeng.com/2019/0621/3482…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 15 July 2019 at 10:52
Cotton On, Target investigate after women speak out about forced labour abc.net.au/news/2019-07-1… via @ABCNews
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 17 July 2019 at 14:00
The Unicode Consortium launches a trendy new website in celebration of World Emoji Day home.unicode.org
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 18 July 2019 at 10:12
The Legal page of the new @unicode website is interesting home.unicode.org/legal-news/
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 22 July 2019 at 16:18
I wonder how the trolls and apologists explain this (@incunabula)
Xinjiang People's Publishing House 新疆人民出版社:
Chinese: 12 pages of books
Mongolian: 3 pages of books
Uyghur: not a single book
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 22 July 2019 at 16:35
Kazakh 10 pages, Kyrgyz 2 pages, Sibe 4 pages ... so apparently it's just Uyghur language books which are effectively banned in Xinjiang.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 22 July 2019 at 23:22
In 2015 there were eight pages of Uyghur books listed on the site web.archive.org/web/2015040313… but even the books of Xi Jinping speeches and the anti-terrorism handbook are all gone now.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 23 July 2019 at 00:21
The Ming dynasty Diamond Throne Pagoda of the Temple of True Enlightenment in Beijing, commonly known as the Temple of Five Pagodas (五塔寺) commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wuta… ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 23 July 2019 at 00:26
... now being rebuilt in Shanghai in 21st-century style. Grotesque.
H/T @xujnx twitter.com/xujnx/status/1…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 23 July 2019 at 10:29
"Xinjiang People's Publishing house was founded in 1951 as a general regional publisher in the six languages of Uyghur, Chinese, Kazakh, Mongolian, Kyrgyz and Sibe." xjrmcb.com/about/show/125… (notice the order of languages) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 23 July 2019 at 10:32
You can download their lists of books published in Chinese, Kazakh, Mongolian, Kyrgyz and Sibe languages (up to end of 2014 only) from xjrmcb.com/down/0.aspx ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 23 July 2019 at 10:37
But their list of books published in the Uyghur language, which used to be top of the page is no longer available. web.archive.org/web/2015040910…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 23 July 2019 at 10:48
I can't find a cached copy of the Uyghur booklist (新疆人民出版社维吾尔文图书目录.xlsx) but here is a partial list showing the range of books that have disappeared (dictionaries, the Koran, world history, a brief history of Islam, and even books on Chinese socialism and the CCP).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 23 July 2019 at 13:06
British Library Add MS 73525 (bl.uk/manuscripts/Fu…) is a collection of manuscript fragments dating from the 10th through 16th centuries, including this single folio "in an unknown script, in red, blue, and black ink, possibly liturgical in nature".
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 23 July 2019 at 15:24
And the other side of the folio, with the same undeciphered writing.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 23 July 2019 at 15:36
I have no idea what the writing is, but would observe that there may be two forms of writing here: the headings and some "words" (highlighted) look more like alphabetic writing than the more disjoined, dotty signs which make up most of the text — could they be musical notation?
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 24 July 2019 at 11:40
四月印芫萎餅 Making Coriander Cakes in the 4th month. Coriander cakes (芫荽餅) are traditionally eaten on the Buddha's Birthday celebrated on 8th or 15th day of the 4th lunar month.
Via @JeffreyKotyk twitter.com/JeffreyKotyk/s…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 25 July 2019 at 16:59
The Silchester Ogham Stone, found at the bottom of a well in the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum in 1893. Photographed by me on this day three years ago. twitter.com/BabelStone/sta…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 26 July 2019 at 08:36
Ming dynasty tomb with wall paintings inscribed "Buried on the 11th day of the 2nd month of the 9th year of the Yongle era of the Great Ming" "大明永樂九年二月十一日葬" [1411] discovered at Yuxian in Shanxi (山西盂县) kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 26 July 2019 at 08:48
Also discovered in the same village of Xiacao (下曹村) were three caches of colour-painted clay and wooden Buddhist statues (38 in total, mostly arhats) from a local temple which had been hidden in caves dug into the hillside during the Cultural Revolution kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 26 July 2019 at 08:54
The statues are thought to date to the Ming dynasty. Local villagers recently went looking for the buried statues, and when they found them they reported the discovery to the authorities (!)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 28 July 2019 at 13:40
Went for a Sunday morning walk, so here are some sheep chilling in the shade of some trees near where we live.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 28 July 2019 at 16:10
Trying out a new recipe for Korean crispy and spicy fried chicken (닭강정) in preparation for visit by @Evertype next month (based on maangchi.com/recipe/easy-da… by @maangchi)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 2 August 2019 at 10:49
Pica Saxon from "A Specimen of the several sorts of Letter given to the University by Dr. John Fell" (Oxford, 1695) showing lower case and upper case forms of the letter "and" (⁊) digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/p/876b… cc @Evertype
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 5 August 2019 at 15:42
Almost the last day of filming of 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔒𝔩𝔡 𝔊𝔲𝔞𝔯𝔡 at the Bourne Woods this afternoon (photos shot at full zoom through a small gap in the trees at about 300 yards)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 5 August 2019 at 16:37
Every time there is filming at the Bourne Woods (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourne_Wo…) they kindly put up a notice at the end of my road to let me know. TOG = en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_G…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 9 August 2019 at 10:26
#WTF twitter won't let me tweet about an archaeological discovery in China because it wants to protect y'all from spam.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 9 August 2019 at 10:30
Here are the pictures without a link to the source (just google 山东发掘两座大型汉代画像石墓):
Excavation of two large-scale Han dynasty tombs in Jinan, Shandong, with a total of 58 engraved picture stones.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 13 August 2019 at 10:31
Proposal for Face with X Eyes emoji (unicode.org/L2/L2019/19303…) in order to try to sort out the chaos created by incompatible vendor implementations of the existing Dizzy Face 😵 emoji.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 13 August 2019 at 10:37
I assume that at least some vendors will respond by keeping their x-eyes emoji where it is, and adding a spiral-eyed emoji at the new code point.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 13 August 2019 at 21:17
Also proposed: Face with Open Eyes and Hand Over Mouth emoji because Apple implements Smiling Face with Smiling Eyes and Hand Covering Mouth 🤭 with open eyes unicode.org/L2/L2019/19304…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 13 August 2019 at 21:31
And coming soon, proposal for Smiling Face with Smiling Eyes and Three Big Hearts and One Small Heart because @Emojipedia can't count very well 🥰
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 14 August 2019 at 20:13
Starting to prepare BabelMap for Unicode 13.0 in March 2020, which will see the advent of the Tertiary Ideographic Plane (TIP)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 14 August 2019 at 20:32
The highlighted character is the simplified form of the Sawndip character for the first part of the word Sawndip 𭨡𮄫 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawndip
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 14 August 2019 at 20:36
The characters in the edit buffer are 2nd stage simplifications that were briefly used in 1977-1978 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_ro…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 14 August 2019 at 20:42
CJK Ext. G also includes about 1,000 derived simplified forms of Chinese characters included in the 2nd ed. of the Great Dictionary of Chinese Characters 《漢語大字典》 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanyu_Da_…) which will help ongoing efforts to index and digitalize this important dictionary.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 14 August 2019 at 21:05
Discussion of the Tertiary Ideographic Plane from 10 years ago (unicode.org/mail-arch/unic…) ... some thought it would not happen in their lifetime, but John Knightley correctly predicted "the overflow of CJK Extensions from the SIP will take place
sometime between 2020 and 2025"
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 14 August 2019 at 22:22
As I recall, the term "Tertiary Ideographic Plane" was coined by @Evertype in about 2007 as a placeholder name for Plane 3, but despite some objections from Japan it stuck.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 16 August 2019 at 18:44
Discovered today in Taiyuan, a well-preserved Tang dynasty tomb with spectacular wall paintings, including a magnificent tiger and a lovely 5-stringed pipa. Importantly, there is a stone epitaph which will provide information about the deceased. mp.weixin.qq.com/s/unvQiOzDwK4W…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 16 August 2019 at 22:48
Unicode 13.0 (March 2020) also includes Khitan Small Script. With font support sequences of individual KSS characters automatically combine into word clusters, as shown here (as with Mongolian & Phags-pa, horizontal text needs to be rotated for vertical display, e.g. using CSS).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 17 August 2019 at 11:23
The KSS text shown in the edit buffer is from the Record of the Journey of the Younger Brother of the Emperor of the Great Jin Dynasty (大金皇弟都統經略郎君行記) dated 1134.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 17 August 2019 at 11:38
I have a test page for my prototype KSS font at babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/KSS_Test…. At present KSS cluster formation works as expected under Windows 10 with my font, but I would not be at all surprised if Microsoft decided to fix it not to work when they add support for Khitan Small Script.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 18 August 2019 at 15:21
Adding some more photos of the tomb in case the linked site ever disappears.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 18 August 2019 at 15:30
And some close-ups of the musicians, tiger, and fenghuang.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 27 August 2019 at 15:20
Visited yesterday, the excavation by @LymingeDig of the Saxon church at Lyminge, Kent, founded by Queen (later Saint) Ethelburga (Æthelburh) in 633. Very clear remains of the apsidal chancel separated from the nave by a triple arch.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 28 August 2019 at 09:35
Buddhist cliff sculptures of a buddha and four bodhisattvas in Baiyu county of Sichuan's Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture are identified as dating to the period of the late Tibetan Empire (9th century). kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 31 August 2019 at 08:43
Unfortunately still using ┐ (Box Drawings Light Down and Left) instead of ⁊ (Tironian Sign Et) twitter.com/Department_ASN…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 9 September 2019 at 10:26
A couple of plain brick Tang dynasty tombs (M421 and M422) excavated at Lanshan County in the very south of Hunan ... kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20190…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 9 September 2019 at 10:31
Nothing very special about them, except that they kindly built in a few date-imprinted bricks to help future archaeologists:
Yongchang 1 永昌元年 [689] (M421)
Wude 1 武德元年 [618] (M422)
Zhenghuan 1 唐貞觀元年 [627] (M422)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 9 September 2019 at 10:36
And one brick imprinted with the name Léishān 雷山 "Thunder Mountain", which the archaeologists insightfully suggest "might be the name of a mountain".
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 12 September 2019 at 09:13
Proposal to encode 96 Chinese place name ideographs by @WangXieyang unicode.org/L2/L2019/19308…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 14 September 2019 at 20:55
I've never seen the two Tangut seals on the right before:
𘀗𘑨 = 乾祐 Qianyou era (1170-1193)
𗣼𗪘𗍫𗤒 = 元德二年 Yuande 2 (1120)
They both look very fake to me, with poor calligraphy. twitter.com/toranosukev/st…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 14 September 2019 at 21:21
There's no reason to doubt the authenticity of the "chief" 𗥦𗖅 (首領) seal as many examples are known to have been in the hands of Japanese collectors ... but they have displayed it upside down here (oops!)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 15 September 2019 at 11:48
Five Western Xia official seals in #Tangut seal script on display at the National Museum of China in Beijing.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 15 September 2019 at 11:55
These seals are very different to contemporary Song Chinese and Liao Khitan official seals, with the text usually inverted (imprinted in white), and not following the "Seal of {office}" formula used on Chinese and Khitan seals. (Photo of seals at old Xixia Museum in Yinchuan)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 15 September 2019 at 12:07
A very few seals have four or six Tangut characters, such as 𗍅𘏿𗆻𘞪" meaning "special seal of the Supervisor of Works" (Chinese 工監專印) and "𗼨𗆟𘍴𗩙𗆻𘞪" meaning "special seal of the Department of Rites of the Weiming clan" (Chinese 嵬名禮部專印) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 15 September 2019 at 12:16
... but the vast majority of seals have just two Tangut characters "𗥦𗖅" meaning "commander" or "chief" (Chinese 首領). Luo Fuyi lists 85 examples in his 1982 catalogue of Tangut seals, and I have managed to photograph 23 examples at four museums commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 15 September 2019 at 12:42
The calligraphy for the two Tangut characters "𗥦" (首 "head") and "𗖅" (領 "to lead") for the title "commander" varies from one seal to another, and no two seals are exactly the same, but the typical structure of the seal script glyphs is as shown here.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 15 September 2019 at 13:28
The back of the seal is normally engraved with date of issue and name of owner, and 𗹭 (上) "Up" on the knob to show orientation. The handwriting of the reverse inscription is typically atrocious, with malformed characters and incorrect components. (random photo from internet)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 15 September 2019 at 13:58
On this example, the date on the right is 𘀗𘑨𗤁𗤒 (乾祐六年) Qianyou 6 (1175), and the owner's name on the left is 𗚷𗸰・[𘕤𘙲𘀄?] Tśhi̯əton [Seeking-long-luck ?]. The knob character 𗹭 (上) is upside down. chnmuseum.cn/Portals/0/web/…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 15 September 2019 at 15:07
The enigma of bronze age tin ingots found off the Israeli coast with marks that may be Cypro-Minoean signs phys.org/news/2019-09-e…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 15 September 2019 at 15:21
Four signs occur on 4 ingots: b, c and d may correspond to Cypro-Minoan signs 95, 75 and 102 respectively, but there is no C-M version of (a) which occurs on all 4 ingots and may have been applied last; a-c do however all have analogues in Iberian scripts. jstor.org/stable/1356605
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 15 September 2019 at 16:17
Tangut seal imprints are sometimes found on Tangut documents in the @idp_uk database, although they are usually too unclear to read, as in these examples:
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 15 September 2019 at 16:42
@idp_uk However there is one Tangut document in the @idp_uk database which has six seal impressions, five of which are clear impressions of the same (?) "𗥦𗖅" (首領) "commander" seal (all upside down):
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 17 September 2019 at 12:29
@idp_uk Side-by-side view of the seal impression on the British Library Tangut document from Kharakhoto (rotated 180°) and a bronze seal held at the National Museum of China (mirrored), both with the same "𗥦𗖅" (首領) "commander" inscription.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 17 September 2019 at 13:10
Annual grape harvest underway at the West household
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 17 September 2019 at 15:48
Picked about 8 kg of grapes, but still plenty left on the vine for birds and foxes, which made about 5 litres of grape juice. I don't try to make bad wine, but just drink the raw grape juice, which is wonderfully refreshing and sweet, although needs to be finished in a few days.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 18 September 2019 at 11:35
Wow, it seems that the British Library believes that the Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi bl.uk/collection-ite… is in copyright until at least 31 December 2039 under the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act because it was created by a citizen of the European Economic Area (EEA).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 19 September 2019 at 09:38
Proposals for black or white versions of existing emoji using ZWJ sequences:
White Wine emoji {🍷⬜} unicode.org/L2/L2019/19276…
Black Cat emoji {🐈⬛} unicode.org/L2/L2019/19277…
Polar Bear emoji {🐻⬜} unicode.org/L2/L2019/19296…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 19 September 2019 at 09:52
Recent emoji proposals (㉖/⧜):
Submarine emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19305…
Crow/Raven emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19307…
Mirror Ball emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19310…
Bubbles emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19311…
Chainsaw emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19312…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 19 September 2019 at 10:15
My photo of Mr Emojipedia @jeremyburge wearing his submarine emoji shirt last summer.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 19 September 2019 at 15:48
Unperturbed by the unseasonably warm summer weather that we should not be having in late September, today I visited the lovely Norman church of St James at Bramley in Hampshire ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 19 September 2019 at 15:50
... which is justly famous for its medieval wall paintings that were whitewashed over in 1550-1551, and rediscovered in the late 19th century.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 19 September 2019 at 16:09
On the south wall above the original south door is this 12th century depiction of the murder of Thomas Becket, ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 19 September 2019 at 16:17
(I meant late 12th or early 13th century ... believed to have been painted within 50 years of the event in 1170)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 19 September 2019 at 16:21
... and on the north wall is a 16th century depiction of Saint Christopher, which has been likened to contemporary portraits of Henry VIII
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 19 September 2019 at 16:29
Unfortunately, the painting of St Christopher has considerably deteriorated since it was discovered in 1874 by the Rev. Charles Eddy, as can be seen from this early photograph.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 19 September 2019 at 19:05
Medieval wall paintings on the east wall of St James' church, Bramley.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 19 September 2019 at 19:33
Other uncovered text paintings and a painted cross.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 21 September 2019 at 17:16
Medieval graffiti on the chancel arch of the Church of St Nicholas in Compton, Surrey, depicting a Norman knight with a conical helmet and a nose guard.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 21 September 2019 at 17:23
Close by on the same arch is a medieval engraving of five interlocked circles, perhaps intended to mark the position above for a consecration cross (too close to the floor to be the actual position).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 21 September 2019 at 18:53
To the south of the chancel arch is a doorway to a chantry chapel for Henry de Guildford (d. 1312), on which are engraved the names of his executor John de Brideford alias Le Sweyn and his brother Gilbert le Mareschal: "BR[u]de[n]f[or]de Sway[ne]" and "GilBRetus L eM[areschal]".
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 21 September 2019 at 21:56
The 14th-century chantry chapel for Henry de Guildford has a well worn wooden prayer desk and a quatrefoil squint that allowed the priest to observe the high altar.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 22 September 2019 at 11:14
The chantry chapel is commonly confused with an undocumented anchorite cell that was supposed to be attached to the church; but the actual remains of the anchorite cell, with a plain rectangular squint, are on the north side of the chancel.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 22 September 2019 at 13:59
About 9 miles away, in the Church of St James in Shere, there is an anchorite cell documented to have been the home of Christine Carpenter in 1329 and 1332. A squint for receiving communion and a squint giving sight to the altar are all that survive. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 22 September 2019 at 21:07
15th-century painting of St Christopher on the south wall of the Old Church of St Peter and St Paul at Albury Park in Surrey; and an early 16th-century painting of St Christopher on the north wall of the Church of St James in Bramley, Hampshire. I visited both churches this week.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 23 September 2019 at 18:14
Fragment of jade from the site at Karabalgasun, capital of the Uighur Empire (744/745 to 840 AD), with an Old Uyghur inscription written in Chinese characters — h/t @csen_nomads twitter.com/csen_nomads/st…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 23 September 2019 at 18:17
@csen_nomads The three Chinese characters read 没蜜施 (Mandarin mò mì shī) which transcribe the Old Uighur word bolmiš "to receive", which occurs in the titles of at least nine Uighur khans from 747 to 848 who are listed in the Old and New History of the Tang Dynasty. zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9B%9E…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 23 September 2019 at 19:58
@csen_nomads For example in New Tang History (新唐書) 217B.1b there is mentioned 愛登里囉汩没蜜施合毗伽昭禮可汗 = Ay täŋridä qut bolmiš alp bilgä Zhaoli qaɣan "Brave and Intelligent Khagan Zhaoli who received blessing from the Moon God" which is the epithet for Khagan Qasar who ruled 824–832.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 23 September 2019 at 22:17
@csen_nomads This jade fragment reminds me of a jade fragment with a Khitan small script inscription that was found at a Liao imperial tomb in 2018 twitter.com/BabelStone/sta…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 23 September 2019 at 22:47
@csen_nomads Some other photos from the Mongolisch-Deutsche Orchon-Expedition dainst.org/projekt/-/proj…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 24 September 2019 at 09:54
"This means that when the Royal Commissioners walked into the House of Lords it was as if they walked in with a blank sheet of paper." supremecourt.uk/news/latest-ju… ... but it turns out the PM was not Doctor Who
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 25 September 2019 at 08:41
Liang Sicheng's plans to build gardens along the top of Beijing's Ming dynasty city wall chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/html/cd… twitter.com/CarlZha/status…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 26 September 2019 at 12:49
@csen_nomads The project description (dainst.org/projekt/-/proj…) talks of several fragments of polished stone tablets with gold-encrusted Chinese characters [einigen Fragmenten von „Jadebüchern“ (polierten Jadetäfelchen mit chinesischen, golden inkrustierten Schriftzeichen)] ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 26 September 2019 at 13:12
@csen_nomads ... and I was able to find a picture of one more fragment with five Chinese characters "於天下氣無" in this document (publications.dainst.org/journals/index…) ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 26 September 2019 at 13:26
@csen_nomads ... which come from a memorial poem written by the famous Tang poet Bai Juyi to the Uighur Khagan in 821 (《册回鹘可汗加号文》). It is also the source for "没蜜施" in the other fragment (here written as "歿密施").
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 30 September 2019 at 16:53
Is it just me? This is what I get when I try to visit home.unicode.org with Internet Explorer.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 30 September 2019 at 17:01
With Firefox I just see PUA characters all over the place.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 30 September 2019 at 17:04
Chrome's no better.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 1 October 2019 at 08:16
To celebrate the 35th anniversary of the 35th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, here is a photo of me recently arrived in China circa October 1984, with 35th anniversary poster in the background (roommate photographer Adrian Bradshaw cropped out).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Tuesday, 1 October 2019 at 13:01
Some of my tóngxué stayed in Beijing to watch the mighty military parade, but I and some others travelled south to Suzhou and Hangzhou. Here is the unrestored Ruiguang pagoda (瑞光塔) in Suzhou with a National Day banner over the entrance.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 2 October 2019 at 09:58
I still have my set of tourist maps (which I got for free from the Chinese consulate in London) which helped guide me around China in 1984 and 1985. You can see me studying them in the photo. pic.twitter.com/8D81EzNIqh
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 2 October 2019 at 13:05
I still have my set of tourist maps (which I got for free from the Chinese consulate in London) which helped guide me around China in 1984 and 1985. You can see me studying them in the photo.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 2 October 2019 at 15:08
Which I supplemented with my essential 1982 map of Beijing and my 1980 Tibetan-language map of Lhasa ... how both cities have changed since then!
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 8 October 2019 at 16:26
Li Fanwen's Tangut-Chinese Dictionary (2008) has a puzzling Tangut word for Pratyeka-buddha (Chinese 辟支佛) ... it took me a while to realise that 𘆄 "etc." is a mistake for 𘒶 "buddha" (the transcription of Chinese 佛 rather than the normal Tangut word for Buddha 𗢳).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 11 October 2019 at 21:52
@csen_nomads I have now been able to have a look at Lyndon A. Arden-Wong's 2011 "Preliminary Thoughts on the Marble Inscriptions from Karabalgasun" (brepolsonline.net/doi/pdf/10.148…) which describes two more fragments from the same site ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 11 October 2019 at 21:55
@csen_nomads ... and KB002 is a 7.1 cm long marble fragment engraved with the two Chinese characters "較雄" which are also from Bai Juyi's 《册新回鶻可汗文》: 南西東方，亦有君長，較雄鬥智，莫之與京。
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 11 October 2019 at 22:02
@csen_nomads KB001 has the remains of three Chinese characters but only the middle one is identifiable as 雲. This does occur once in Bai Juyi's 《册新回鶻可汗文》, but the characters on either side do not match the description of the fragmentary characters above and below 雲 on the fragment.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 11 October 2019 at 23:20
@csen_nomads I have updated my blog post with details of the two fragments found in 2009 and 2011. We now have fragments from two different investiture texts for the Uighur Khagan written by Bai Juyi in 821 babelstone.co.uk/Blog/2019/10/k…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 24 October 2019 at 13:44
Uyghur economist and activist Ilham Tohti, sentenced to life imprisonment in 2014, has been awarded the 2019 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 25 October 2019 at 10:53
Recent emoji proposals (㉗/⧜):
Low Battery emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19316…
Raised Little Finger emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19326…
Hand with Index Finger and Thumb Crossed emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19327…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 25 October 2019 at 11:02
Recent emoji proposals (㉘/⧜):
River emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19334…
Vulture emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19335…
Lotus emoji unicode.org/L2/L2019/19371…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 31 October 2019 at 09:47
Western Jin brick tomb dated 306 discovered at Zixing in Hunan kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20191…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 31 October 2019 at 09:54
Like many tombs from this period, its date is recorded on inscribed bricks: 永興三年七月乙酉朔五日己丑石氏作 "Built by Mr Shi on the fifth day (jichou cyclical day) of the 7th month (with the new moon on the yiyou cyclical day) of the 3rd year of the Yongxing era (306 CE)".
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 31 October 2019 at 10:01
Inexplicably, the report misreads the inscription as "永兴三年七月酉□五日己丑石氏作", omitting the flat "乙" before "酉" and failing to identify "朔" after "酉". The jichou 己丑 day is of course five days after the yiyou 乙酉 day (the new moon of the 7th month).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 4 November 2019 at 16:56
A list of books, offprints and papers by Sir Aurel Stein offered for sale by John Randall, together with an important collection of his original letters to the Italian explorer Filippo de Filippi, and related material booksofasia.com/PDFs/Orientali… @HelenWangLondon @incunabula
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 4 November 2019 at 17:07
@HelenWangLondon @incunabula Some of the 72 letters from Aurel Stein to his friend Filippo de Filippi dated 1913-1938, offered for sale at £45,000.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 4 November 2019 at 17:26
Sable Wood, Farnham #dailywalk
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 11 November 2019 at 10:04
Jin dynasty brick tomb with murals depicting the Stories of 24 Filial Acts and an inscription dated 1189 discovered near Xingtai in Hebei kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20191…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 11 November 2019 at 10:07
Details of the murals afpbb.com/articles/-/325…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 11 November 2019 at 10:14
The floor of the tomb was strewn with the bones of the occupants, a man and his two wives wemp.app/posts/57f33463…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 11 November 2019 at 10:22
The tomb is helpfully dated by an inscription: "Recorded on the 28th day of the 9th month of the 29th year of the Dading era" 大定廿九年九月二十八日記之 (8 November 1189 in the Julian calendar)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 12 November 2019 at 16:44
The game board depicted on a runestone from Sweden is remarkably similar to that used for playing liubo in China a thousand years earlier. babelstone.co.uk/Blog/2009/05/l… twitter.com/Berserkjablogg…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 14 November 2019 at 00:11
Looks very promising twitter.com/lokamitrahk/st…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 16 November 2019 at 16:01
Off the beaten track at Bourne Wood Farnham
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 20 November 2019 at 20:49
Foundations of a Song dynasty hexagonal brick pagoda uncovered in Zhejiang. Bricks printed with "道源塔磚" (Daoyuan Pagoda brick) and "南無大乘妙法蓮華經" (Namo Mahāyāna Saddharmapuṇḍarīka-sūtra). kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20191…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 20 November 2019 at 20:50
At the core were found six coins dating to Tang and Northern Song: "開元通寶" (621–846), "乾元重寶" (758–762), "元豐通寶" (1078–1085), "元祐通寶" (1086–1094).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 21 November 2019 at 10:50
Foundations for three Liao dynasty hexagonal pagodas excavated in 2012 at the site of the Liao Superior Capital in Inner Mongolia, the largest 40+ metres across, thought to be part of an imperial Buddhist temple kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xcczlswz/2…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 21 November 2019 at 10:58
Buddhist statues and a dharani pillar base discovered during the excavations
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 21 November 2019 at 11:05
More at my account of my visit to the Liao Superior Capital site in 2017 babelstone.co.uk/BabelDiary/201…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 21 November 2019 at 11:51
The above photo is a replica of a Liao dynasty Guanyin statue that stood here until 2007. She lost her head in the early 20th century, and was damaged by an earthquake in 2003, so now lives in the nearby Liao Shangjing Museum, not on display but I managed to catch a peek of her.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 21 November 2019 at 16:07
BBC News - Detectorists stole Viking hoard that 'rewrites history' bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 22 November 2019 at 13:39
I have just released BabelStone Han v. 13.0.0 with support for the forthcoming Unicode 13.0 (March 2020), and now covering 40,574 CJK unified ideographs babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Han.html
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 22 November 2019 at 13:47
The font covers 2,354 of the 4,939 characters in the new CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G block in the newly-opened Tertiary Ideographic Plane (TIP) unicode.org/charts/PDF/Uni…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 22 November 2019 at 14:29
I proposed the encoding of 1,709 of the characters in Ext. G, including 994 derived simplified characters used in the 2nd ed. of Hànyǔ Dàzìdiǎn 漢語大字典, and 98 2nd stage simplified characters (二简字) which I first proposed over ten years ago (unicode.org/L2/L2009/09260…)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 22 November 2019 at 15:04
There are 13 urgently-needed characters added to the end of the main CJK block, mostly names for fish, as well as macaw and hutia (unicode.org/L2/L2019/19202…)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 22 November 2019 at 15:14
Added to the end of CJK Ext. A are 10 characters disunified from existing characters (see IRG N2337, N2338, N2370, N2422 appsrv.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~irg/irg/irg53…)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 22 November 2019 at 15:16
Added to the end of CJK Ext. B are 7 characters used for Chinese musical notation (hooked versions of the gongche characters 合四一上尺工凡) proposed by @eisoch and @JerryYou517 (unicode.org/L2/L2018/18245…)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 22 November 2019 at 15:24
@eisoch @JerryYou517 Also new in Unicode 13 are two Vietnamese "reading marks" which are intended to combine with CJK unified ideographs. BabelStone Han supports a limited set of combining sequences of CJK unified ideographs and these Vietnamese reading marks ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 22 November 2019 at 15:30
@eisoch @JerryYou517 ... which I have tested as working under #HarfBuzz, but they won't work with Chrome or Firefox even though they use versions of HarfBuzz which do work. Test page here babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Vietname…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Friday, 22 November 2019 at 15:49
@eisoch @JerryYou517 Finally, this version of BabelStone Han supports a provisional and unregistered set of 934 Ideographic Variations Sequences for 463 CJK unified ideographs (babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/BSH_IVS.…). I may register a BabelStone IVD collection at a future date after feedback from users and experts.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 23 November 2019 at 11:32
Four important archaeological discoveries on the Silk Road in China announced yesterday:
1) In Qinghai, a royal tomb from the Tibetan Empire, circa 700, excavated Sept. 2018 to Sept. 2019; with murals, a gilt crown and a gold cup inlaid with turquoise. kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20191…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 23 November 2019 at 11:47
2) In Gansu, discovered on 25 September 2019, the tomb of Murong Zhi 慕容智, 3rd son of Murong Nuohebo, last khan of the Tuyuhun kingdom, who died in 691 aged 42. kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20191…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 23 November 2019 at 11:51
His wooden coffin is covered with silk cloth with elephants marching left and right.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 23 November 2019 at 11:59
A stone epitaph identifies the occupant of the tomb. This is the cover for the epitaph, inscribed "大周故慕容府君墓誌" = "Tomb epitaph for the deceased Lord Murong of the Great Zhou" (Great Zhou refers to the short-lived Zhou dynasty established by Empress Wu Zetian).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 23 November 2019 at 12:14
3) In Qinghai, at the Reshui tomb complex dating to the 6th-8th centuries, a large mausoleum was excavated between Sept. 2018 and Oct. 2019 in response to a case of tomb robbery. kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20191…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 23 November 2019 at 12:16
At the tomb entrance is a pit with the skeletons of six horses.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 23 November 2019 at 12:18
Various items of fine jewellery have been found, indicating the high status of the occupant.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 23 November 2019 at 12:28
4) In Xinjiang Yuli County, one of a series of Tang dynasty beacon towers first surveyed by Stein in 1914, has been under excavation for the last month (and is still continuing). kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20191…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Saturday, 23 November 2019 at 12:30
Among the items found so far are some plates of armour ...
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Saturday, 23 November 2019 at 12:32
... and the remains of Chinese documents written on paper and wood.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 26 November 2019 at 14:57
@eisoch @JerryYou517 BabelStone Han now updated to v. 13.0.1 in order to include five new bopomofo letters and various non-Han characters added in Unicode 13.0. babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Han.html
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 26 November 2019 at 15:02
My BabelStone Shapes font is now updated to include Creative Commons symbols and Symbols for Legacy Computing which are included in Unicode 13.0 (March 2020) babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Shapes.h… @DougEwell
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 26 November 2019 at 17:43
From Miran Fort, digitized by @idp_uk at:
idp.bl.uk/database/oo_lo… twitter.com/AltaytoYughur/…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 28 November 2019 at 17:51
The puppy has been named "Dogor", which means "friend" in the Yakut language and is also the start of the question "dog or wolf?" bbc.co.uk/news/world-eur…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 28 November 2019 at 17:53
I had my doubts when I read it, but it turns out to be true that "dogor" does mean "friend" in Yakut.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 28 November 2019 at 22:43
The dictionary shown is a recent edition of N.V. Sljunin's manuscript "Russian-Yakut-Ewenki Trilingual Dictionary" compiled at the beginning of the last century brill.com/view/title/387…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 2 December 2019 at 10:55
Jin dynasty (1115–1234) wall-mounted pottery lamps excavated from a site south of Kaiyuan Temple in Zhengding Hebei (河北正定开元寺南广场遗址). Some inscribed with the slogan "Be careful of fire; store up water!" 慎火停水 kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20191…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 2 December 2019 at 11:13
Some more examples with 慎火停水 slogan kknews.cc/history/lm8pnv…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 2 December 2019 at 11:30
Also from a Jin dynasty rubbish pit at the site, a couple of water storage jars inscribed 天威軍官瓶 "Official jars of the Tianwei Army" (Tianwei Army was a Song dynasty army command based at Jingxing 井陘 60 km southwest of Zhengding, which was defeated by the Jin army in 1126).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 8 December 2019 at 14:35
Some Yue ware vessels from a large cluster of tombs dating to the Six Dynasties period (3rd–6th centuries) under excavation at the Qixingdui 七星堆 site by the Gan River at Nanchang in Jiangxi. xinhuanet.com/2019-12/08/c_1…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 8 December 2019 at 14:37
Some more Yue ware from the site.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 8 December 2019 at 14:39
A bronze basin from one of the tombs.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 8 December 2019 at 14:40
And a pottery tile end with a monstrous face.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 9 December 2019 at 13:11
30 carvings of human faces (10-20 cm in size) discovered on rocks on the northern bank of the Yellow River near Zhongwei in Ningxia. nxbbs.cc/15375-1.html
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 9 December 2019 at 13:13
Based on their similarity with the palaeolithic rock carvings at the nearby Damaidi site (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damaidi), these carvings are also thought to date back to the stone age.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 10 December 2019 at 14:55
Pot containing grain and chicken eggs from a 500 year old Ming dynasty tomb in Sichuan. huaxia.com/zhwh/kgfx/2019…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 10 December 2019 at 14:56
Of course, that is nothing compared to these 2,500 year old chicken eggs from a tomb in Jiangsu discovered earlier this year. twitter.com/BabelStone/sta…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 11 December 2019 at 01:00
Wooden stick (74.2 cm) with 94 Chinese characters written in ink on six sides, thought to date to the 6th-century during the Silla period, discovered near Gyeongsan in South Korea. newspim.com/news/view/2019…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 11 December 2019 at 01:02
The text relating to land taxation includes the special Korean character 畓 "rice field", previously first attested on a monument erected in 561 at Changnyeong commemorating a border inspection by King Jinheung (r. 540–576).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 11 December 2019 at 19:31
An account of my visit to the Hongfo Pagoda in August 2016 babelstone.co.uk/BabelDiary/201… twitter.com/incunabula/sta…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 12 December 2019 at 00:23
This woodblock for a Tangut Buddhist text which was found inside the Hongfo Pagoda 宏佛塔 north of Yinchuan Ningxia in 1990 is believed to be the oldest surviving text printing block in China (I took the photograph at the Ningxia Museum in 2016 commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hong…).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 12 December 2019 at 00:30
It is the largest of about two thousand printing block fragments (1,000 with text) that were found during restoration of the pagoda in 1990. The pagoda dates back to the Western Xia (1038–1277), and I visited it in August 2016 babelstone.co.uk/BabelDiary/201…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 12 December 2019 at 00:35
This particular printing block (here mirrored) is for vol. 5 of the Tangut translation the "Shi moheyan lun" 釋摩訶衍論 (attributed to Nāgārjuna, but only extant in Chinese). As far as I know the Tangut translation only survives in the printing block fragments from Hongfo Pagoda.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 12 December 2019 at 01:10
This evening I spent a quiet couple of hours attempting to transcribe the Tangut text on this woodblock, and approximately match it against the corresponding Chinese text of 釋摩訶衍論 (T1668).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 12 December 2019 at 13:49
Here are some more typical-sized fragments of Tangut wooden printing blocks (photo taken by me at the old Xixia Museum in Yinchuan; no provenance given but probably also from Hongfo Pagoda)
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 12 December 2019 at 19:13
After filling in some gaps and making some corrections, this is my best attempt at transcribing the Tangut text.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 12 December 2019 at 19:14
□□𗋕𗡶𗡜𘞂□
𗜓𗱕□𘎳𗴮𘋅𗁲𗪺𗖵𗄊
□𗐱𗌭𗅉𗍫𘋠𘟣𗍫𗫂□
𘋢𗥤𘆄𘟂𗉣𗉣𗹬𗳒𗡜𘞂
□□𗡶■■𘝵𗦳𘈽𗷝𗟧
𗖵𗡶𗟧𗫂𗹙𘛽𘋢𗥤𘟂𗠷𗷎
𗪺𗖵𗋕𗡶𗹢𗭍𗌮𗒘𗡜𘞂𗖵
𘙇𗆐𗡜𘞂𗅋𗍣𗢳𗞞𗨻𘅍𗉘
𗆐𘗽𗋃𘕿𗫡𘌽𗧘𘝶𗦜𗋕𗌮
□𗜓𘉐𗄈𗡜𘞂𗺓𗅋𗍣𘃞
𘓂𘙌𘟂𘈩𗫂𘒣𗆔𗦬𗥠𘗠𗍫
𘗠𗥃𗫂𗠷𗷎𘏒𘎪𘗠𗏁𗫂𗋃
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 12 December 2019 at 23:05
After 40 years I vote in a General Election for the very first time — in these dire times every vote is needed to kick out my MP Jeremy Hunt and stop the doomsday cult he belongs to. twitter.com/april_nishi/st…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 13 December 2019 at 22:27
Well, my faith in the decency and commonsense of British people was wildly misplaced! But at least in my constituency of Surrey South West we managed to slash Jeremy Hunt's majority to 8,817 from 21,590 in 2017 and 28,556 in 2015, with a 15% swing from Conservatives to Lib-Dems.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 13 December 2019 at 23:01
Two tile ends with faces found during recent excavation of a Liao dynasty palace close to the tomb for a Liao Imperial Concubine which was discovered at Duolun in Inner Mongolia in 2015. chinanews.com/cul/2019/12-13…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Friday, 13 December 2019 at 23:32
Here is a brief report in English about the 2015 discoveries kaogu.cssn.cn/ywb/special_ev…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Sunday, 15 December 2019 at 20:00
Wooden tablet with ink inscription in semi-cursive Tangut recording repairs to the Baisigou Square Pagoda (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baisigou_…) between the 13th and 23rd days of the 5th month of the 13th year of the Zhenguan era, i.e. 27 June to 7 July 1113 in the Julian calendar.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 15 December 2019 at 20:49
The inscription on two sides, which lists the names of eight Chinese plasterers, has been translated into Chinese by Prof. Nie Hongyin as:
貞觀癸巳十三年五月
十三日，西浮屠上手乃
泥，二十三日了畢。泥
匠：任原，庶人等六人。
任原 劉平
庶人 □宣 高阿尾
王牛兒 鍾求善
任打打
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 15 December 2019 at 21:16
Even with the aid of the Chinese translation, it is not terribly easy to read the Tangut text, but here is my attempt.
Front:
𗣼𘝯𘃠𗀋𗰗𘕕𗤒𗏁𗼑
𗰭𘕕𗾞𗜫𗽔𘗣𗀔𗁅𘙌
𘏕𗋋𗍫𗰗𘕕𗾞𗈪𘃪𗋋
𗍅𗕌𗤩𘛢𘓐𘆄𗤁𘓐
Back:
𗕌𗤩 𘛫𗦮
𘛢𘓐 □𗘬 𗣛𗥼𗗶
𗷮𗒫𗄋 𗤛𘋒𘛣
𗕌𗘄𗘄
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 15 December 2019 at 22:13
1) The workers are called 𗋋𗍅 ¹chor₂ ¹kyr'₄ "mud craftsmen". The Tangut-Chinese glossary Pearl in the Palm includes the related word 𗌒𗍅 ²chor₂ ¹kyr'₄ which is glossed as 埿匠 nì jiàng meaning a worker who applies mud or plaster to the outside of an architectural structure.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 15 December 2019 at 22:52
2) Nie Hongyin does not translate the 1st character of the 3rd column, but it looks like 𘏕 ¹vir₂ "to throw", apparently used as the verb for applying mud or plaster, although the word order is unexpected if it modifies the following 𗋋 ¹chor₂ "mud".
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 15 December 2019 at 23:49
3) I accidentally said there are eight names listed, but there are actually only seven. The word 𘛢𘓐 = 庶人 "commoner" is inserted between the 2nd and 3rd names, suggesting that the two preceding names are for officials, whereas the last five names belong to common workers.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Sunday, 15 December 2019 at 23:57
4) The name 高阿尾 Gāo Āwěi "Gao A-tail" should perhaps be translated as "Gao A-fox" as the final character 𗗶 is disunified into two separate characters 𗗶 ny₁ "fox" and 𘴁 ¹ta₁ "tail" in Unicode 13.0 (unicode.org/L2/L2019/19207…), and the form here matches the form of "fox".
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 16 December 2019 at 00:00
5) The final name, which Nie Hongyin translates as 任打打 Rèn Dǎdǎ, seems to be written as 𗕌𗘄𗘄 ¹zhin₃ ¹ta₁ ¹ta₁ in Tangut, meaning "Maggot Maggot Ren" (where Ren is a Chinese family name).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 16 December 2019 at 00:18
6) Last but not least, the pagoda is referred to as the "Western Pagoda" (𗜫𗽔𘗣 = 西浮屠), which implies that there was once also an Eastern Pagoda, perhaps one pagoda on either side of the valley, matching the Twin Pagodas still standing at the mouth of the valley.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 17 December 2019 at 23:59
Han dynasty road densely marked with cart ruts uncovered at a site in Xi'an thought to be close to the location of the Changmen Palace 長門宮 where the deposed Empress Chen was banished to in 130 BCE. kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20191…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 18 December 2019 at 00:03
Some footprints (left) and hoofmarks have also been found among the cart ruts (right).
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 18 December 2019 at 09:43
Tomb of Xue Shao 薛紹 (661–689), husband of the Taiping Princess 太平公主 (665–713), son-in-law of Empress Wu Zetian, and nephew of Emperor Gaozong, discovered in Shaanxi at a site between Xianyang and Xi'an. kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20191…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 18 December 2019 at 09:47
The tomb, which comprises two chambers and four vertical shafts, has been extensively and deliberately damaged, but apparently not by tomb robbers. Some 120 artefacts have been recovered, including a stone epitaph for Xue Shao.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 18 December 2019 at 09:57
The epitaph indicates that Xue Shao was interred in this tomb in the 1st month of the 2nd year of the Shenlong 神龍 era (706), at a location identified as Xianyang County in Yongzhou Prefecture 雍州咸陽縣. The epitaph also implies that the tombs of his parents are nearby.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Wednesday, 18 December 2019 at 10:01
Pottery figurines found in a niche.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 18 December 2019 at 10:03
Stone sculpture of a head found in one of the vertical shafts.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Wednesday, 18 December 2019 at 10:35
Sixty photographs of the Gansu Corridor (河西走廊) taken by Walter C. Lowdermilk in 1943, mapped by @MicahMuscolino ucsdonline.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapTour/i…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 19 December 2019 at 14:43
Five Song dynasty (c. 12th century) brick tombs discovered during roadworks at Gaojiahe 高家河 in Ningqiang County Shaanxi were excavated between February and August 2019. kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20191…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 19 December 2019 at 14:48
The five tombs (4 single chamber and one double chamber) evidently belong to a single family, and are arranged in order going up a hillside. The earlier tombs are more lavishly decorated and have more grave goods than the later tombs.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Thursday, 19 December 2019 at 14:53
The tombs use brick to imitate a wooden structure, as was common for the time, and the four walls of the tomb depict scenes such as husband wife sitting together, doors and windows, furniture and tea equipment, warriors, animals and plants.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 19 December 2019 at 14:54
The family seem to have had a particular affection for cats!
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 19 December 2019 at 15:21
Three early Tang dynasty white pottery tomb figurines of foreigners (an official, a warrior, and a merchant) discovered during construction work at Nanhe County Hebei. kaogu.cssn.cn/zwb/xccz/20191…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Thursday, 19 December 2019 at 15:23
A rescue dig of the presumed Tang dynasty tomb the figurines come from is now under way at the huge construction site.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 30 December 2019 at 21:01
Gold statuette of a camel 🐫 discovered in a tomb associated with the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor dwnews.com/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 30 December 2019 at 21:04
Some of the other objects found in the tomb, indicating the high status of the occupant, and probable close relationship with the Qin royal family.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
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Monday, 30 December 2019 at 21:24
More pictures of the large number of grave goods found in the tomb, including a set of bronze bells.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 30 December 2019 at 21:47
Today I received a copy of a massive book by Lei Runze et al. on the Western Xia (Tangut) Buddhist pagodas and stupas, which I have being trying to get hold of for several years. It has 227 colour plates and 29 plans and sections of pagodas.
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Monday, 30 December 2019 at 21:55
The cover shows the 108 heavily-restored stupas at Qingtongxia which I visited in 2016. Like most cultural sites in China, the area surrounding the stupas has now been paved over with beautiful concrete slabs and tasteful water features. babelstone.co.uk/BabelDiary/201…
Andrew West 魏安 @BabelStone
Tuesday, 31 December 2019 at 16:27
Wow, I didn't know about this 1967 version of publishing online by Tangutologist Eric Grinstead. twitter.com/cosmicore/stat…
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