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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 30/07/2025

It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that we, the family of Andrew West, confirm his peaceful passing on 10th July 2025. The BabelStone legacy will be continued by colleagues and friends. corp.unicode.org/pipermail/un...

corp.unicode.org

Andrew C. West 魏安 1960–2025

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 27/05/2025

My reconstruction and identification of a partially-preserved Tangut character in a unique fragment of the Homophones text held at the British Library www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n53...

Fragment of folio 56A of the B version of the Tangut Homophones text held at the British Library, showing twelve partial entries with eight complete or partial head characters. The partial head character on the bottom right is identified and proposed for encoding in the linked document.

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 25/05/2025

First step towards the encoding of Jurchen *small script* characters, by @cosmicore.bsky.social and myself www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n53...

Gold paizi found in Chengde, Hebei in 1972, with a vertical inscription in Jurchen small script characters (two clusters of three characters each) beneath a huaya 花押 symbol. Photograph courtesy of Vladimir Belyaev.

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 12/03/2025

Monumental three-volume Handbook of Epigraphic Cultures to be published by De Gruyter, early next year hopefully. Open Access eBook! Includes chapters on Khitan and Tangut epigraphy.

Flyer publicizing two forthcoming Handbooks on Material Text Culture from De Gruyter: Handbook of Medieval Book Ornament [ISBN 978-3-11-141107-1] and Handbook of Epigraphic Cultures (3 volumes) [ISBN 978-3-11-124094-7]

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 11/03/2025

When I was in Lhasa in Spring 1985 I witnessed a sky burial. Below are a selection of photographs I took (with permission, and only after the vultures had been summoned) using poor quality Chinese film after finishing my supply of Fujifilm.

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 07/03/2025

One day in Lhasa I bumped into this guy who was a passenger on one of the other trucks from Chengdu to Lhasa, and I spent half a day taking photos of him posing all around town. The photos are not great as they are taken on cheap Chinese film, but there is a certain charm to them.

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Reposted by Andrew West 魏安

Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 28/02/2025

Trashi delek! Happy Losar! Happy Tibetan lunar new year! Welcome to the Wood Snake 🪵🐍 year! The illustration shows the auspicious greeting བཀྲ་ཤིས་འབར་འགྱུར་གཅིག༎ in hor yig ཧོར་ཡིག 'Mongolian' script.

Illustration from A. M. Pozdneyev's Лекціи по исторіи монгольской литературы (St. Petersburg, 1897) page 192. The illustration shows four columns of Tibetan text in hor yig script (a Tibetan decorative style of Phags-pa script), written top-to-bottom and left-to-right.

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 28/02/2025

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 07/02/2025

For the Spring Holiday of 1985, during our year studying at the Beijing Language Institute (2nd year of SOAS Chinese degree course), my roommate (APB) and me decided to go on a big adventure overland from Chengdu to Lhasa 1/🧵

Set of three commemorative stamps (Set 特14) issued by the China People's Postal Service (中國人民邮政) in March 1956 to celebrate the completion of two highways from Sichuan and Qinghai to Lhasa (康臧青臧公路)

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 28/01/2025

For #EpigraphyTuesday some fragments of Chinese-inscribed marble slips unearthed from the ruins of Karabalgasun, situated on the west side of the Orkhon River in central Mongolia, which was capital of the Uighur Khaganate between 744 and 840. The first fragment is engraved 没蜜施 ... 1/7

Fragment of a marble slip engraved with the three Chinese characters 没蜜施

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 26/01/2025

Precious Seals of the Qing Dynasty 清代寶璽 — a set of one hundred postcards published by the Palace Museum in 1932 which show the Chinese and Manchu inscriptions on the faces of one hundred Qing dynasty imperial seals #SealSunday

babelstone.co.uk

Precious Seals of the Qing Dynasty

Palace Museum Postcards Set Number 5. This is a set of one hundred postcards published by the Palace Museum in 1932 which show the Chinese and Manchu inscriptions on the faces of one hundred Qing dyna...

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 22/01/2025

For #WoodblockWednesday, the only extant woodblock printed edition of the Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary (part of the Huáyí Yìyǔ 華夷譯語 series produced by the Bureau of Translators 四夷館 during the Ming dynasty), held at Tiānyīgé 天一閣 library in Ningbo. 71 out of 108 folios preserved (missing fasc. 1 of 3).

Folio 37 (first folio of the second of three fascicles) of the only extant copy of a woodblock printed edition of the Ming dynasty Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary, held at the Tianyige Library in Ningbo Yìyǔ (pressmark 善0376).

The book is a classified vocabulary list, with Chinese words written in large text, the corresponding Jurchen term written in Jurchen script on the right, and the approximate reading of the Jurchen term using Han characters on the left. There are four vocabulary items per half-folio. This version of the text comprises 821 entries, of which 542 are preserved in this copy.

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 22/01/2025

I'm still waiting for him to learn about Unicode, then mandate US ASCII on all government websites

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 21/01/2025

For #EpigraphyTuesday the story of the famous bilingual Khitan-Chinese "Record of the Journey of the Younger Brother of the Emperor of the Great Jin" 大金皇弟都統經略郎君行記 which is engraved on the originally blank face of the Wordless Stele 無字碑 for Empress Wu Zetian at the Qianling Mausoleum in Shaanxi. 1/7

Photograph looking up at the densely-inscribed surface of the huge "Wordless Stele" 無字碑 for Empress Wu Zetian 武則天 (r. 690–705) at the Tang dynasty Qianling Mausoleum 乾陵 in Shaanxi.

Photograph CC BY SA by 猫猫的日记本 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Qianling_Mausoleum_42_2013-08.JPG).

For unknown reasons the stele for Empress Wu Zetian was originally blank, but from the Song dynasty onwards various inscriptions were engraved on its surface.

The bilingual Khitan-Chinese "Record of the Journey of the Younger Brother of the Emperor of the Great Jin" 大金皇弟都統經略郎君行記 is engraved in a prominent position near the top of the middle of the stele, the text surrounded by an elaborate decorative border.

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 10/01/2025

Tangut Proverb #48 (《𗆧𗰖𗬻𘜼𘋥𘝿》 folio 5A): Riding a horse along a long road shows off its strength and power; Accompanying a person in old age, it is clear how strong [the friendship is]. 𗵘𘙲𘆝𘓢𘟏𗪺𗏴 𘓐𗤒𗳳𗀚𘝶𗊵𗩯

Folio 5A of the 1187 woodblock printed edition of the Tangut Proverbs, with Proverb #48 highlighted in red

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 10/01/2025

A lot of Cantonese-usage characters are coming to Unicode 17.0 later this year, but perhaps my favourite is ⿴囗芒 [UK-20506] pronounced mon1 which means a 'computer monitor'

Extract from an article in the Hong Kong magazine “Resonate” 《迴響》 no. 1 (July 2020) p. 6

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 31/12/2024

Christmas 1984 in Beijing passed by quietly and almost unnoticed, but the new year's holiday a week later allowed us a brief respite from classes at the Beijing Language Institute 北京语言学院, and so on New Year's Eve a few of us boarded a night train from Beijing Station to ...

Beijing railway station at 10:14 pm on New Year's Eve 1984

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 24/12/2024

The most recent discovery of a monumental Tangut inscription occurred in September 2013 when this small funerary stele (60 cm high) was unearthed during excavations of a tomb situated outside the original east city wall of Daming 大名 in Hebei.

Small stone stele with two columns of Tangut text engraved on one side

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 09/12/2024

For #ManuscriptMonday here is a fragment of a Tangut inventory dating from the Western Xia (1038–1227) which was unearthed in 2005 at the Shanzuigou 山嘴沟 site in the Helan mountains of Ningxia 1/4

Fragment of a manuscript with four columns of text written mostly in Tangut, but with the the dates written in Chinese characters

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 09/12/2024

BabelStone Flags font updated for Syria www.babelstone.co.uk/Fonts/Flags....

Extract from the BabelStone Flags download page showing the flag of Syria

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 25/11/2024

The other Chinese pronoun coming to Unicode v. 17.0 next year, in addition to ⿰㐅也 (3p gender-neutral, ⿰男也 (3p explicitly male), ⿱妳心 ( f. equivalent of 您), ⿱我心 (Taiwanese 1p plural), is ⿱她心 (f. equivalent to 怹)

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 24/11/2024

At the Dalston Rio for Tibet Film Festival screening of Snow Leopard 雪豹 གསའ།

Doorway to the Rio Cinema in Dalston, with a poster for the Tibetan Film Festival

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 13/11/2024

Unicode 17.0, planned for release in early September 2025, will include a new block for CJK Unified Ideographs Extension J with 4,298 characters (U+323B0 through U+33479), including 906 characters submitted by the UK (shown below)

906 Chinese characters displayed using the BabelStone Han version 17 font (these are the 906 successful characters from the UK submission of 1,000 characters for IRG Working Set 2021)

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 12/11/2024

Northern Song 太平通寶 cash coin with six tentatively-identified Khitan large script characters scratched onto the reverse side, unfortunately their meaning is not obvious www.zeno.ru/showphoto.ph...

Round bronze coin of the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127) with a square hole in the middle. One side is cast with the legend Taiping Tongbao 太平通寶, and the other side is plain, but with six difficult-to-read characters scratched into the surface. These characters are tentatively identified as belonging to the only partially-deciphered Khitan large script.

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 09/11/2024

Combined Chinese character for 福禄寿 "good fortune, prosperity, long life" inscribed on a ceramic pot lid excavated from a Qing dynasty mosque at Jingdezhen 景德镇 in Jiangxi

A round white-glazed ceramic pot lid with the central part inset, in the centre of which a cursive Chinese character that combines the three auspicious characters fú 福 'good fortune', lù 禄 'prosperity', and shòu 寿 'long life' is written in black.

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 22/10/2024

Me in August 2016 with the enormous Tangut inscription standing at the entrance to the Western Xia tombs near Yinchuan ...

Andrew West wearing sandals, jeans, and a red shirt, carrying a tote bag with Tangut writing on it, standing next to a huge replica of a Tangut inscription on an irregular-shaped piece of stone

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 21/10/2024

Today I started to scan the negatives of my photos from my time as a student in China from 1984 to 1985 ... and yes I am aware that some of them have been nibbled by a wayward mouse ...

Pile of 135mm film negatives in plastic wallets, some with visible mouse damage, next to a newly-acquired film scanner

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 22/09/2024

Exciting discovery of an Anglo-Saxon name-stone from this season's dig at Lindisfarne. The name ᚳᚢᚦᚹᚢᛚᚠ = Cuthwulf in runes at the top, and the what seems to be part of the same name (CVD...) in Latin script below.

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 06/09/2024

40 years ago today I walked across the Lo Wu Bridge 羅湖橋 into China for the very first time — into a world that a year's intensive study of Mandarin and Classical Chinese at SOAS University of London had woefully ill-prepared me for.

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 06/09/2024

Prof. Rachel Harris giving the citation for an honorary doctorate awarded by SOAS University of London to unjustly imprisoned Uyghur ethnographer Rahile Dawut two days ago

Graduation ceremony for SOAS University of London at Friends House, with robed faculty on the stage, and robed graduands on stepped seating. Prof. Rachel Harris is making the honorary citation for Rahile Dawut at the lectern on the stage.

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 09/08/2024

The Phags-pa script was particularly well-suited for writing Sanskrit. This is the Phags-pa transcription of the Dharani of the Tathagata Heart (Tathāgata-hṛdaya-dhāraṇī)

Photograph by Andrew West of the bottom left section of the multiscript Buddhist inscriptions on the west inner wall of the Cloud Platform at Juyong Pass near Beijing, showing the transcription of the Sanskrit Dharani of the Tathagata Heart in nineteen columns of Phags-pa text

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 07/08/2024

The Tibetan alphabet written in dzi calligraphy (gzi yig གཟི་ཡིག), from Lokesh Chandra's "Indian Scripts in Tibet" (New Delhi, 1982) p. 60

The Tibetan alphabet written in a special calligraphic style that mimics the form of dzi beads, from Lokesh Chandra's "Indian Scripts in Tibet" (New Delhi, 1982) p. 60

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 02/08/2024

This is one of four early 14th-century Christian gravestones from Quanzhou (the great port city of the Mongolian empire, known to Marco Polo as Zayton) which have a main inscription engraved in Chinese language using the Phags-pa script.

Gravestone with a cross at the top, a main inscription in the middle consisting of two columns of Chinese text in Phags-pa script meaning "Tomb memorial of Yang Wengshe", and a date corresponding to 1314 in small Chinese characters on either side of the main inscription.

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 02/08/2024

BabelStone Han v. 16.0.1 released, with 1,500 additional CJK characters, and finally completing coverage of Ext. A. The font covers 64,064 Unicode characters, including 59,240 CJK unified ideographs, and is the last major update before the font will implode under the pressure of Ext. J next year.

babelstone.co.uk

BabelStone Fonts : BabelStone Han

BabelStone Han is a free Unicode CJK font with over 59,000 Han characters (hanzi, kanji, hanja)

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 28/07/2024

The four characters shown in the first image (⿱雨⿰口合, ⿱雨⿰口明, ⿱雨⿰口日, ⿱雨⿰口天) are not available in Unicode, but the first three were proposed for encoding by the UK, and have been accepted into CJK Ext. J expected in Unicode 17.0 next year.

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 26/07/2024

Phags-pa script was mainly used for Mongolian and Chinese, but this 14th-century Phags-pa inscription on the north corridor wall to Cave 217 at the Mogao Caves reads ꡏꡦꡋ ꡎꡟ ꡗꡦꡋ ꡢ ꡗꡦ mėn bu yėn qa yė meaning "I, Buyan-Qaya" in the Uyghur language (Buyan-Qaya is a Buddhist name meaning Rock of Merit).

Paul Pelliot, "Les grottes de Touen-Houang" vol.6 (1924) Plate CCCLXVI, showing a several columns of Old Uyghur text and a single column of large Phags-pa text inscribed in the blank space on the top right of a Tang dynasty mural depicting two officials.

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 24/07/2024

It's exactly a year since I quit twitter (and later deleted my account), and I don't miss it in the slightest. I'm content occasionally whispering into the void here, and only wish that all my mutuals who still double post here and there would kick the habit as well!

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 19/07/2024

A small fragment of a Mongolian text printed using the Phags-pa script, recovered from the Northern Area of the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang between 1988 and 1995. The middle column reads ꡖꡞꡘ ꡂꡦ ꡋꡞ ꞏir gė ni = Mongolian ᠢᠷᠭᠡᠨ ᠢ irgen-i 'people' (acc.)

Small irregular-sized fragment of paper with three columns of printed Phags-pa text, but only the middle column is complete and legible, reading ꞏir gė ni meaning 'people' (acc.) in Mongolian

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 19/07/2024

A fragment of the Heart Sutra hand-written in Mongolian on the back of a page from a woodblock printed edition of a Tangut Buddhist text, recovered from the Northern Area of the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang between 1988 and 1995

Five columns of Mongolian text hand-written on the back of a page of a Tangut woodblock printed text. Six columns of Tangut characters in reverse are visible through the paper, and the Mongolian text is deliberately written in the gaps between the columns of Tangut text.

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 17/07/2024

If, like me, you can't see Tangut text in Bluesky posts, copy the post and paste into my Tangut Text Viewer to visualizer the Tangut text www.babelstone.co.uk/Tangut/Viewe...

Screen shot of a mobile phone screen showing a Bluesky post with Tangut text visualized in the BabelStone Tangut Text Viewer

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 05/07/2024

This week I identified an apparently overlooked new Tangut character in this fragment of an otherwise lost page (folio 56a) of a printed edition of the Tangut Homophones 𗙏𘙰 held at the British Library (英藏黑水城文獻 v. 5 p. 379, not yet digitized on IDP unfortunately)

Fragment of the bottom part of a page from a woodblock printed edition of the Tangut Homophones, showing eight whole or partial entries, each entry comprising a large Tangut character with one or two small-sized gloss characters underneath

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 01/07/2024

A first look at provisional and potential additions to the Unicode Standard version 17.0 in September 2025 (repertoire and code points are not yet stable), including 4,300 characters for CJK Ext. J, 914 Jurchen characters, 28 additional Tangut characters, and 115 additional Tangut components.

unicode.org

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Andrew West 魏安 @babelstone.co.uk · 29/06/2024

Back in September 2019, when the world was a very different place, my friend Sergey Dmitriev started to organize a festschrift in honour of the 90th birthday of M. V. Sofronov (b. 11th October 1929), and last week it was finally published as Тангутская и китайская филология. К юбилею М. В. Софронова

Front cover of a book with green background and the Russian title Тангутская и китайская филология (К юбилею М. В. Софронова), with the Chinese title 番漢雜文 on the right, and the Tangut title 𗼇𘂜𘝞𘉅 on the left.

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