Phags-pa Script

The Phags-pa script is an alphabet designed by the Tibetan monk and State Preceptor Phags-pa (b. 1235–d. 1280) for Kublai Khan (r. 1264–1294), the founder of the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) in China, as a unified script for the written languages within the Yuan. This script was only used for approximately one hundred years during the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. It subsequently fell out of use with the advent of the Ming dynasty. The script was used to write and transcribe varieties of Chinese, as well as the Tibetan, Mongolian, Uyghur, and Sanskrit languages during the Yuan era. For historical linguists, its use provides clues about changes in these languages. The period of the use of the script coincided with the spread of Buddhism across the Yuan Empire, thus the Mongolian Phags-pa script has a very large number of Old Uyghur elements, primarily Buddhist terms. This entry gives a short overview of Mongolian variant of the Phags-pa script and considers the influence of Old Uyghur on the Phags-pa documents.