Pearl in the Palm

The Pearl in the Palm (Ch. 番漢合時掌中珠 Fān-Hàn Héshí Zhǎngzhōngzhū) is a bilingual glossary between the Chinese language and Tangut which transcribes the pronunciation of Chinese words into Tangut characters, and the pronunciation of Tangut characters into Chinese characters. It is a very important source for Tangut historical phonology and was the primary source before the publication of monolingual Tangut dictionaries.

A page from the Pearl in the Palm

Discovery

In 1909, the Russian explorer Pyotr Kozlov unearthed a number of texts and artefacts in Ejin Banner, Inner Mongolia, including the Pearl in the Palm and transported them back to St. Petersburg, Russia. There, Aleksei Ivanovich Ivanov, professor at Saint Petersburg State University, who was aware of its value, added them to his collection.

In 1912, Chinese scholars Luo Zhenyu and Feng Ge visited Ivanov upon learning about the work in his possession, and was given access to nine pages, which they photocopied for study. In 1922 Luo Zhenyu met Ivanov again, in Tianjin. It was only then he would only have access to the full text, then ordered his son to make a full copy.

The U.S. scholar Luc Kwanten visit to the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, and was able to photograph the whole of "The Pearl in the Palm". In 1982, the book finally saw the light of day when the photographed version was published in the United States.

Content and style

The original manuscript consists of 37 xylograph folios in concertina format. The preface is identical content written in both Chinese and Tangut. From tha sentence: "How can you mix with foreigners without learning foreign words, How can you be counted amongst the Han without learning Han words,"</ref> it is clear that the book aimed to facilitate the Tanguts and the Chinese to learn each other's languages.

The book contains words 414 CPC, according to three powers are divided into nine categories: celestial bodies, celestial images, sky changes, terrestrial bodies, terrestrial images, terrestrial use, human body, human phase, human matters. One category is the most extensive content: personnel issues accounts for half of all the content.

Each entry contains four elements: from right to left, these are 1)Tangut phonetics in Chinese, 2)Tangut script, 3)Chinese script, and 4)Chinese phonetics in Tangut. The book is important in understanding and interpretation of the now dead Tangut language.