| Sawndip Old Zhuang script | |
|---|---|
 Characters for the Zhuang wordssaw 'character' andndip 'uncooked' | |
| Script type | |
Time period | 7th century – present |
| Languages | Zhuang,Bouyei |
| Related scripts | |
Parent systems | Oracle bone script
|
| Chinese characters |
|---|
 |
Collation and standards
|
Homographs and readings |
Sawndip (Sawndip:𭨡𮄫;[a]Zhuang pronunciation:[θaɯ˨˦ɗip˥]) areChinese characters used to write theZhuang languages in the Chinese provinces ofGuangxi andYunnan.Sawndip is aZhuang word that means "immature characters". The Zhuang word forChinese characters used in theChinese languages issawgun (𭨡倱 'Han characters');gun is the Zhuang term for theHan Chinese. Even now, in traditional and less formal domains, Sawndip is more often used than alphabetical scripts.
Sawndip is also calledold Zhuang script, usually used to distinguish it from theLatin-basedStandard Zhuang. InStandard Chinese, the old Zhuang script is calledGu Zhuangzi (古壮字; 'old Zhuang characters') orFangkuai Zhuangzi (方块壮字; 'square shaped Zhuang characters').
Sawndip and its synonyms can be used with a spectrum of narrow to broad meanings. The narrowest meaning confines its use just to characters created by Zhuang to write Zhuang and excludes existing Chinese characters. At its broadest, it includes all the "square" characters used to write Zhuang regardless of whether they are of Chinese or Zhuang origin. However, it is not always possible to determine the origin of a character. In this article the inclusive broader meaning is usually used.
In Chinese, while usuallyold Zhuang script (古壮字) andsquare Zhuang script (方块壮字) are synonymous, when used contrastively, the former is restricted to those characters used before the founding of the Republic of China in 1911.
Sawndip is made up of a combination of Chinese characters, Chinese-like characters, and other symbols. Like Chinese it can be written horizontally from left to right, or vertically from top to bottom. The script has never been standardized; some morphosyllables have more than a dozen associatedvariant glyphs.[2] According to Zhang Yuansheng (张元生), characters not also used in Chinese usually make up about 20% of Sawndip texts, although some texts may be composed almost entirely of characters also used in Chinese.[3]
Different scholars categorize Sawndip in slightly different ways. Displayed below is the estimated frequency of different types of characters by Holm:[4]
| Mode of reading | Number | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Phonetic | 2303 | 71.3% |
| Semantic | 78 | 2.4% |
| Phono-semantic | 40 | 1.2% |
| Chinese loan | 708 | 21.9% |
| Zhuang | 97 | 3.0% |
| Dubious | 5 | 0.2% |
| Total | 3231 | 100% |
According to Bauer, Sawndip characters can be categorized using a more complex system than thesix traditional classification principles:[5]
The script has been used for centuries, mainly by Zhuang singers andshamans, to record poems, scriptures, folktales, myths, songs, play scripts, medical prescriptions, family genealogies and contracts, but exactly when it came into being is not known. It is usually reckoned that Sawndip started to be used over one thousand years ago in theTang dynasty or earlier.[7][8][9] However a study comparing Sawndip with the similar but different neighbouringchữ Nôm script of Vietnam suggested that the script started at latest in the 12th century at about the same time as chữ Nôm.[10]
Even before the Tang dynasty, Zhuang or closely related languages were written down using characters that were either Chinese or made up of Chinese components. Whether these are viewed as Sawndip, or as some sort of precursor to Sawndip, depends not only the evidence itself, but also differing views of what counts as Sawndip and from what era the term Zhuang can be applied.
Some scholars say Sawndip started in theHan dynasty and note the occurrence on words of Zhuang origin in ancient Chinese dictionaries such as犩 which is Sawndip for Zhuangvaiz ('water buffalo') and in section 19 of theErya is given as having similar pronunciation and means牛 ('cattle').[8][11]
There are some similarities in the poetical style of "The Song of the Yue boatman" (Chinese:越人歌;pinyin:Yuèrén Gē) from 528 BC and the Zhuang "Fwen" style. Wei Qingwen (韦庆稳) has interpreted the song by reading the characters asZhuang and some consider the written version and other such songs to be a forerunner though not an example of Sawndip,[12] it has also been interpreted as beingThai,Dong andCham.
The fact that Zhuang readings of borrowed Chinese characters often matchEarly Middle Chinese suggests a Sui–Tang date, however it has been noted these could also be explained as later borrowings from conservativePinghua varieties.[13][14] Chinese characters were already in use in the Zhuang area, as illustrated by two Tang dynastysteles entitled 'Eulogy of the six-sided courtyard' (六合坚固大宅颂;Liù hé jiāngùdàzhái sòng) in 682 and 'Monument of Zhi Cheng city' (智城碑;Zhì chéng bēi) in 697.[15] Although these are written in Chinese, the latter contains a number of non-standard characters.[16][17] One of these is the Sawndip character consisting of𥹫 'RICE' over⽥ 'FIELD' fornaz 'paddy field'.[18]
SeveralSong dynastyHan Chinese authors give examples of 'vernacular characters' (土俗字;Tǔsúzì) used in Guangxi such as Zhou Qufei inLingwai Daida andFan Chengda in theGuihai yuheng zhi (桂海虞衡志) saying that such characters were common in the area and used in legal documents such asindictments,complaints,receipts andcontracts.[9][17]
Table of characters noted in the Song dynastyGuihai yuheng zhi and also in 1986 Sawndip dictionary:
| Sawndip | 𨱥 | 䦟 | 𡘫 | 仦 | 𡚻 |
| Zhuang | daemq,[19] gaenq[20] | onj,[21] vaenj[22] | onj,[21] vaenj[22] | neux[23] | dah[24] |
| English | short | steady | steady | weak | used addressing a lady |
Whilst no manuscripts from theMing dynasty have been found, dozens of classic Sawndip works that survive to this day were first written during this dynasty or earlier. Some consider this to be the most abundant period of Sawndip literature.[25] Exact dating is difficult in part because some songs were composed and transmitted orally before being written down, such asFwen Ciengzyeingz ('Song to tell others'), which Liang Tingwang (梁庭望) has stated whilst containing some content comes from centuries before that was written down during the Ming dynasty. Similarly "Songs of March", "Songs of the Daytime", "Songs of the Road", and "Songs of House Building" where first created between the Tang and Song dynasties or earlier and certainly written down at latest during the Ming dynasty.[26]
Some songs were both created and written down during the Ming dynasty.Fwen Caeg "Songs of War" (贼歌;Zéi gē) fromPingguo which is considered to be such despite some lines which are later additions.[27][28]Fwen nganx欢𭪤 ('The Dragon Eye Fruit Song'), a love story, is also from the Ming era.[29]
A number of songs written in Sawndip are stories which are originally of Han origin but for hundreds of years have been part of the Zhuang tradition, such as𠯘唐皇Fwen Dangzvuengz ('Song about Tang emperors') aboutLi Dan and𠯘英台Fwen Yinghdaiz ('Song about Yingtai') and𠯘文隆Fwen Vwnzlungz ('Song about Wenlong') to name but a few are reckoned to have first been written down in Sawndip during the Ming dynasty or earlier. In the case ofFwen Vwnzlungz, the original Han story itself has been lost.[30]
Thousands of Sawndip manuscripts from the Qing period survive to this day. One well known old surviving text is theYuefeng (粵風) book of folksongs fromGuiping, published in the 18th century.[31] A book entitledTaiping Spring (太平春) that contains a number of songs and is kept inLingyun is dated as 1682.[32]
Another source is theHuayu yiyu (華夷譯語 'Barbarian vocabulary') compiled by theBureau of Translators in the mid-18th century on the order of theQianlong Emperor, and now held in the archives of theImperial Palace Museum. The survey of western Guangxi (Tàipíng fǔ yíyǔ tōngyì) was less thorough than other parts of the empire, consisting of just 71 to 170 items from three locations. Each entry consists of a Zhuang word written in the Zhuang script, with its pronunciation and meaning given in Chinese.[33] It demonstrates both the wide use and lack of standardization of Sawndip.
While after the introduction of an official alphabet-based script in 1957, Sawndip have seldom been used in some formal domains such as newspapers, laws and official documents, they continue to be used in less formal domains such as writing songs, and personal notes and messages.
After theChinese Communist Revolution in 1949, communist revolutionary propaganda was written using sawndip. In 1957 an officialromanized Zhuang script was introduced. However, there are major phonetic and lexical differences between Zhuang dialects, and the Latin-based system is based on theWuming dialect. Because of this and other reasons, there still are many Zhuang speakers that prefer to write Zhuang using sawndip.[34][35] Even though it is not the official script at grassroots level various departments have continued to use Sawndip on occasions to get their message across. Coming into the 21st century, Sawndip understanding and usage of Sawndip remains significant: of those surveyed in two dialect areas, just over one third said that they understood Sawndip, and about one in ten that they use Sawndip in most domains.[36] These rates are approximately twice those for the romanized script: with only one-sixth saying they understood it, and only one in twenty saying they used it in most domains.[37]
After five years in preparation, theSawndip Sawdenj (古壮字字典;Gǔ Zhuàngzì zìdiǎn; 'Dictionary of Ancient Zhuang Characters') was published in 1989 with 4,900 entries and over 10,000 characters, and is the first and only dictionary of Zhuang characters published to date.[1][38] In 2008 it was announced that work was to begin on a new dictionary calledThe Large Chinese Dictionary of Ancient Zhuang Characters (中华古壮字大字典).[39] In 2012 an enlarged facsimile of the 1989 dictionary was published with a different cover.[citation needed]
Unicode versions 1 to 8 included some Sawndip characters that are frequently used in the Chinese names for places in Guangxi, such as岜bya (Chinese:bā) meaning 'mountain' or崬ndoeng (Chinese:dōng) meaning 'forest', and are therefore included in Chinese dictionaries, and hence also in Chinese character sets and also some that are from other non-Zhuang character sets. Over one thousand Sawndip characters were included in theCJK Unified Ideographs Extension F block that was added toUnicode 10.0 in June 2017, another set of over one thousand in theCJK Unified Ideographs Extension G block added toUnicode 13.0 in 2020, over 400 in theCJK Unified Ideographs Extension H block added toUnicode 15.0 in 2022 and others are under consideration for inclusion in a future version of the Unicode Standard.
For over one thousand years theZhuang have used Sawndip to write a wide variety of literature, including folk songs, operas, poems, scriptures, letters, contract, and court documents.[40] Sawndip literature is often though not always in verse. Only a small percentage of Sawndip literature has been published. Traditional songs, or stories, are often adapted over time, and new works continue to be written to this day.
With regional differences, as with other aspects of Sawndip scholars express a number of differing ideas.
One of the first systematic studies of Sawndip that covered more than one location was Zhang Yuansheng's 1984 examination of 1114 Sawndip, mainly fromWuming but also including some characters from 37 other locations. Zhang found substantial variation between dialect areas, and even within locales.[41]
In 2013, David Holm reported a geographical survey of the script, comparing characters used for 60 words in texts from 45 locations in Guangxi and neighbouring areas. He found that regional variations in the script often did not correlate with dialect groups, which he attributes to importation of characters from other regions, as well as subsequent sound change.[42] However, he claims to have found a clear geographical division in terms of the branch of Chinese that provided the pronunciation of borrowed characters. In Guizhou and northern Guangxi, character readings correspond toSouthwest Mandarin, which was brought to the area by the armies of theMing dynasty. In central and southwest Guangxi, they closely matchPinghua, which is derived from the speech ofHan dynasty immigrants. Holm states that while both Pinghua and Zhuang have changed over this period, this has generally been in parallel, making it difficult to date the readings.[43] Scholars studying the script used inGuizhou associate its origins with the introduction of Chinese officials in the earlyQing dynasty.[44]
From Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights in Northern Zhuang:
Traditional form:
Simplified form:
