ABSTRACT

The history of Chinese writing is conventionally presented as a continuous development from the inscriptions of the Shang dynasty to the standardized script of the Qin and Han periods and, ultimately, to modern Chinese characters. This developmental sequence is well established. Yet the broader history of writing in East and Inner Asia raises a more complicated question: to what extent should the history of the hanzi be understood within a wider Eurasian environment in which northern and Inner Asian peoples repeatedly created, adapted, and transformed logographic and phonetic writing systems?

This article does not claim that the Xiongnu or later Mongolic peoples can presently be demonstrated to have invented the earliest Chinese characters. Such a claim would exceed the surviving archaeological and palaeographic evidence. Instead, it proposes a broader historical hypothesis: the development of writing in eastern Eurasia cannot be adequately understood through a strictly Sino-centric model. The emergence of Khitan Large and Small Scripts, Tangut writing, and Jurchen writing demonstrates that peoples of the northern frontier repeatedly developed sophisticated writing systems adapted to their own languages and political institutions. These traditions existed within a complex network of interaction involving the Chinese, steppe, Manchurian, and Inner Asian worlds.

The Khitan monuments of Mongolia, including inscriptions preserved in present-day Khentii Province, are therefore important not because they constitute direct evidence for the invention of hanzi, but because they demonstrate the existence of a powerful indigenous tradition of script creation among the northern polities of Inner Asia. The article further examines the recurring political use of the name Xia, the relationship among Xianbei, Khitan, Tangut, and Jurchen political traditions, and the possibility that the history of East Asian writing should be reconsidered as a history of interaction rather than a single civilizational line.

Keywords: Hanzi, Xiongnu, Khitan, Tangut, Jurchen, Xianbei, Xia, Inner Eurasia, palaeography, Chinese writing, writing systems, Mongolian Plateau

                                                                                               INTRODUCTION: THE PROBLEM OF ORIGIN

Few writing systems have exerted an influence as extensive as the Chinese script. From the oracle-bone inscriptions of the late second millennium BCE to the standardized scripts of imperial China and the modern hanzi tradition, Chinese characters constitute one of the world’s longest continuously documented writing traditions.

Yet continuity should not automatically be confused with exclusivity.

The fact that the earliest securely decipherable corpus of Chinese writing appears in the Shang political sphere does not, by itself, answer the larger question of how writing developed across the societies surrounding the Central Plains. Nor does it establish that every intellectual, technological, and symbolic component of writing originated within a single ethnic or linguistic community.

This distinction is particularly important when examining the northern and northwestern frontiers of ancient China. The Mongolian Plateau, Manchuria, the Hexi Corridor, and the regions surrounding the Yellow River were not isolated cultural zones. They were interconnected through migration, warfare, trade, diplomacy, marriage alliances, technological transmission, and political competition.

Over the course of two millennia, peoples identified in historical sources as Xiongnu, Xianbei, Rouran, Khitan, Jurchen, Tangut, and Mongol established states across this enormous zone. Several of these polities developed or commissioned writing systems of their own.

The historical question therefore should not be reduced to:

“Who invented the Chinese characters?”

A more productive question is:

“How did the traditions of writing, political authority, linguistic representation, and symbolic inscription interact across the societies of East and Inner Asia?”

This formulation allows the evidence to be examined without imposing a modern ethnic category upon societies that existed thousands of years before the emergence of modern national identities.

                                                                                          THE SHANG INSCRIPTIONS AND THE EARLIEST HANZI

The earliest substantial corpus of Chinese writing is associated with the Shang dynasty, particularly with the oracle-bone inscriptions of the late Shang period. These inscriptions, found primarily at Anyang, record divination, royal activities, warfare, sacrifices, agriculture, weather, lineage, and other matters of political and religious importance. Their importance is enormous because they represent a mature writing system rather than a primitive collection of isolated signs.  This observation creates an important chronological problem.

If the Shang inscriptions already display a highly developed writing system, the process by which the system emerged must have begun earlier. Archaeological discoveries from Neolithic and early Bronze Age sites across northern China have produced numerous symbols and graphic marks. Some resemble later Chinese characters, while others remain difficult to interpret. Their relationship to the mature Shang writing system remains one of the central problems of early Chinese palaeography.

The evidence therefore supports a developmental process rather than an instantaneous invention. But development does not necessarily imply that every stage occurred within precisely the same political or ethnic population. The Central Plains were situated within a much larger interaction zone.

                                                                                                      WRITING, POWER, AND THE NORTHERN FRONTIER

Writing in ancient Eurasia was not merely a method of recording spoken language. It was also an instrument of political authority.

In early states, writing was closely associated with:

• royal legitimacy;
• ritual authority;
• divination;
• taxation;
• military administration;
• diplomatic communication;
• territorial claims;
• monumental commemoration.

This connection between writing and sovereignty becomes particularly visible among the states that arose north of the traditional Chinese heartland. The historical record shows repeated examples of northern powers adopting existing scripts while simultaneously creating new writing systems for their own languages. This phenomenon is especially significant in the cases of the Khitan, Tangut, and Jurchen.

                                                                                                               THE KHITAN EXPERIMENT

The Khitan Liao dynasty (907–1125) represents one of the most important examples of independent script creation in medieval Inner Asia. The Khitans employed two principal writing systems conventionally known as the Khitan Large Script and Khitan Small Script.

The existence of two systems is itself significant. The Khitans did not simply abandon their linguistic identity in favor of the Chinese written language. Instead, they developed systems capable of representing their own political and linguistic world.

The Khitan Small Script is traditionally associated with Yelü Diela and the early tenth century, and historical accounts connect its creation with knowledge of the Uyghur script. This demonstrates an important principle in the history of writing:

script creation is often a process of adaptation rather than isolated invention.

A writing system can incorporate elements from several traditions while becoming an independent system once adapted to another language and political environment. The Khitan scripts therefore provide an important historical precedent for understanding writing as a technology that moved across cultural boundaries.

                                                                                                       THE KHITAN INSCRIPTIONS OF MONGOLIA

Khitan monumental inscriptions preserved in Mongolia are especially valuable for reconstructing this history. The inscriptions found in present-day Khentii and other parts of Mongolia belong to a political world in which the Mongolian Plateau was not peripheral to civilization but one of the principal centers of imperial power in Inner Asia. The monuments are more than archaeological curiosities.

They demonstrate that political elites operating from the Mongolian Plateau possessed:

1. a developed literary culture;
2. monumental inscriptional practices;
3. specialized writing systems;
4. institutions capable of producing and preserving written texts;
5. a political ideology expressed through writing.

This evidence does not prove that the Khitans invented the Shang characters. It does, however, undermine a simplistic assumption that sophisticated writing belonged exclusively to the Central Plains. The Khitan evidence demonstrates that script creation was repeatedly undertaken by northern imperial societies.

                                                                                                                  FROM KHITAN TO JURCHEN

The Jurchen case is even more revealing. During the Jin dynasty (1115–1234), the Jurchens developed their own writing system. The creation of Jurchen writing occurred within a multilingual political environment in which Chinese and Khitan traditions were already established. Historical sources describe the development of Jurchen writing in relation to existing scripts. This provides a remarkable example of cultural transmission.

The process was not simply:

Chinese writing → non-Chinese population

but rather:

Chinese + Khitan + indigenous linguistic requirements → new Jurchen writing tradition.

This distinction matters.

Writing systems should not be treated as fixed possessions belonging permanently to one ethnicity. They function historically as technologies that can be borrowed, transformed, standardized, and reinvented. The Jurchen experience therefore belongs to the same broader history as the Khitan and Tangut experiments.

                                                                                                                       TANGUT AND THE WESTERN XIA

The Tangut state, conventionally known as Western Xia (Xi Xia), provides another extraordinary example. The Tangut script was created in the eleventh century for the Tangut language and was deliberately designed as an elaborate graphic system. Its characters frequently resemble Chinese characters visually, yet the system was not simply Chinese writing. This distinction is crucial.

Visual resemblance does not establish identical linguistic structure. The Tangut script demonstrates that a society could take the visual and structural principles of a prestigious logographic writing tradition and transform them into an independent script serving another language and state. The existence of Tangut writing therefore strengthens the argument that the northern and northwestern political worlds of East Asia possessed their own traditions of script engineering.

                                                                                                                      THE RECURRING NAME “XIA”

The political history of the name Xia deserves separate attention. The term Xia is traditionally associated with the earliest dynastic tradition of China. Later political entities also employed the name, including Western Xia. The recurrence of dynastic names across different historical periods is not sufficient evidence of direct ethnic continuity. Nevertheless, it is historically meaningful because political communities frequently legitimized themselves by associating their regimes with earlier traditions.

The question becomes particularly interesting when examining the political traditions of the Xianbei and Khitan worlds. The Tuoba Northern Wei state, for example, was founded by a Xianbei ruling house and participated in the political culture of northern China. Later northern regimes repeatedly appropriated or reinterpreted older dynastic terminology.

The recurrence of Xia should therefore be investigated as a phenomenon of political memory and legitimacy, rather than treated automatically as proof that every polity using the name belonged to the same ethnic population. This distinction makes the argument stronger, not weaker.

                                                                                     XIANBEI, KHITAN, AND THE QUESTION OF CONTINUITY

The relationship between the Xianbei, Khitan, and other peoples of the northern frontier remains one of the most complicated problems in Inner Asian history. Historical sources preserve genealogical traditions, political affiliations, tribal names, and ethnonyms, but these categories do not necessarily correspond to modern concepts of ethnicity.

The Khitan world incorporated numerous groups, and the relationship between Khitans and the Kumo Xi was complex and changed over time. Similarly, later Jurchen and Mongol political structures incorporated populations with diverse linguistic and genealogical backgrounds.

Consequently, a direct equation such as:

Xiongnu = Xianbei = Khitan = Tangut = Jurchen = Mongol

cannot be established simply through the recurrence of political institutions or writing systems. Yet rejecting simplistic ethnic equations does not require rejecting historical continuity altogether.

Continuity may operate through:

• population movement;
• political institutions;
• elite traditions;
• marriage networks;
• military organization;
• religious practices;
• technological transmission;
• geographic continuity;
• political memory.

The history of Inner Eurasia is therefore better understood as a history of successive political formations interacting within a persistent geographic system.

                                                                                                                    THE XIONGNU QUESTION

The Xiongnu occupy a particularly important position in this discussion. The Xiongnu Empire, established in the late third century BCE, was the first large-scale steppe empire known from extensive written sources north of the Han state. Its political structure encompassed populations of diverse origins.

The Xiongnu controlled a vast territory extending across the Mongolian Plateau and surrounding regions. Their political institutions influenced subsequent steppe empires, although the exact mechanisms of institutional continuity remain debated. The major problem is documentary. Unlike the Shang, the Xiongnu have not left a securely identified indigenous corpus of monumental writing comparable to the oracle bones.

This absence is important. It means that the statement “the Xiongnu invented hanzi” cannot currently be demonstrated archaeologically.

However, the absence of a surviving Xiongnu writing corpus should not automatically be interpreted as proof that the Xiongnu lacked literacy or graphic traditions. Steppe societies could rely upon oral transmission, diplomatic documents written in other scripts, seals, symbols, administrative specialists, and neighboring writing systems. The archaeological record is therefore incomplete.

                                                                                                      THE SEAL, THE MARK, AND THE STATE

One of the most promising directions for future research concerns the relationship between seals, marks, symbols, and writing.

Across ancient Eurasia, seals served multiple purposes:

• authentication;
• ownership;
• administrative control;
• political authority;
• ritual identity;
• elite status.

The Chinese tradition of seals eventually became deeply integrated with written characters. The broader Eurasian evidence, however, demonstrates that sealing practices are much older and geographically wider than the Chinese literary tradition alone. Mesopotamian cylinder seals, Indus seals, and other ancient sealing traditions demonstrate the antiquity of graphic communication associated with authority. But similarity should not automatically be transformed into genealogical descent.

The existence of ancient seals in Mesopotamia or the Indus Valley does not prove that Shang writing was imported from those regions. What it does demonstrate is something more general:

writing and political authority emerged repeatedly within societies where symbols, seals, ritual, and administration were already deeply interconnected.

This broader comparative framework is essential for understanding the origins of writing.

                                                                                 “HEAVENLY WRITING” AND SACRED AUTHORITY

In many early civilizations, writing possessed a sacred dimension. In the Shang world, writing was closely connected with divination and communication with ancestral powers. The oracle-bone inscriptions were not simply administrative documents. They formed part of a ritual system through which the Shang king sought knowledge concerning warfare, agriculture, weather, sacrifice, childbirth, illness, and other matters.

This provides an important conceptual bridge to later Inner Asian political traditions. Across the steppe, sovereignty was frequently legitimized through relations among heaven, ruler, ancestors, and cosmic order.

The Mongol concept of Tengri is a particularly famous later expression of this political-religious relationship. It would be historically irresponsible to claim that Shang divination and later Tengri traditions are identical. They are not. Yet comparative study of sacred authority + kingship + inscription + legitimacy may reveal structural similarities that deserve deeper investigation.

                                                                                                           FROM DIVINATION TO ADMINISTRATION

The development of Chinese writing also illustrates a transition from sacred inscription to increasingly diverse administrative uses.

Over time, written characters became essential for:

• law;
• taxation;
• military administration;
• historical recording;
• literature;
• diplomacy;
• education.

The Qin and Han periods were particularly important in standardizing and expanding written administration. This process created what might be called a state-writing complex. The same phenomenon later appeared among the Khitan, Tangut, Jurchen, and Mongols.

The political lesson is significant:

states create writing systems not merely because they need language to be recorded, but because writing becomes an instrument through which sovereignty itself is organized.

                                                                                                         THE GREAT INNER EURASIAN WRITING NETWORK

By the medieval period, Inner Eurasia contained a remarkable network of writing traditions.

Among them were:

• Chinese script;
• Old Turkic runiform writing;
• Sogdian and related Iranian scripts;
• Uyghur script;
• Khitan Large Script;
• Khitan Small Script;
• Tangut script;
• Jurchen script;
• later Mongolian script.

These systems were not isolated. Merchants, monks, diplomats, soldiers, scribes, translators, and imperial administrators moved between political worlds. The creation of a new writing system frequently involved adaptation from an existing one. This suggests that the history of writing in Eurasia should be modeled not as a tree with a single root, but as a network of transmission, adaptation, and innovation.

                                                                                            WHAT THE KHITAN EVIDENCE REALLY PROVES

The Khitan inscriptions are therefore important for a reason somewhat different from the strongest version of the proposed thesis. They do not prove that the Khitans invented hanzi.

They demonstrate something historically profound nonetheless:

A major imperial society of the Mongolian Plateau independently developed sophisticated systems of written representation adapted to its own political and linguistic requirements.

The same observation applies to Tangut and Jurchen. Once these examples are placed together, the conventional image of a single writing civilization radiating outward from China becomes inadequate.

A more accurate model is interactive:

Central Plains ↔ Mongolian Plateau ↔ Manchuria ↔ Hexi Corridor ↔ Central Asia

Within this system, writing technologies crossed political boundaries repeatedly.

                                                                                                                             A REVISED HYPOTHESIS

The strongest version of the Inner Eurasian hypothesis should therefore not claim that the Xiongnu invented the Chinese characters without direct evidence.

Instead, it should propose three propositions.

FIRST

The origins of East Asian writing must be investigated within the wider archaeological environment of northern China, Mongolia, Manchuria, and Inner Eurasia rather than through the history of the Central Plains alone.

SECOND

The later emergence of Khitan, Tangut, and Jurchen writing demonstrates that northern and Inner Asian political societies possessed sophisticated traditions of script creation and adaptation.

THIRD

The possibility of cultural, technological, and demographic interaction between northern populations and early Chinese states deserves much greater investigation than a simplistic division between “Chinese civilization” and “barbarian peoples” permits.

These propositions are historically defensible and open the door to a much more ambitious research program.

                                                                                                                      THE CENTRAL QUESTION

The central question, therefore, is not whether modern Mongolians can retrospectively be declared the inventors of Chinese writing.

The more important question is:

How much of the history of writing in East Asia has been obscured by treating political and ethnic categories of later periods as if they were fixed and homogeneous in antiquity?

The Shang state existed within a world of interaction. The Xiongnu emerged within a world of interaction. The Xianbei, Khitan, Tangut, Jurchen, and Mongols likewise emerged within interconnected political landscapes. Their histories cannot be reduced to a simple opposition between “Chinese” and “non-Chinese.”

                                                                       CONCLUSION: FROM OWNERSHIP TO CIVILIZATIONAL INTERACTION

The history of hanzi remains one of the world’s great questions concerning the origins of writing. The available evidence does not currently justify the conclusion that the Xiongnu or their Mongolic descendants invented the Shang writing system. Nor does the existence of Khitan, Tangut, or Jurchen writing establish a direct genealogical descent from the earliest Chinese characters.

But these qualifications do not diminish the significance of the northern evidence. On the contrary, they point toward a more sophisticated historical model. The Mongolian Plateau and its surrounding regions repeatedly produced powerful states whose rulers recognized the political importance of writing and commissioned sophisticated scripts for their own languages and institutions.

The Khitan scripts are perhaps the clearest medieval demonstration of this phenomenon. Tangut and Jurchen writing reinforce it. The historical record therefore supports a fundamental revision in perspective:

The history of writing in East Asia was not the history of one people possessing writing while others merely borrowed it. It was the history of interconnected political societies continuously adapting, transforming, and reinventing technologies of written communication.

The Khitan inscriptions of Mongolia should consequently be read not merely as relics of a vanished empire but as evidence for a much larger intellectual history of Inner Eurasia.

The ultimate question is not simply:

Who owns the origin of the Hanzi?

It is:

What network of peoples, states, languages, and sacred-political traditions made the emergence and transformation of writing possible across East Asia?

That question remains open.

And it may ultimately prove more important than the search for a single inventor.