Nakhi Geba (Na-Khi ²Ggŏ-¹baw, Naxi Geba)

ISO 15924

Nkgb

Family

Central Asian

Type

syllabary

Direction

LTR (left-to-right)

Baseline

bottom

Word separation

unspecified

Ligatures

unspecified

Status

Historical

Unicode

true

Nakhi Geba (also called Na-Khi ²Ggŏ-¹baw or Naxi Geba) is one of three scripts used for writing the Naxi language, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by approximately 310,000 people in the Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan, and in Tibet. Naxi has also been written in the Latin and, more famously, the Dongba scripts.

Nakhi Geba is thought to have been developed around 1200-1250 AD but was never widely used; its primary use was the transcription of religious mantras. There are few remaining texts in the script, and little is known about it. It was a syllabary, and the shapes of the letters appear to have been variously based on Chinese and Dongba characters, with some original designs.