Writers › Writer / Poet
Gule Maocai
Tangut scholar of Western Xia who compiled the Tangut-Chinese glossary Pearl in the Palm in 1190
In a study at night, a desk holds a brush pot, a porcelain vase with a plum branch, a lit red lantern, a folded fan and an unrolled blank scroll, with no one seated there, while through a round window the moon rises over a lake with a sailboat.
Also known as Gule Maocai of Western Xia
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Gule Maocai was a Tangut of the Western Xia about whom nothing else is known. In 1190, the twenty-first year of Qianyou under Emperor Renzong, he compiled the Pearl in the Palm, a glossary arranged under heaven, earth and man in nine sections, each entry giving a Tangut word, its Chinese equivalent and the pronunciation of each in the other script, so that Tanguts and Chinese could learn each other's language; his preface says that only those who know both tongues can deal with one another. The printed book was excavated at Khara-Khoto in the early twentieth century, is held by the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St Petersburg, and remains a key tool for reading Tangut.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; compiled the Pearl in the Palm in 1190