Abstract
The Tangut script was created through deliberate modeling on Chinese characters and constitutes a logographic writing system whose graphic organization and visual principles show clear affinities with those of the Chinese script. In manuscript practice, however, the intrinsic structural complexity of Tangut characters gave rise to widespread stroke connection, omission, and reconfiguration, producing cursive forms that are often exceptionally difficult to identify and interpret. Although previous scholarship has conventionally adopted the term “Cursive Script” (草书, cǎoshū), borrowed from Chinese paleography, to describe these phenomena, such a designation is theoretically problematic. Unlike Hanzi, Tangut never developed a mature, standardized, or norm-governed calligraphic tradition. This study therefore proposes the term “Cursive style” (草体, cǎotǐ) as a more precise concept, arguing that its emergence was driven primarily by pragmatic demands of writing efficiency rather than by aesthetic or calligraphic concerns. Based on a close empirical analysis of the Tangut manuscript Jingang Bore Yijieji (金刚般若义解记), this study identifies three principal mechanisms underlying the formation of Tangut cursive writing: kinetic stroke linkage, component omission, and component substitution. By articulating these mechanisms, the article aims to enhance the identification and decipherment of cursive Tangut texts and to propose while offering a new framework for understanding processes of graphic simplification and structural evolution within the Tangut writing system.
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