Shi, Jinbo is a Fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Shi has published widely on Tangutology, including Study of the Sea of Characters (1983), Western Xia Publishing (2004), and Economic Records of Western Xia (2017).Li, Hansong, B.A. University of Chicago, M.Phil. University of Cambridge, is a scholar of intellectual and international history at Harvard University.

• Translator’s PrefaceList of IllustrationsIntroduction1 The Purpose of Studying Tangut2 Some Notes on Learning Tangut1 History and Society of Western Xia1 History of Western Xia2 Tangut Society3 Religions in Western Xia4 Tangut CultureTangut Vocabulary (1)2 Tangut Manuscripts1 Discovery of the Corpus of Tangut Manuscripts2 Types and Quantities of Tangut Texts3 Introduction to Tangut Manuscripts4 Compilation and Publication of Tangut ManuscriptsTangut Vocabulary (2)3 Tangut Bibliology and Bibliography1 Types and Versions2 Binding of Books3 Structure and Design4 Illustrations, Letter Code, and Attachments5 PapersTangut Vocabulary (3)4 Structure and Features of Tangut Characters1 The Structure of Tangut Characters2 Pictograms and Simple Ideograms (Simple Indicatives) Comparisons with Chinese Characters3 Tangut Radicals4 Write and Search Tangut Words in a DictionaryTangut Vocabulary (4)5 Phonetics and Vocabulary1 The Tangut Language2 Tangut Phonetics3 Tangut WordsTangut Vocabulary (5)6 Parts of Speech1 Nouns2 Pronouns3 Numerals and Classifiers4 Verbs5 Adjectives6 Adverbs7 Particles8 Prepositions9 Conjunctions10 Interjections, Mood Particles, and OnomatopoeiaTangut Vocabulary (6)7 Phrases and Word Order1 Phrases2 SyntaxTextual Interpretation (1)8 Sentences1 Judgments, Descriptions, Statements and Interrogations2 Indicatives, Imperatives and Exclamations3 Simple and Compound Sentences4 Active and Passive5 Autonomous and CausativeTextual Interpretation (2)9 Cases and Case-Markers1 Nominative2 Genitive3 Accusative4 Presentative5 Subject of the PerformativeTextual Interpretation (3)10 Existential Verbs1 Categories and Usages2 Definitions and Applications of Existential Verbs in the Sea of Characters3 Features of UsageTextual Interpretation (4)11 Prepositional Particles1 Types and Usage2 Features3 Tactics in Translating Tangut TextsTextual Interpretation (5)12 Rime Transformation and Person Agreement in Tangut Verbs1 Categories of Person Agreements2 Rime Transformation in Person Agreement3 Explanations Found in the Sea of Characters and the Homophones4 In Textual TranslationsTextual Interpretation (6)13 Proper Nouns and Kinship Terms1 Names of States and Ethnicities2 Imperial Titles and Era Names3 Titles of Civil Servants4 Family Names and Given Names5 Addressing Families and RelativesTextual Interpretation (7)14 Interpretation of Tangut Social Documents and the Cursive Script1 Tangut Social Documents2 Tangut Cursive Script and Social DocumentsTextual Interpretation (8)15 Translation and Punctuation1 Some Notes on Translation2 How to Pause Properly When Reading a Tangut TextTextual Interpretation (9)AfterwordBibliographyIndex