Andrew West 魏安

6 Sept 2024

40 years ago today I walked across the Lo Wu Bridge 羅湖橋 into China for the very first time — into a world that a year's intensive study of Mandarin and Classical Chinese at SOAS University of London had woefully ill-prepared me for.

corp.unicode.org Andrew C. West 魏安 1960–2025

30 July 2025

It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that we, the family of Andrew West, confirm his peaceful passing on 10th July 2025. The BabelStone legacy will be continued by colleagues and friends. corp.unicode.org/pipermail/un...

27 May 2025

My reconstruction and identification of a partially-preserved Tangut character in a unique fragment of the Homophones text held at the British Library www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n53...

25 May 2025

First step towards the encoding of Jurchen *small script* characters, by @cosmicore.bsky.social and myself www.unicode.org/wg2/docs/n53...

12 Mar 2025

Monumental three-volume Handbook of Epigraphic Cultures to be published by De Gruyter, early next year hopefully. Open Access eBook! Includes chapters on Khitan and Tangut epigraphy.

But on the other hand, there is considerable overlap between Khitan and Jurchen epigraphy, so I initially expanded the Khitan chapter to cover both Khitan and Jurchen ...

16 Apr 2025

... Unfortunately strict length constraints meant that I had to cut that draft by 50%, including removing all Jurchen material, and I was unable to convince the editors to allow Jurchen epigraphy its own chapter

12 Mar 2025

Monumental three-volume Handbook of Epigraphic Cultures to be published by De Gruyter, early next year hopefully. Open Access eBook! Includes chapters on Khitan and Tangut epigraphy.

12 Mar 2025

I was invited onto the project in January 2023 as a very late replacement for a more qualified scholar who had to withdraw, but I managed to submit my two chapters on Khitan and Tangut epigraphy by the end of July 2023. Original publication was planned for late 2023, but now expected February 2026.

16 Apr 2025

The original plan was for a single chapter on Khitan and Tangut epigraphy, but I managed to convince the editors that they needed to be separate chapters as their epigraphic cultures are quite unrelated, and stand in their own right.

When I was in Lhasa in Spring 1985 I witnessed a sky burial. Below are a selection of photographs I took (with permission, and only after the vultures had been summoned) using poor quality Chinese film after finishing my supply of Fujifilm.

Andrew West 魏安@babelstone.co.uk

The site of the sky burial is near Sera Monastery, and brightly-painted Buddhist paintings adorn the nearby rocks, prominently featuring Yama, god of death, with the head of a buffalo, holding a skull-tipped club in his right hand and a lasso in his left hand, standing on a bull.

A child wearing a gau pendant having a snack

The human remains have now been entirely devoured by the vultures and crows, and the rogyapa wants to take a photograph with me on the rock. This is the final photograph and I am all out of film. Actually my last ever photograph with this camera.

Andrew West 魏安@babelstone.co.uk

Some of the relatives or friends of the deceased

The friendly rogyapa posing for the camera

Andrew West 魏安@babelstone.co.uk

Having discarded his white overclothes the rogyapa washes his hand.

Andrew West 魏安@babelstone.co.uk

The other rogyapa, dressed in white overclothes and a white bandana.

Andrew West 魏安@babelstone.co.uk

Some foreigners (Germans or Swedes I think) arrived after me, and initially observed from a distance before I was asked to invite them over. The man dressed all in white is one of the two rogyapas who were responsible for cutting up the bodies and preparing the flesh and bones for the vultures.

The man in the fur hat was in charge of the whole affair. The possessions of the two deceased had been burned on an open fire, and here he is heating up some food on the ashes.

Andrew West 魏安@babelstone.co.uk

Vultures gathered on a large rock to consume the remains of human bodies laid out for them. The rock is covered in hollows formed over many years when pounding bones with tsampa flour; the tsampa flour has whitened the entire rock.

A closer view of the sky burial rock