There are several numeral systems encoded in Unicode including Mongolian digits. You may think that everything is normal with the ten Mongolian digits at first. But they are really mysterious.
There are nearly no materials about Mongolian digits. I have talked with Sure about the usage of Mongolian digits. We think the following point of view is correct tho we don't have a convincing proof.
| Western | 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 |
| Mongolian | ᠐ ᠑ ᠒ ᠓ ᠔ ᠕ ᠖ ᠗ ᠘ ᠙ |
| Tibetan | ༠ ༡ ༢ ༣ ༤ ༥ ༦ ༧ ༨ ༩ |
| Devanagari | ० १ २ ३ ४ ५ ६ ७ ८ ९ |
Mongolian numerals are related to, and probably based on, the Tibetan numerals. They are still (maybe only) used on Mongolian tögrög banknotes.
They probably were used in Buddhist scripture rolls (Traditional Mongolian and Todo Mongolian versions) before. The page numbers of Mongolian and Manchu books published in Ming and Qing Dynasties were sometimes written in Chinese.
Manchu, Sibe, and Daur languages do not use Mongolian numerals.
Mongolian is written vertically from top to bottom, then from left to right (tb-lr). Chinese and Japanese were traditionally written vertically from top to bottom, then from right to left (tb-rl).But Mongolian numerals are written horizontally from left to right, then from top to bottom (lr-tb). (Mysterious!)
Maybe Mongolian numerals are never used in Mongolian text.
Related posts:
June 15th, 2010 at 21:05
No, you’re wrong. Mongolian numerals was found far before Tibet State was found. All 0-9 digits are the shape of fingers motion, which mean with both hand, anyone can show 0 to 99.
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Baturu Replies:
June 16th, 2010 at 08:41
I tried to think about the Chinese style of fingers motion.
But can you prove it?
I haven’t studied Mongolian too much, but I have never seen Mongolian digits in any Manchu books published in Qing Dynasty.
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April 11th, 2011 at 17:42
在元朝的信函当中用过蒙古文数字……
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Baturu Replies:
April 20th, 2011 at 08:28
谢谢指教！这一类的资料很少啊。
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