![]() ![]() Linen is rarely used and leather is reserved for functional items only (such as armour). ![]() The Khitans use two fabrics in their clothes: silk and cotton. In the towns and cities, literacy is commonplace beyond them, in the wilder areas of the country, most Khitans are functionally illiterate High Mandir, in its written form, is an artwork and the scribes of the Paikang bureaucracy are trained in calligraphy to ensure perfection and clarity (but not necessarily brevity) in every document created. The ideogram style is a mixture of hard and soft lines, often crossed, with swirls, dashes and dots used to convey tense, emphasis and emotion. Written forms of both languages flow from top to bottom and from the right to left. An ideogram conveys single words but also whole expressions, including tense, inflection and emotional weight with thousands of ideograms making-up both Mandir and Min tongues. It is a peculiar sounding tongue but allows the language divide to be bridged by those merchants who travel widely.īoth Mandr and Min use ideograms rather than individual letters in their written forms. Merchants and traders have therefore adopted a trade cant, known as Fu, which mixes Mandir and Min and is used only for commerce. A Min speaker will struggle to make himself understood to a Mandir speaker and vice versa and the diversity of Min dialects can make even native Min speakers unintelligible to each other depending on their region. Min has but one form and is functionally very different to Mandir, with a mixture of vowels and hard consonants. In the south of Khitai, the Min language is common. It is forbidden for the lower orders to speak in High Mandir although written communication can be conducted in High Mandir especially in official documents. It is a fast, fluid tongue with an emphasis on vowel sounds with few hard consonants.Low Mandir, the language of the street and lower orders, is a coarser, even faster language that uses abbreviated forms of High Mandir and sounds clipped compared with the high tongue. High Mandir is the language of the bureaucracy, aristocracy and artists. The predominant Khitan language is called Mandirand it has both high and low forms. Peasants, when in the company of the higher ranks, adopt a natural, deferential stoop to emphasise the social division. The general stature for Khitans is a proud, upright posture,especially amongst the higher classes of society. Some from the north are slightly taller than this but generally very tall Khitans (above 5’9”) are a rarity. The average height of a Khitan is 5’5” for males and 5’0” for females. Stature: Khitans are typically shorter than westerners. Hairstyles are commonly used to denote rank and station, with the highest placed in society possessing the most elaborate hair arrangements. Amongst the learned classes it is common to shave the forehead into a tonsure removing the hair laterally back to the crown and then wearing the long hair plaited to hang down the back. Beards are seen as somewhat uncouth in polite Khitan society although moustaches are considered to lend gravitas and importance. Hair is traditionally worn long in both sexes but neatly tied and secured with a variety of fixings (plaits, crossed sticks, ribbons and so forth). The colour ranges from very dark brown through to raven-black. ![]() Hair: All Khitans have dark, straight hair that grows luxuriantly, particularly in the north. In the north of the country noses tend to be longer and are less flattened whilst in the south and east, particularly amongst the jungle and swamp dwelling communities, the nose is slightly wider than normal. Nose: The Khitan nose tends to be broad and flat compared with that of westerners. In the north, a double crease in the eyelid is more common (though still rare). ![]() These ocular features lend the characteristic oriental appearance more so than any other facial feature. As Khitans age, their skin develops impressively deep lines and wrinkles which, amongst the southern Khitans, creates a leathery appearance to the skin.Įyes:Like most oriental people Khitans have an epicanthic fold (that is, a fold of skin that covers the inner corner of the eye) and usually only a single crease to the eyelid. In the north of Khitai, the complexion is lighter in the south of the country the skin is darker and almost bronzed. The following characteristics are the most evident,Ĭomplexion: The Khitan complexion carries a slightly yellow tinge leading to some westerners terming the Khitans ‘The Yellow Men’. As they are isolated from the west by the Great Wall and very few venture into the wider world, the Khitans seem to be highly exotic when compared with the Caucasian races. The Khitans are an oriental people and they display markedly different physical haracteristics to westerners. ![]()
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