Another Hmong Messianic Script and Its Texts

Among several writing systems devised by native speakers of Hmong, the Sayaboury script is of interest because it is the only one in which a body of apparently original mythic religio-political text material has been recorded. It also has an unusually ingenious, elegant, and economical set of vowel symbols, and a convention of doubling all initial consonant symbols in formal writing. Of secondary interest is the fact that this system was produced (and revealed to one of the authors) west of the Mekong River — not in the more focal Hmong areas which funneled refugees through Ban Vinai, Thailand, into the United States. The authors present here their limited joint knowledge about these texts and the system with which they are written, describing how they became known, their messianic nature, the structure of the writing system, its possible origins, and the fit between the writing and the Hmong language.