Tangut people
In America there have been few scholars working on Tangut. During the 1970s Luc Kwanten worked on Tangu foreign relations, and in 1982 he published a study of the Tangut-Chinese glossary, the "Pearl in the Palm". However, the leading expert on Western Xia history and the Tangut people in the USA is Ruth W. Dunnell. In 1988 Dunnell made a study and translation of a bilingual Tangut and Chinese inscription on a stele erected in 1094, and in 1996 she published an influential book entitled "The Great State of White and High: Buddhism and State Foundation in Eleventh-Century Xia" in which she examined the relationship between the Tanguts and their neighbours, and the role of the Buddhism in the Tangut state.