The script has been used for centuries, mainly by Zhuang singers and
shamans, to record poems, scriptures, folktales, myths, songs, play scripts, medical prescriptions, family genealogies and contracts, but exactly when it came into being is not known. It is usually reckoned that Sawndip started to be used over one thousand years ago in the
Tang dynasty or earlier. However a study comparing Sawndip with the similar but different neighbouring
chữ Nôm script of Vietnam suggested that the script started at latest in the 12th century at about the same time as chữ Nôm.
Early vernacular characters Even before the Tang dynasty, Zhuang or closely related languages were written down using characters that were either Chinese or made up of Chinese components. Whether these are viewed as Sawndip, or as some sort of precursor to Sawndip, depends not only the evidence itself, but also differing views of what counts as Sawndip and from what era the term Zhuang can be applied. Some scholars say Sawndip started in the
Han dynasty and note the occurrence on words of Zhuang origin in ancient Chinese dictionaries such as which is Sawndip for Zhuang ('water buffalo') and in section 19 of the
Erya is given as having similar pronunciation and means ('cattle'). There are some similarities in the poetical style of "
The Song of the Yue boatman" () from 528 BC and the Zhuang "Fwen" style. Wei Qingwen () has interpreted the song by reading the characters as
Zhuang and some consider the written version and other such songs to be a forerunner though not an example of Sawndip, it has also been interpreted as being
Thai,
Dong and
Cham.
Tang dynasty (7th–9th centuries) The fact that Zhuang readings of borrowed Chinese characters often match
Early Middle Chinese suggests a Sui–Tang date, however it has been noted these could also be explained as later borrowings from conservative
Pinghua varieties. Chinese characters were already in use in the Zhuang area, as illustrated by two Tang dynasty
steles entitled in 682 and in 697. Although these are written in Chinese, the latter contains a number of non-standard characters. One of these is the Sawndip character consisting of '' over for 'paddy field'.
Song dynasty (10th–13th centuries) Several
Song dynasty Han Chinese authors give examples of used in Guangxi such as Zhou Qufei in
Lingwai Daida and
Fan Chengda in the
Guihai yuheng zhi () saying that such characters were common in the area and used in legal documents such as
indictments,
complaints,
receipts and
contracts. Table of characters noted in the Song dynasty
Guihai yuheng zhi and also in 1986 Sawndip dictionary:
Ming dynasty (14th–17th centuries) Whilst no manuscripts from the
Ming dynasty have been found, dozens of classic Sawndip works that survive to this day were first written during this dynasty or earlier. Some consider this to be the most abundant period of Sawndip literature. Exact dating is difficult in part because some songs were composed and transmitted orally before being written down, such as '''' ('Song to tell others'), which Liang Tingwang () has stated whilst containing some content comes from centuries before that was written down during the Ming dynasty. Similarly "Songs of March", "Songs of the Daytime", "Songs of the Road", and "
Songs of House Building" where first created between the Tang and Song dynasties or earlier and certainly written down at latest during the Ming dynasty. Some songs were both created and written down during the Ming dynasty. "Songs of War" () from
Pingguo which is considered to be such despite some lines which are later additions. ('The Dragon Eye Fruit Song'), a love story, is also from the Ming era. A number of songs written in Sawndip are stories which are originally of Han origin but for hundreds of years have been part of the Zhuang tradition, such as ('Song about Tang emperors') about
Li Dan and ('
Song about Yingtai') and ('
Song about Wenlong') to name but a few are reckoned to have first been written down in Sawndip during the Ming dynasty or earlier. In the case of , the original Han story itself has been lost.
Qing dynasty (mid-17th–19th centuries) Thousands of Sawndip manuscripts from the Qing period survive to this day. One well known old surviving text is the
Yuefeng () book of folksongs from
Guiping, published in the 18th century. A book entitled
Taiping Spring () that contains a number of songs and is kept in
Lingyun is dated as 1682. Another source is the
Huayu yiyu ( '
Barbarian vocabulary') compiled by the
Bureau of Translators in the mid-18th century on the order of the
Qianlong Emperor, and now held in the archives of the
Imperial Palace Museum. The survey of western Guangxi () was less thorough than other parts of the empire, consisting of just 71 to 170 items from three locations. Each entry consists of a Zhuang word written in the Zhuang script, with its pronunciation and meaning given in Chinese. It demonstrates both the wide use and lack of standardization of Sawndip.
Modern era (20th–21st centuries) sources. These agree on the choice of character for only one of the four words, 'house'. While after the introduction of an official alphabet-based script in 1957, Sawndip have seldom been used in some formal domains such as newspapers, laws and official documents, they continue to be used in less formal domains such as writing songs, and personal notes and messages. After the
Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949, communist revolutionary propaganda was written using sawndip. In 1957 an official
romanized Zhuang script was introduced. However, there are major phonetic and lexical differences between Zhuang dialects, and the Latin-based system is based on the
Wuming dialect. Because of this and other reasons, there still are many Zhuang speakers that prefer to write Zhuang using sawndip. Even though it is not the official script at grassroots level various departments have continued to use Sawndip on occasions to get their message across. Coming into the 21st century, Sawndip understanding and usage of Sawndip remains significant: of those surveyed in two dialect areas, just over one third said that they understood Sawndip, and about one in ten that they use Sawndip in most domains. These rates are approximately twice those for the romanized script: with only one-sixth saying they understood it, and only one in twenty saying they used it in most domains. After five years in preparation, the ''
() was published in 1989 with 4,900 entries and over 10,000 characters, and is the first and only dictionary of Zhuang characters published to date. In 2008 it was announced that work was to begin on a new dictionary called The Large Chinese Dictionary of Ancient Zhuang Characters'' (). In 2012 an enlarged facsimile of the 1989 dictionary was published with a different cover. ==Unicode==