Jason Cox sent in the following photograph of the cover of a Vietnamese religious text and asked what was going on with the “characters” along the left and right sides.

This immediately reminded me of Square Word Calligraphy (writing English words in the shape of a square, like Chinese characters), originally created by Xu Bing in 1994, a new version of which was developed by David B. Kelley in 2012.

Before tackling the “characters” in vertical columns on the left and right, let’s see what sort of text this is.

At the top it reads: “Cao Dai Great Way” (Cao Dai is the popular, monotheistic religion in the Mekong delta). The large red letters in the middle say “True Teachings of the Great Vehicle (Mahayana)”. For more on the Cao Dai, see Millenarianism and Peasant Politics in Vietnam (1983) by Hue Tam Tai. More.

See: Language Log