Dongba Manuscripts
Dongba Manuscript is an important classic of Dongba religion. It was compiled by the ancient Naxi priests, also called Dongba, meaning ‘instructor’, in Naxi language, with an estimated total of 20,000 volumes.[1]
Naxi Script
[edit]The Dongba Manuscript is the main source for studying the Naxi writing system. The Naxi writing system, consisting of both pictographic Dongba symbols and phonographic Geba symbols, is unique in that it exists in a buffering state of transition from drawings to formal writing, resulting in an intriguing hybrid of both, rather than solely pictographic or phonographic as some scholars may suggest.[2] Given its close relationship with pictorial representation, the characters exhibit remarkable flexibility in their forms, including variations such as tilting, inversion, fragmentation, splitting, reduction, extension, and rotation, as well as modifications through dots, lines, colors, and scaling.[3] Around 1,231 volumes of Dongba manuscripts were collected by Chinese Anthropologist Li Lincan in the Naxi area. These scriptures laid the crucial foundation for his publication of Naxi Pictographic Dictionary in 1944 and Naxi Phonetic Dictionary the following year.
According to the Naxi legends recorded in the manuscripts, phonetic Geba characters first came into existence but proved difficult to mark down. The invention of Dongba symbols was later inspired by portraying common objects like stones and wood. This view is in accordance with Rock (1937).[4] Nevertheless, some contradicting evidence exists, with the most prominent being the word Geba, meaning ‘pupil’, used to denote phonograms. Li (2001) suggests that this indicates the subordinate status of Geba, as the humble younger script, as opposed to Dongba, as the older ‘instructor’ script. The argument that Geba should be a direct descendant of Dongba is also supported by Zhang and Huang (2018).[5]
Other than the Dongba manuscript, the direct reference to the Naxi language made by the Naxi people can only be found in Mushi Huanpu (Chinese: "木氏宦谱", literally "Genealogy Book of Mu family"), which belongs to the Naxi headmen, or tusi, family. It states that a legendary ancestor named Cong who learned all scripts (Chinese: "旁通百蛮各家诸书", literally "knows a hundred barbarian and other scripts") of early 13th century, during the period of the Song Dynasty, invented their own script.[6] Li speculates (2001) that the script mentiond was Dongba. Another reference comes from a Han Chinese scholar who lived during the period of Qianlong Emperor. He described the language as the following:[7]
"Mostly in pictographs, people are drawn as people, objects are drawn as objects, and this serves as writing."
— Yu Qingyuan, Chronicles of Weixi
An anecdote is also noted in Li's dictionary, which states that legend has it that in late Qing dynasty the Naxi language used to be ridiculed by local Chinese literates as the hideous script (Chinese: "牛头马面", literally "cow-headed and horse-faced") due to its very much pictographic nature. A grand priest named He Wenyu, who could no longer stand this kind of humiliation, invented the Geba symbols instead.
Textual Components
[edit]Although it may be seen as traditionally composed in ritual literature (Duncan 2023), its content in fact encompasses a wide range of topics, including Naxi cultural traditions, language and writing, astronomy, geography, philosophy, etc.[8] In actual texts, there is no fixed word order of the symbols, and they are often arranged in intricate, ideographic collages. To further complicate the matter, one graph can correspond to a single word, or sometimes even a whole sentence, as some symbols are written as silent markers, while many others are read and not written. Subsequently, there is generally a looser relationship between the written and the spoken symbols than an average reader is probably used to.
An example of a word corresponding to one sentence is as follows:
[mɯ33] which means "sky."
[mɯ33nɯ33dʐv33rv33kwɛ55] which means "the heaven (sky) releases dispute (on earth)."[3]
Note that the numbers in superscript indicate the tone of the previous syllable.
See also
[edit]- Dongba Religion
- Dongba symbols
- Li Lincan
- Joseph Rock
- ^ "中國的世界遺產-东巴文化". Retrieved 2017-11-17.
- ^ Poupard, Duncan (2023). A PICTOGRAPHIC NAXI ORIGIN MYTH FROM SOUTHWEST CHINA. Leiden University Press. ISBN 978-90-8728-427-5.
- ^ a b 李, 霖灿 (2001). 纳西族象形标音文字字典 [Naxi pictographic and phonographic dictionary] (in Chinese) (1st ed.). 昆明: 云南民族出版社. ISBN 7-5367-2126-9.
- ^ Rock, J.F. (1937). "Studies in Na-khi literature". Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient. 37: 1–120. doi:10.3406/befeo.1937.5350.
- ^ Zhang, Gongjin; Huang, Jianming, eds. (2018). 中国少数民族古籍珍品图典: 民族古文字古籍整理研究 100 年通览 [Illustration of China's ethnic minorities valuable classics: overview of collection and research on minorities ancient writing and documents over the past 100 years] (in Chinese) (1st ed.). Beijing: China Social Sciences Press. ISBN 978-7-5203-2079-5. OCLC 1056966792.
- ^ 木氏宦譜 [Genealogy Book of the Mu Familly] (PDF) (in Chinese). 1840.
- ^ 余, 慶遠. 維西見聞紀 [Chronicles of Weixi] (in Chinese).
专象形，人则图人，物则图物，以为书契。
- ^ 白, 庚胜 (2023). "纳西族东巴文化与东巴经". 中国民族. 3: 17–19.