Research Paradigms and Multidimensional Perspectives on the Dongba Narrative Tradition
This theoretical article argues that the Dongba narrative tradition of the Naxi has long been reduced to "Dongba literature," a literarizing and politicizing framework that obscures its wholeness as a living, multi-textual cultural tradition combining ritual performance, oral recitation, music, dance, and painting. The author proposes six comparative research dimensions needed to properly study it: diachronic (historical change, e.g. the impact of the 1723 Reform of the Native Chieftain System), synchronic (regional variation among Dongba sub-traditions such as Sanba, Ruka, and the Lijiang basin), cross-textual (oral, semi-oral/written, and ritual-level texts), cross-genre (myth, epic, tale, legend, and their mutual transformation, using Lu Ban Lu Rao as a case where epic shaped folk song rather than the reverse), cross-cultural-category (Dongba narrative's function beyond literature, including illness-healing and identity), and cross-ethnic (shared Qiang-derived features among Naxi, Yi, Qiang, and other Tibeto-Burman peoples, and broader parallels with Greek epic). The article concludes that Dongba studies must shift from literature-centered to ethnography-based, interdisciplinary research.
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