The Evolution of Leisure Sports Items in Dongba Characters
Kang Houliang, Yang Yuting, and Wang Fan search the Naxi Dongba pictographic script for characters related to leisure sports, using Fang Guoyu's Naxi Pictographic Script Compendium as their corpus. They find 13 relevant characters, grouped into three categories: those bearing only a loose resemblance to an activity (downhill skiing, rafting); those with a corresponding character sharing an action but differing fundamentally in purpose from production activities such as hunting, boating, riding, archery, camping, and fishing; and those fully realized as leisure sports today, namely swinging, singing, and dancing, all of which separated from productive labor and remain practiced among the Naxi. The authors argue this documents how leisure sports gradually differentiated, at differing speeds and to differing degrees, from the Naxi ancestors' production, hunting, and warfare activities, offering rare written evidence for theories of leisure sport's primitive origins.
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