Ideological Front
This article reviews over a century of research on Dongba script (the pictographic writing system of the Naxi ethnic group), beginning with Terrien de Lacouperie's 1894 study that launched Western scholarly interest. It traces the collection and dissemination of Dongba manuscripts, noting that tens of thousands of texts were acquired by foreign collectors (Forrest, Rock, Roosevelt) and shipped abroad, while domestic scholars such as Fang Guoyu, Zhou Rucheng, and Li Lincan collected thousands more within China. Since folk religious practices were destroyed during political movements, surviving manuscripts in libraries and research institutions worldwide are now invaluable. The article also covers field surveys of Dongba script from the 1920s onward alongside broader ethnolinguistic investigations. Despite significant achievements in document compilation, dictionaries, general and comparative grapholinguistics, the field faces bottlenecks in disciplinary structure and methodology. The author calls for better planning, talent training, database construction, and methodological innovation to advance Dongba script studies.
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