A Preliminary Discussion of the Dongba Scripture Love-Suicide Epic Lubanlurao
Yang Fuquan examines the Dongba scripture epic Lubanlurao, a foundational Naxi love-suicide narrative. He surveys competing scholarly interpretations of the title's meaning offered by Niu/Zhao, Yang/He, Fang Guoyu/He Zhiwu, and Joseph Rock, concluding that "lu" specifically denotes the young herders in the story who choose to die for love, reflecting the Naxi's pastoral-nomadic origins. Rejecting Morgan-derived unilinear-evolution readings that force the epic into a fixed sequence of group marriage, pairing marriage, and monogamy, Yang instead identifies two real causes of the tragedy: the conflict between an ancient custom of free sexual love and patrilineal marriage/chastity norms (sharpened by the Qing dynasty's 1723 forced-marriage reforms), and the pull of the natural paradise "Twelve Slopes of Joy." The final section analyzes the epic's tragic aesthetics, particularly the heroine Kaimei Jiumingjin and its pervasive nature imagery.
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