Some Issues in the Social and Historical Development of the Naxi People as Seen from the Pictographic Dongba Scriptures
This article by He Zhiwu examines several problems in the social-historical development of the Naxi (Nakhi) ethnic group through analysis of pictographic Dongba scriptures. The author argues that linguistic/textual research and social-historical research must be integrated, since Dongba pictographic writing—among the world's rare surviving primitive pictographic scripts—offers valuable evidence for Naxi history, language, literature, religion, and inter-ethnic relations. Focusing on primitive social formation, the article notes that pre-1949 matrilineal families and "azhu" (dyadic) marriage survivals among the Yongning Naxi reflect uneven historical development. Drawing on western-dialect Dongba texts, the author traces evidence of Engels' "consanguine family" stage—siblings as spouses, pastoral-nomadic life, cannibalism legends, and clan origin myths (Shu, Ye, Mai, He clans)—corroborating genealogical records in the Lijiang Mu clan chronicles and comparative accounts like Marco Polo's Travels, to reconstruct early Naxi kinship and social evolution.
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