A Brief Account of the International Academic Symposium on Dongba Culture
This 1999 conference report summarizes the International Academic Symposium on Dongba Culture, held in Lijiang, Yunnan, October 16–19, 1999, as part of the "1999 China Lijiang International Dongba Culture and Art Festival." It drew 200 scholars from 16 mainland provinces plus Hong Kong and Taiwan, 100 Dongba priests from Sichuan and Yunnan, and 58 foreign scholars from 11 countries, submitting 128 papers. Topics included the genetic position of Naxi within Tibeto-Burman (possibly transitional between Yi and Qiang branches), the origins and dating of Dongba script, the breadth of Dongba culture as both Naxi and world heritage, the philosophy and psychological functions of wind-propitiation and other rituals, classification of Dongba sects, a controversial theory linking 19th-century Naxi religious development to the Yunnan Hui uprising and the Opium War, marriage and gender roles in Naxi society, tourism and ecological-protection issues, and new findings in regional history, epigraphy, and archaeology, including Tibetan steles, pictographic bricks, and stone-coffin burials.
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