A Study of the Character System of "Great Wind Sacrifice: Deliverance of the Hanged Dead of the Dong Clan, Opening Volume"
Yang Lei presents a case study of Geba script (a Naxi syllabary distinct from the pictographic Dongba script, used in a small number of surviving religious texts) by compiling a full character list for one purely Geba-written scripture, "Great Wind Sacrifice: Deliverance of the Hanged Dead of the Dong Clan, Opening Volume" (25 pages, 394 sections, dated by colophon to 1907). The scripture narrates how the deity Meilidongzhu's herds and land are attacked by a poison-ghost, leading to his affliction and a Dongba exorcism rite. The author documents 32 initial consonants, 18 finals, and 4 tones across roughly 330-495 distinct syllables, catalogs errors and omissions found in earlier decipherments, and analyzes variant characters (heterographic vs. heterostructural) and homographs. The conclusion is that Geba remains an early-stage, still-standardizing syllabary derived from logographic Dongba script, with variation traceable to its four historical sources (mainly Dongba script, plus Chinese, Tibetan, and invented forms) and to the decline of Dongba transmission after 1949.
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