A Comparison of the Artistic Use and Character-Formation Function of Human Figures in Oracle Bone Script and Dongba Script
This article compares how oracle bone script and Naxi Dongba script both derive large numbers of pictographs from transformations and combinations of the human figure, arguing this reflects the ancient cognitive pattern of "taking the near at hand from one's own body, the far from external things." It identifies four shared artistic devices — line variation, artistic exaggeration, addition of distinguishing marks, and combination of forms — illustrated with paired oracle-bone and Dongba examples (e.g., "to sit," "to jump," "body," "Naxi," "thief"). It further notes that derived human-figure characters can be re-derived a second time (e.g., "woman" yielding "daughter" and "mother"), and that the four devices are often combined rather than used alone. The conclusion interprets this as evidence of an "embodied activity" mode of thought shared by early Han and Naxi peoples, who used the human body as their primary reference for conceptualizing the wider world. (An unrelated fragment on Chinese neologism "class-affixes," appended in the source, is not covered in this summary.)
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