# The Ersu Shaba Pictographic Script
This article, by Sun Hongkai, introduces the pictographic script of the Ersu (Ersu/Duoxu/Lisu/Lasu/Musu) people, a Tibeto-Burman, Qiangic-branch ethnic group of about 20,000 people distributed across Ganluo, Yuexi, Mianning, Muli, Shimian, Hanyuan, and Jiulong counties in Sichuan. Ersu has three mutually unintelligible dialects and no traditional writing system, with speakers using Chinese, and occasionally Yi or Tibetan script. Recently, researchers discovered colorful pictographic scriptures preserved by shaba (ritual priests) in several counties, comprising dozens of religious texts of which about a dozen titles are still remembered. Termed "Shaba script" for its resemblance to Naxi Dongba script, its origin is undocumented, though comparative analysis of writing methods and structure suggests a similar or slightly later age than Dongba script. Written in six colors with symbolic meanings, Shaba script—locally called "Lama"—shows fixed form-meaning correspondence, cross-regional consistency among shaba, and standardized rather than arbitrarily invented characters, with roughly 200-plus documented graphs so far.
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