A Preliminary Exploration of the Relationship between Bashu Script and Dongba Script
Addressing a scholarly disagreement over whether Dongba script and the undeciphered ancient Bashu script of Sichuan are related, this article compares the two systems' pictographic, indicative, and compound-ideographic character-formation methods, their graphic-symbol forms (abstraction level, character-size standardization, writing direction), and their respective relationships to Chinese characters. It finds that while both share a broadly similar early ideographic stage and some individually similar-looking pictographs, Dongba script uses richer differentiation devices (splitting, reduction, deformation, orientation, color) absent from Bashu script, while Bashu script shows a later-stage rise in symbolic abstraction and features resembling Chinese characters that independently-developed Dongba script never acquired. The authors conclude the shared graphic resemblances likely reflect parallel independent invention rather than genetic relationship, contradicting earlier claims by Xu Zhongshu and others of a kinship between the two scripts.
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