A Study of Quentin Roosevelt's Research on Naxi Dongba Painting Art
This article examines the 1941 Harvard bachelor's thesis of American scholar Quentin Roosevelt (1919-1948), "A Preliminary Study of the Nashi People: Their History, Religion and Art," arguing it was the first substantial study of Dongba painting. Based on Roosevelt's 1939 fieldwork and collecting trip to Lijiang, the thesis compares Dongba religious painting with Bon and Tibetan Buddhist art, analyzes the Road of the Gods (shenlu tu) paintings, scroll paintings, pictographic and Geba scripts, and ritual implements such as the five-Buddha crown and ritual bell. The author, Naxi studies scholar Yang Fuquan, traces Roosevelt's biography, his collecting activities (over 1,800 manuscripts, now held at the Library of Congress and Harvard), his hypotheses on Dongba religion's relationship to Bon and the Gesar epic, and his aesthetic comparisons between Dongba and Tibetan Buddhist thangka painting. Yang affirms many of Roosevelt's observations while noting open questions about Dongba-Bon relations that remain unresolved.
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