**References**
This article introduces Dongba script, a still-living pictographic writing system used by the Naxi people of Yunnan Province, China. Unlike the long-extinct oracle-bone script, Dongba characters remain in use among common people today, retaining a pictorial, colorfully illustrated quality resembling picture-book narratives. Historical evidence, including an inscription from the Ming dynasty (mid-16th century), suggests the script existed since at least the eleventh century. Traditionally employed by Dongba priests to record religious scriptures—covering rituals such as wind worship, exorcism, funerals, dragon worship, and prayers for longevity—the script also documents history, legends, poetry, proverbs, astronomy, geography, medicine, and customs, and in some areas is used for bookkeeping and correspondence. Comprising over a thousand ideographic, phonetic, and auxiliary symbols without unified pronunciation across regions, Dongba writing represents a transitional stage between pictography and ideography. It holds great value for linguistics, folklore, and ethnology, attracting sustained international scholarly research, as showcased in a recent national exhibition of Chinese ethnic scripts.
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