Cultural Studies
This article by He Limin examines the transmission of Dongba culture, the traditional culture of the Naxi people, which faces crisis due to the disappearance of successive generations of Dongba priests. The author first argues that Dongba culture possesses universal, world-class cultural value, based on seven distinguishing features: it preserves the world's only surviving living system of pictographic hieroglyphs (Dongba script); it retains over 30,000 volumes of readable Dongba scriptures across more than 1,000 titles; it holds the world's earliest pictographic dance notation, still performed today; it exhibits a comprehensive, systematic cultural structure functioning as an encyclopedia of ancient Naxi society; it demonstrates an open cultural consciousness that continually absorbed advanced knowledge; it embodies harmony between humans and nature; and it has been transmitted as a living tradition through generations of Dongba practitioners for millennia. The article concludes that safeguarding this heritage requires government-led overall planning, restoration of Dongba religious practice, and broad reliance on folk cultural organizations to ensure its renewed transmission.
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