A Brief Review of Unveiling Dongba Culture
This review appraises Mu Lichun's 330,000-character monograph "Dongba Culture Revealed," praising it as a substantial work combining living Naxi folk culture with firsthand fieldwork on Dongba scriptures, forming a "living fossil" record. The reviewer highlights the book's totem-stratification theory as its major contribution. At the first level, the Naxi ancestors' four clans (Mei, He, Shu, You) held original totems of frog, snake, bear, and monkey, with monkey and snake becoming especially prominent through myths of human origins tied to eagle eggs, monkeys, and reproductive worship. At the second, highest level, the composite totem "Shu" (frog-headed, human-bodied, snake-tailed)—paralleling the Han dragon and Fuxi-Nüwa imagery—reflects patriarchal-era ancestor veneration and fertility symbolism. The book's most original insight links folk witchcraft ("gu") to the degraded remnants of totem worship, tracing how collective totems evolved into individual female "totem women" and eventually became associated with malevolent sorcery. The reviewer notes some textual obscurity but affirms the analysis's persuasiveness.
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