The Value and Characteristics of The Marvelous Naxi Dongba Script
This essay reviews the 2018 monograph The Marvelous Naxi Dongba Script by Lijiang scholar Lan Wei, part of a national project on digitizing the Dongba scripture transmission system as a Memory of the World heritage. It argues the book's value lies in three areas: restoring Dongba characters to their scriptural context rather than treating them as dictionary entries, since a single graph's meaning shifts across chanting contexts (illustrated with a tiger glyph, a mugwort/hillside/black compound, and 64 variant forms of "monkey"); drawing all its material directly from primary canonical texts rather than earlier, limited dictionaries by Li Lincan and Fang Guoyu; and disclosing new manuscripts, including eight original Star-Worship Scriptures, two undeciphered divination texts, an unreadable phonetic script on nature-worship tablets, and a Yongning-area birth-ritual scripture. It also discusses new terms like "character-paintings" and a call for a "Contemporary Dongba Era."
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