The Establishment of a Research Database for Naxi Dongba Culture
This article traces the history of Naxi Dongba culture research, a rich tradition recorded in over a thousand Dongba scriptures written in the Naxi pictographic script, covering language, history, religion, folklore, art, and astronomy. It reviews shifting research emphases across decades—linguistics in the 1930s–40s, mythology in the 1950s–60s, and dance in the 1980s—alongside achievements in social history, calendrics, and art. The article highlights pioneering foreign scholars: Terrien de Lacouperie (1885), the first Western discussion of Naxi pictographs; Jacques Bacot's "Les Mo-so" (1913), the first comprehensive monograph including 360 pictographs; and Joseph Rock, dubbed the "father of Western Naxiology," whose 28 years of fieldwork and monumental Naxi-English Encyclopedic Dictionary laid the foundation for Naxiology. It also credits Chinese scholars Yang Zhonghong, Fang Guoyu, and Li Lincan for compiling early pictographic dictionaries, establishing systematic groundwork for later Dongba culture database research.
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