A Review of Research on Variant Characters in Naxi Dongba Script
This article reviews scholarship on variant characters (yìtǐzì) in Naxi Dongba script, a pictographic writing system of southwest China's Naxi people, regarded as a "living fossil" for studying the origin and evolution of writing. Variant forms are unusually abundant and complex in Dongba script, characterized by large numbers of variants, diverse recording methods and character-formation principles within variant groups, and significant regional differences. Despite sustained scholarly interest, research remains relatively weak due to scattered materials and the absence of a comprehensive compilation of variants. The author surveys early collection and organizational efforts, notably in three authoritative dictionaries—Fang Guoyu's "Naxi Pictographic Script Compendium," Li Lin-ts'an's "Moso Pictographic Dictionary," and Rock's "Naxi-English Encyclopedic Dictionary"—each employing different arrangement principles (by variant grouping, by formal evolution, or alphabetically) to identify and explain relationships among variants, including formation logic and evolutionary pathways. The article argues future work should focus on identifying variants, systematic compilation, determining relationships among variants, and clarifying links between variant proliferation and the historical evolution of Dongba script.
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