Examples of Textual Exegesis on Difficult Characters and Words in Naxi Dongba Script
This article by Yu Suisheng (Institute of Chinese Language and Documentation, Southwest University), published in Chinese Linguistics Journal (June 2008, pp. 268–273), addresses difficult characters/words in Naxi Dongba pictographic script. Because Dongba writing never underwent script standardization, it exhibits great variation across eras, regions, and individual scribes, producing many variant graphs and phonetic loans whose form, sound, and meaning remain obscure. Drawing on newly discovered, mostly unpublished practical Dongba documents (contracts, account books from Yongning, Muli/Eya, etc.), the author deciphers six problematic Dongba (including two Geba) characters/words. Through comparative analysis of variant forms across land deeds and account books, he identifies one character as a variant meaning "finished/completed" (se21), and another obscure symbol—previously unidentified—as a stylized depiction of "tea" (le55), tracing its graphic evolution and multiple usages (noun "tea leaf," homophonous adverb "again"). The study aims to advance rigorous decipherment methodology for Dongba textual scholarship.
This page publishes the bibliographic record and the project's summary. The scanned article text belongs to its publisher and is shown to readers under a research-use policy; it is not reproduced in this record.