Linguistic Contact, Religious Interaction, and Cultural Integration Between the Naxi and Tibetans: A Translation and Interpretation of the Naxi Dongba Inscriptions on the Mani-Stone Cairn in Jiaqu Village, Muli County
In 2000 a survey team discovered a Mani-stone cairn at Jiaqu Village, Yiji Township, Muli County, Sichuan, bearing both the Tibetan six-syllable mantra and a rare 128-character Naxi Dongba inscription on three stones. The article, by He Jiquan, gives the discovery history, a full character-by-character phonetic gloss and translation of the inscription -- a memorial erected by a family for a deceased woman of the He clan, invoking prayers for good fortune, protection of livestock and land, and the soul's safe passage -- and situates it within the long history of Naxi-Tibetan contact under the Mu-clan tusi and later Gelug/Muli theocratic rule. It argues the inscription is valuable as historical evidence of Naxi-Tibetan relations and Bon-Buddhist-Dongba religious blending, as a rare stone (rather than paper) Dongba document, and philologically for its unusually high (70%) rate of phonetic-loan characters and distinct regional glyph forms.
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