Naxi Discourse Materials
This article, compiled and translated by Jiang Zhuyi and published in Minzu Yuwen (1988), presents transcribed Naxi (Nakhi) discourse material centered on the folk narrative "The Tiger and the Crow." The text is given in phonetic transcription with tone marks alongside morpheme-by-morpheme Chinese glosses, illustrating the language's tonal and grammatical features, including nominal, verbal, and particle usage. The narrative recounts the mythic origin of the tiger, describing its celestial and ancestral lineage—its grandfather, grandmother, father, and mother—each linked to cosmic or spiritual entities such as the blue-green dragon and figures from Yongning. It further details how various body parts and attributes of the tiger (skin, lungs, liver, bones, flesh, breath, blood, heart, eyes, voice, claws, gallbladder, ears) were symbolically bestowed by corresponding natural elements (sky, sun, moon, stars, wind, water, earth, iron). The material serves as a primary linguistic and ethnographic source documenting Naxi oral tradition and cosmological beliefs.
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.