Questioning the Compendium of Naxi Pictographs
This article critically examines Fang Guoyu's Naxi Pictographic Dictionary (《纳西象形文字谱》), a landmark Dongba script dictionary compiled over nearly fifty years and long regarded as the most influential reference of its kind. Drawing on Dongba manuscripts and comparisons with other Dongba dictionaries (e.g., Li Lin-ts'an's), the author identifies inconsistencies and errors in the dictionary's character-structure analyses, which follow a Shuowen-Jiezi-style format of listing forms, pronunciations, and structural glosses (e.g., "from X, from Y" or "from X, Y phonetic"). Through specific examples—such as characters for "yellow," "field ridge," "mountain foot," and "lightning"—the author shows that Fang inconsistently applies semantic versus phonetic analysis, sometimes overlooking more plausible pictographic or semantic interpretations in favor of unexplained phonetic loans. The paper argues these issues warrant reconsideration to improve the dictionary's accuracy and scholarly reliability.
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