Dongba

Consapevoli del fatto che molti studiosi hanno trascorso tutta la propria vita per raccontare anche soltanto una piccolissima parte della storia della Cina e delle sue etnie, ci stiamo impegnando a mettere il nostro tempo e la nostra volontà al servizio della ricerca… Vorremmo riuscire a contribuire anche in una parte infinitesimale a raccogliere materiale e testimonianze che riguardino le molte " minoranze etniche " , purtroppo ormai quasi estinte, che hanno trovato origine o si sono stabilite sul territorio cinese lasciando un segno più o meno evidente nella storia di questo paese. …per non dimenticare che essere umani è quanto di più vario eppure uguale possa esistere in natura. Gli articoli che seguono sono l'inizio di un percorso che parte da un viaggio fatto da xiulung due anni fa nel Sichuan. Questa breve relazione sulle etnie cinesi, in particolare la Naxi, costituisce quindi un primo passo in un percorso di studio e di esperienze che si sta continuamente trasformando, attraverso cui abbiamo avuto modo di contattare persone che hanno già riversato da parecchi anni grande impegno e passione in questa stessa ricerca… …piano piano un universo si sta schiudendo dinnanzi a noi e tutto ciò, quanto meno, ci porterà ad arricchire il nostro mondo interiore… Voglio quindi ringraziare Stefano per l'impegno che ci mette e per avermi coinvolto in questa avventura…

Alessandro Ferro - Tiebaozi

Wushu ed arte rupestre cinese.
Appunti di studio delle evidenze artistico-rupestri cinesi relazionabili alla storia ed alle iconografie del Wushu.

Questa raccolta di appunti è inerente allo studio delle evidenze rupestri dei siti della Cina che possono essere messe in relazione con la storia antica del 武术Wushu – arti marziali, in particolare con alcune iconografie e pratiche associabili alle arti marziali cinesi, alla storia ed alla cultura del Wushu.
Dopo acluni appunti focalizzati sullo studio delle nozioni, della terminologia e degli aspetti fondamentali del Wushu, il focus della ricerca verte sull'analisi dei principali aspetti e della bibliografia dedicata alla sconfinata materia di ricerca quale l’arte rupestre cinese, dove per “cinese” s'intende un vasto sistema ecologico-culturale caratterizzato da open e globular clusters  di nicchie culturali ed ambientali diffuso nei territori coincidenti e limitrofi alle regioni ed alle provincie della Cina attuale, che sono anche il criterio di organizzazione del materiale di studio presentato come excursus dei maggiori siti di arte rupestre soffermandosi sulle raffigurazioni che posso essere ritenute pertinenti all'ambito dell’analisi storica del Wushu.
A queste evidenze è talvolta associata un’ulteriore documentazione ed in alcuni casi l’approfondimento di peculiari aspetti di manufatti e cultura materiale proveniente dagli scavi archeologici.
Altra peculiarità ivi annottata e presentata è l’analisi nelle sue pertinenze al Wushu della tradizione manoscritta 东巴Dongba propria della minoranza etnica 纳西Naxi (regione di 丽江Lijiang, provincia dello 云南Yunnan) interpretata come ramo espressivo di un filone della pittografia direttamente relazionabile con l’arte rupestre.
Nelle conclusioni si tenta di sketchare un quadro riassuntivo di quanto sembra possibile evincere dalle fonti analizzate.

This book is a study of European-language translations of Naxi ritual manuscripts, the ritual literature of a small ethnic group living in southwest China’s Yunnan Province.

The author discusses the translations into European languages (in English, French and German) from the late nineteenth century to the second half of the twentieth century, revealing a history of fragmentary yet interconnected translation efforts in the West. By exploring this network, he shows how translation can be understood as a metonymic “recreation” of textual worlds.  As Naxi manuscripts are semi-oral texts representing an oral-formulaic tradition, their translation involves a metonymic relay of partial incorporations from manuscript/image to reading/spoken language. Therefore, the book engages in a series of textual excavations to uncover the previously occluded contemporaneous readings that would have led to the translations we can consult today, particularly in an attempt to understand how the Naxi literature came to be part of Ezra Pound’s Cantos.

Stefano Zamblera, 2018: "A Dongba Pictographs Dictionary with Iconographic Index Plates"
Dictionary of Dongba pictographs implemented in categories sorted by iconographic index plates of BASIC pictographs.

Iconographic and graphic study of such corpus of glyphs evinced two distinguished sets of pictographs which could be named BASIC and COMPLEX.
BASIC PICTOGRAPHS are those glyphs made by one and just one iconographic unit (signifier) that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to the physical object meant.
BASIC PICTOGRAPHS are assembled together making COMPLEX PICTOGRAPHS, alias COMPLEX UNITS OF SIGNIFIERS.
As any BASIC PICTOGRAPH consists in a signifier written by a minimal graphic unit,  identification of BASIC PICTOGRAPHS categories to gather them coincides with the study and identification of a set of ICONOGRAPHIC PRIMES into Dongba pictographs corpus.
ICONOGRAPHIC PRIME is then used in the making of iconographic index plates for BASIC PICTOGRAPHS.

Wushu ed arte rupestre cinese.
Appunti di studio delle evidenze artistico-rupestri cinesi relazionabili alla storia ed alle iconografie del Wushu.

Questa raccolta di appunti è inerente allo studio delle evidenze rupestri dei siti della Cina che possono essere messe in relazione con la storia antica del 武术Wushu – arti marziali, in particolare con alcune iconografie e pratiche associabili alle arti marziali cinesi, alla storia ed alla cultura del Wushu.
Dopo alcuni appunti focalizzati sullo studio delle nozioni, della terminologia e degli aspetti fondamentali del Wushu, il focus della ricerca verte sull'analisi dei principali aspetti e della bibliografia dedicata alla sconfinata materia di ricerca quale l’arte rupestre cinese, dove per “cinese” s’íntende un vasto sistema ecologico-culturale caratterizzato da open e globular clusters  di nicchie culturali ed ambientali diffuso nei territori coincidenti e limitrofi alle regioni ed alle provincie della Cina attuale, che sono anche il criterio di organizzazione del materiale di studio presentato come excursus dei maggiori siti di arte rupestre soffermandosi sulle raffigurazioni che posso essere ritenute pertinenti all'ambito dell’analisi storica del Wushu.
A queste evidenze è talvolta associata un’ulteriore documentazione ed in alcuni casi l’approfondimento di peculiari aspetti di manufatti e cultura materiale proveniente dagli scavi archeologici.
Altra peculiarità ivi annottata e presentata è l’analisi nelle sue pertinenze al Wushu della tradizione manoscritta 东巴Dongba propria della minoranza etnica 纳西Naxi (regione di 丽江Lijiang, provincia dello 云南Yunnan) interpretata come ramo espressivo di un filone della pittografia direttamente relazionabile con l’arte rupestre.
Nelle conclusioni si tenta di sketchare un quadro riassuntivo di quanto sembra possibile evincere dalle fonti analizzate.

The culture of Dabaism, the native religion of the Moso people in Southwest China, is mainly contained in the oral classics. Ephemeris is the only writtenliterature of Dabaism discovered to date. It is used for selecting days for certain purposes. The present study focuses on the forms, including sounds, meanings, numbers and the nature of the symbols in the ephemeris. By interviewing several of the Dabas from Wujiao Village, Lijiazui Village, and Qiansuo Village, three versions of ephemerides in both Chinese and Moso language, an eastern dialect of Naxi language, have been interpreted. This paper discusses the relationships among the forms, sound and meaning of the symbols, their social features and historical development. It attempts to explore the nature of the symbols and their philological values by integrating field investigation data and related theories of philology.

Tibetan author Alai's Chinese essay, Yi di shui jingguo Lijiang (一滴水经过丽江 [A drop of water passes through Lijiang]) is a piece of travel writing that describes the city of Lijiang (home to the Naxi minority of Yunnan province) and its environs from the perspective of an anthropomorphic drop of water. The essay has been subsequently translated back into the minority Naxi language of Lijiang by Naxi scholar Mu Chen, and both versions are presented as a lapidary inscription in a tourist square. Writing travel from the reverse perspective, i.e. translating the writing from the minority perspective of the place being travelled, is perhaps a way of counteracting the genre's inherently epistemic appropriation of the 'other'. I believe that a comparative approach can act as an antidote against the monolingual, ethnocentric tropes of travel writing. In this essay it will be observed that through back-translation of the travel writing into the Naxi culture being observed, cultural specifics can be reintroduced into a text, and a minority culture can reclaim the power to speak for itself.

This essay considers the orality of ritual texts written in the Naxi dongba script from southwest China. Historically, the inherent orality of these texts has been largely ignored in favor of seeing them as a kind of visual “hieroglyphics.” Here, a case will be made that the Naxi texts represent an intermediary stage between the “oral” and the “written,” questioning the existence of a stark divide between orality and literacy.

Dongba pictographs dictionary with Index Plates. Third category of pictographs - C: Anthropomorphic deities.

Stefano Zamblera, 2018: "A Dongba Pictographs Dictionary with Iconographic Index Plates"
Dictionary of Dongba pictographs implemented in categories sorted by iconographic index plates of BASIC pictographs.

Iconographic and graphic study of such corpus of glyphs evinced two distinguished sets of pictographs which could be named BASIC and COMPLEX.
BASIC PICTOGRAPHS are those glyphs made by one and just one iconographic unit (signifier) that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to the physical object meant.
BASIC PICTOGRAPHS are assembled together making COMPLEX PICTOGRAPHS, alias COMPLEX UNITS OF SIGNIFIERS.
As any BASIC PICTOGRAPH consists in a signifier written by a minimal graphic unit,  identification of BASIC PICTOGRAPHS categories to gather them coincides with the study and identification of a set of ICONOGRAPHIC PRIMES into Dongba pictographs corpus.
ICONOGRAPHIC PRIME is then used in the making of iconographic index plates for BASIC PICTOGRAPHS.

There is a well-documented history of translation between India, Tibet and China beginning in the seventh century and continuing for almost a millennium. The transmission of the Buddhist canon that took place during this time has been perceived as one of the world’s greatest cultural exchanges. But what about the transmission of the non-Buddhist Tibetan canon (if indeed it can be called a canon), that is, the ritual tradition from early Tibet that has been classified by some as “Bon”? In the mid-twentieth century it was suggested that the explication of the still-extant religious literature of a small tribe in southwest China, the Naxi, would lead to a fuller understanding of the Tibetan Bon tradition. But there has still been little comparative study between these two lineages. Analysis of the Dunhuang manuscripts, in particular the textual references to the archetypal ritualist, gShen-rab myi-bo, reveals a common through line from old Tibet, to Bon tradition, to Naxi ritual manuscripts, which feature prominently a chief ritualist known as Do-bbaq sheel-lo.

I suggest that the Naxi manuscripts show an inheritance from early Tibet – perhaps before the formation of an organized “Bon” religion. In this essay I posit that the existence of an archetypal ritualist in the Naxi canon is a continuation of a narrative theme (that of the well-versed ritual practitioner), and indeed possibly of specific ritual personages themselves, from the old Tibetan manuscripts, filtered through the lens of cultural translation, across the borders from the Tibetan empire into southwest China

A script can be a window into a language and all the culture contained within it. China’s minority peoples have a multitude of scripts, but many are in danger of falling out of use, a decline spurred by the adoption and promotion of standard Chinese across the country. Nevertheless, efforts are being made to preserve minority writing systems. This article reveals how the primarily logographic Naxi dongba script (often labelled the world’s ‘last living pictographs’), used in China’s southwestern Yunnan province to record the Naxi language, can be practically used as a modern writing system alongside its more widely known traditional role as a means of recording religious rites, and what exactly separates these two styles of writing. The efforts that have been made to achieve the goal of modernisation over the past decades are reviewed, including the longstanding attempts at Unicode encoding. I make some suggestions for the future development of the script, and employ plenty of examples from recent publications, alongside phonetic renderings and English translations. It is hoped that overall awareness of this unique script can be raised, and that it can develop into a vernacular script with everyday applications.

Two unusual characters appear in the closing lines of Ezra Pound’s Canto CXII (from his “Drafts and Fragments”), characters that may offer up the most complete example of Pound’s much-discussed “ideogrammic method”. The characters discussed in this paper belong to the Naxi dongba script, the logographic writing system of a tribe in China’s south-western province of Yunnan. Pound’s sources are analysed and a new theory of the origin of the two characters—from Joseph Rock’s translation of a Naxi ritual text—is put forward. The two Naxi dongba characters in Canto CXII unlock the meaning of the canto within which they appear, and echo themes that run through the Cantos when taken as a whole. But we can also see Pound using both pictorial and phonetic elements of the script to create a “cumulative ideogram”, and through this comparative Poundian lens we can update our historically limited understanding of the Naxi writing system.

Dongba pictographs dictionary with Index Plates.
Firts category of pictographs - A: man and his occupation.

Dictionary of Dongba pictographs implemented in categories sorted by iconographic index plates of BASIC pictographs.

Iconographic and graphic study of such corpus of glyphs evinced two distinguished sets of pictographs which could be named BASIC and COMPLEX.
BASIC PICTOGRAPHS are those glyphs made by one and just one iconographic unit (signifier) that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to the physical object meant.
BASIC PICTOGRAPHS are assembled together making COMPLEX PICTOGRAPHS, alias COMPLEX UNITS OF SIGNIFIERS.
As any BASIC PICTOGRAPH consists in a signifier written by a minimal graphic unit,  identification of BASIC PICTOGRAPHS categories to gather them coincides with the study and identification of a set of ICONOGRAPHIC PRIMES into Dongba pictographs corpus.
ICONOGRAPHIC PRIME is then used in the making of iconographic index plates for BASIC PICTOGRAPHS.

Stefano Zamblera, 2018: "A Dongba Pictographs Dictionary with Iconographic Index Plates"
Dictionary of Dongba pictographs implemented in categories sorted by iconographic index plates of BASIC pictographs.

Iconographic and graphic study of such corpus of glyphs evinced two distinguished sets of pictographs which could be named BASIC and COMPLEX.
BASIC PICTOGRAPHS are those glyphs made by one and just one iconographic unit (signifier) that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to the physical object meant.
BASIC PICTOGRAPHS are assembled together making COMPLEX PICTOGRAPHS, alias COMPLEX UNITS OF SIGNIFIERS.
As any BASIC PICTOGRAPH consists in a signifier written by a minimal graphic unit,  identification of BASIC PICTOGRAPHS categories to gather them coincides with the study and identification of a set of ICONOGRAPHIC PRIMES into Dongba pictographs corpus.
ICONOGRAPHIC PRIME is then used in the making of iconographic index plates for BASIC PICTOGRAPHS.

Musiche e danze Naxi

Lijiang ha da sempre offerto uno splendido e variegato paesaggio musicale creato attraverso l’interazione di una moltitudine di realtà e di fattori etnici, religiosi, economici, politici, tecnologici.
Nell’area di Lijiang vi è una costante verità, valida oggigiorno come da secoli: poli diversi di due realtà distinte quali l’etnia e cultura Naxi e la cinesizzazione della regione si interscambiano in un continuum visibile già dalla convivenza dei remoti villaggi Naxi montani alla città di Dayan, e dalle zone rurali di Lijiang in cui si interseca e penetra il fiume Jinsha.
In questo setting ambientale vi è la convivenza di due gruppi sociali principali, Naxi e Han, e la coesistenza di altre realtà etniche minori, convivenza che generò e ancora oggi mantiene legami ed influenze visibili, ad esempio, nella produzione letteraria popolare di leggende e storielle in cui è evidente quanto “le minoranze etniche […] sono più o meno tutte in contatto con le minoranze vicine, così come con gli Han” (Mc Khann 1997:2).
L’importanza dei contatti e delle influenze interetniche è assolutamente evidente anche negli studi cinesi di musicologia, ed in questo caso particolare, sebbene vi sia stata nella storia una certa tendenza degli storici musicologi cinesi a parlare in termini pacati e discreti circa le minoranze etniche Naxi, Pumi e Lisu, da sempre per questa regione è stato riconosciuta la peculiarità della produzione musicale come risultato di questo processo di permeabilità ed interazione fra contatti e produzioni artistiche interetniche (Shi Xiao 1985; Liang Yu 1986).
Per quanto sia conveniente suddividere i tipi musicali tra i principali prodotti secondo un’appartenenza etnica, l’importanza delle influenze interetniche non deve essere assolutamente dimenticata per un così peculiare frammento sud occidentale di Cina…

This article investigates public textual inscriptions in China’s Naxi minority region and the role they play in projecting power. Cliff inscriptions in Chinese minority areas may be an attempt to enforce the hegemonic project of the “civilizing centre,” which sees Han culture as a civilizing force on the “barbarians” that live in China’s border provinces. Despite the nominal equality of China’s ethnic minority groups, the language and writing system of the Han majority occupy an undeniably privileged position in the country’s linguistic hierarchy. But powerful writing does not necessarily have to emanate from the centre of political control, and I argue that there are examples of graphic pluralism where the hierarchy is upturned. One such example of powerful, informal public text acts are the graffiti found on the walls of a cave in an ethnically Naxi township of Baidi in Yunnan province. The most powerful and prestigious graffiti inscriptions are those that are written in the native Naxi logographic script. An analysis of these inscriptions may help to reveal the social implications of writing in heterographic situations, showing how the ritual act of writing Naxi inscriptions on the wall inculcates Naxi values and suggests that China’s linguistic hierarchy is not immutable.

This paper is focused on giving a short description of Naxi language sounds panorama with a grammar and phonetic sketch.
It is moreover oriented into the definition of a Naxi – Dongba system of romanization with IPA annotation according to most important historical studies focused on Naxi people and Dongba tradition, as a guideline of the romanization orthography system of the Dongba Pictographs Dictionary with iconographic plates – 东巴常用字词典含象形索引表.
After a brief introduction on Naxi and its classification into Tibeto-Burma languages family a brief description of Naxi dialects is briefly introduced, followed by a draft grammar sketch of Naxi language.
Romanization solutions and IPA chart is finally presented with examples, if available, of western languages approximate sounds for each letter of Naxi system.

The British Library holds a modest but important collection of religious texts from a lesser-known people: the Naxi of the Himalayan foothills in southwest China. Among China's officially-recognised ethnic minorities, the Naxi are a relatively small group, especially when compared to their more populous neighbours to the north, the Tibetans. But the Naxi are nevertheless significant, not least for the unique way in which they record their religious literature: the dongba script...

Naxi is one of the 55 official ethnic group of China, depositary of Dongba tradition, result of local shamanistic practices, stratified with Bön pre-buddhist substratum, melted to Buddhist, Indy, Taoist and Confucian elements. Written documents of Dongba tradition and ceremonials are realized on manuscripts, mostly written by pictographic signs, which contains all rituals, precepts and myths.

According to such literature and tradition, all animated and in-animated beings are manifestation and home of supernatural entities who live in equilibrium and coexistence. In  this peculiar vision of universe, the relationship that humans must have with any element of the creation, has to be grounded on veneration and respects of relative supernatural sphere, so man must practices propitiatory rituals before interacting with any element of surrounding setting: digging a hole on the ground, hunting animals, cutting trees, etc…, in this tradition are all activities which have to be propitiated in respect to tutelary spirits.

Dongba priests are the specialists able to perform proper ceremonies suited for each situation, also to restore eventually unbalances of equilibrium between humans’ and spirits’ world. The latter is represented into manuscripts as a variegate pantheon of deities, and among such crowds of supernatural beings, sources documented 2 main sets of gods, respectively associated to a reptile-based and to a bird-based iconography, both with many subclasses, variants and interaction with other signs.

Context of manuscripts documenting myths and rituals associated to a kind of cult dedicated to prosperity, long life, evicting of demons and illness, which is as peculiar to Naxi people, as it could be related to a wider religious mythological stream, diffused in Tibetan, Indian and Chinese traditions.

Texts of manuscripts, iconographies, detailed study of signs of animals associated to supernatural entities documented:

·Ssù – serpent cult. Based of the veneration of the serpent-tailed and human-body spirits, a life-god entity. Propitiated for granting prosperity and fertility, closely associated to rain and water, able to provoke terrible misfortunes if got hungry with humans. In this study it’s directly related to the traditions of kLu in Tibet, Nāga
in India and Long in China

·Bird-god cult. Bird deities are powerful, strong, able to suppress the serpents-spirits and devour them. Able to spell charms, allied to Shilo the founder of Dongba tradition. In this study the bird-gods of Naxi – Dongba pantheon are associated to mythologies of Khyung-chen of Tibet and Garuda of India.

·Serpent vs. Eagle fight myth, here directly related to the mythologies of kLu versus Khyung-chen of Tibet and Naga versus Garuda of India

As emerged from manuscripts and according to Naxi tradition, the central figure of Dongba Shilo is here looked not just as the founder of Dongba religion, but as directly related to the Enlightened Buddha sTompa gShen-rab of Bön tradition.

Methodology of research

According to the theme of the colloque, the methodology of study adopted by author mostly consisted in the research of signs from documents, as the signs are pictographs which were made of an animal-based graphic unit, directly relate to deities. Once they’ve been found the study of the functions of signs ad of the context was the way followed: identification of readings and meanings associated to pertinent signs, alias the research of the signs’ phonetic and semantic values, the identification and the interpretation of iconographic motifs associated to the pertinent sign.

Then the study of the context, which here is meant as the study of the signs which surrounding the pertinent one in an adjacent part of text (mostly the rubric containing the pertinent pictograph), as the research of eventual relationship with surrounding signs in adjacent parts of text for the identification of eventual association patterns among signs,.

Once sign was identified as pertinent, alias study of the sign and its contexts evinced that by this significant a deity was meant, then a deeper analysis started focused on the detailed study of the iconography represented by the sign and its
variants, the reconstruction of iconologies, also with the help of cross-studies focused on related (but non necessary Naxi) cultural, iconographic and iconologic elements; this methodology permitted to the author some integrations with non Naxi – Dongba directly related documentation, as Indian, Tibetan and Chinese.

First stage of study, which consisted in the identification of pertinent signs, was performed by the analysis of available sources which contains attestations of pictographs with an animal-based graphic unit. Nature of available sources evinced the possibility of making use of two kind of attestations: direct and indirect attestations.

·Direct attestations: are those performed directly from documents belonging to Naxi – Dongba pictographic tradition: manuscripts, scrolls, wall-paintings, handcrafts and sculptures. Some hundreds of documents are available online thanks to Harvard Yenching web resources, which consist in a selection from their collection of 598 manuscripts. By this web resource is possible to perform direct analysis over Dongba manuscripts, avoiding the difficulties in retrieving of documents.[1]
·Indirect attestations: are those made and evinced from documents which not belong to Naxi – Dongba tradition, but directly or indirectly dedicated or related to Naxi culture and Dongba, in particular dictionaries, Naxi mythology and Dongba culture dedicated studies.[2]

By this two ways of attestation, the signs identified as pertinent, alias signs associated and identified as a deity, were recorded in a concordances’ system, with manuscripts’ page, rubric, reading and meaning.

As introduced upper, further analysis of surrounding contexts was performed for identification of possible association of signs: sources evinced a number of not casual association, here meant as recurring pattern, with peculiar reading and meaning, pertinent inside the context of animal-deities belonging to Naxi – Dongba Pantheon.

Such group of pertinent signs evinced by sources from direct and indirect attestations, on a corpus of 78 manuscripts,[3] according to contexts and to dedicated bibliography, scored 1242 attestations of signs of animals associated to 2 main groups of iconographies of deities:

◦reptile – gods iconography,
with 513 attestations

◦bird – gods iconography,
with 729 attestations

Analysis of context which the pertinent signs belong to, evinced a very complex pantheon of gods with many subgroups of deities, both in reptile and bird forms: reptile and bird iconographies thus here are meant as two main classes of gods, as from contexts they appear to be antagonist, while inside bird and reptile group of deities the different form of spirits are often in close interaction, share a common origin, and acts in strong influence and interaction with/against humans.

The reptile – deities iconographies was thus characterized of different and distinguished kind of supernatural entities:

· serpent-tailed, human headed with trilobate crown, associated to
many readings: Ssù, Llü-mun, Ssaw-ndaw
and/or mute sign

· dragon iconography, associated to the reading Lu

· serpent iconography, associated to the reading Shi-zi


The bird – deities iconographies also contains at least 3 different gods:

· iconography, associated to the reading Khyu-t’khyu

· iconography, associated to the reading Dter-gko

· iconography, associated to the reading Yu-ma


Data, concordances and statistics here quoted are completely available on author’s website.[4]

***
[1] http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:hyl00002 For a detailed description of Harvard Yenching web resource and features please, cfr.: http://www.xiulong.it/4.0/Dongba/CENSUS/bycollections/HY/introHY.php

For an exemple of Harvard Yenching manuscripts pertinent to the theme studied (the Ssù cult) and for crossing references with Joseph Rock manuscripts’ collection please, cfr:

http://www.xiulong.it/Dongba/conferences/Arras2010/Attestations/SsuCultManuscriptsCorpus.htm

[2] Particular attention was focused on Dongba pictographs dictionaries and monograph studies dedicated to Dongba religious tradition, with an eye especially focused on Joseph Rock and Chas McKhann works . In particular cfr.: Rock J., 1952, 1963, 1972; McKhann C., 1989, 2003c, 2003d

[3] Here manuscripts are grouped in 3 clusters, just for a more comfortable layout. Data are available online:

http://www.xiulong.it/Dongba/conferences/Arras2010/Attestations/AnimalGodsGeneral.htm

[4] http://www.xiulong.it/Dongba/conferences/les-signes-danimaux-et-de-creatures-mythiques-en-orient-et-en-occident/data-attestations-and-concordances/

Manuscripts belonging to Dongba pictographic tradition could be considered as religious scriptures, dedicated to ceremonies belonging to Naxi Dongba tradition.
During last century many thousands of manuscripts were taken from China and arrived in Europe and U.S.A., and actually are still preserved in collections spreaded in whole western world institutions: the most numerous and important collections, also because of their web resources instruments which permits to consult Dongba manuscripts without being in China, are at today Harvard Yenching Library Naxi Manuscript Collection with 598 manuscripts, and the Collection of Naxi Manuscripts of the Library of Congress, Asian Division, Washington, D.C.. with 185 manuscripts.
Availability of coverpage, data, metadata and complete argumentation of manuscripts depends closely to availability of Institution where the original collection is preserved.
This paper reports an update list of collections of Dongba manuscript, with relative owner Institution, gathered by Country.

Carnet de Voyage: 丽江 Lijiang
Japanese Moleskine 1

Questo carnet di viaggio è realizzato su Moleskine giapponese (pagine con rilegatura e piegatura a fisarmonica) con acquerello trasparente, Gouache, inchiostri di china, creta rossa, gialla e bianca per l'impressione dei sigilli cinesi, e patchwork di materiale cartaceo vario

Questa presentazione è realizzata in php, html e javascript. Per quanto concerne il mark-up dei facsimili digitali delle tavole della Moleskine sono stati utilizzati XML ed IMT - Image Markup Tool; in entrambe i casi il markup è conforme alle specifiche TEI (release P5).

Nel frame di sinista è possibile scegliere una delle tavole per volta che cerrà visualizzata nella parte centrale della pagina attiva. Una volta caricate le annotazioni realizzate con IMT è possibile muoversi col puntatore sull'immagine digitale della tavola della Moleskine, dunque le parti attive dell'immagine saranno highlited consentendo la visualizzazione della trascrizione delle parti di testo (1 click) e lo zoom sulla parte d'immagine highlighted (2 click).

Dedico queste pagine ad i Naxi di Lijiang, a Claudia, al professor Roberto R. del Turco ed a Stefano Faravelli.

2010, July the 2nd 羞龍 Xiulong

Geba writing system is one of the writing systems in Naxi nationality in China. Geba writing is used by the religious specialist Dongba in the manuscripts, but its modality is different from the Dongba writing. This paper attempt to analyse the Geba writing system's origin, by comparison with Dongba, Han and Tibetan writing systems.

Dongba manuscripts corpus consist in several thousands of texts
According to Jackson (1989 “Naxi studies: past, present and future”) among them about 5.118 manuscripts are fostered in some western institution.
Each institution cataloged and classified manuscripts independently to the others' collections, thus CENSUS means in the making of a GENERAL CENSUS of Dongba manuscripts, creating ONE general catalogue of them, and to make this archive available for scholars and researchers as a publication and as a web resource, the latter linked and interrelated with an pictographs dictionary and digital edition of Dongba manuscripts.
CENSUS also provides a research system based on keywords for Documents Retrieval operations by users.