You notice on the writing Naxi
The Naxi have a writing pictográfica, that "in the last years has received world recognition for being the only writing pictográfica still alive." (1) Is the called writing Dongba. It is called this way because the priests Dongbas use it fundamentally, when they realize his different ceremonies and exorcisms.
The writing Dongba arose in the XIIth century approximately. Although in the religion Dongba there is a good number of influences of the primitive religion of the Tibetan ones, called Bon. This writing does not seem to have Tibetan influences, at least as for his aspect purely formally, since the pictographs that it uses, are deeply influenced by the cults Bon, and for the cults hindúes that they influenced in turn. The love of the Naxi for the culture is surprising, since without being provided with a unified church, in little less than 100 years, the writing and the religion Dongba had spread over all the villages of the Naxis.
In fact, these priests Dongbas, have not left his productive activities. This is, they cultivate his grounds as other members of the community. Only when some member of the community needs his service, or to expel the demons that cause an illness, which misfortunes provoke for the family, to celebrate a funeral, or some another ceremony, they take his sacred books, they dress themselves the habit of the celebration, and fulfill his mission as religious specialists. Sometimes they are rewarded by some piece of meat or another small obsequiousness.
The persistence of the religion Dongba during more than eight centuries between the Naxi, has created an important number of "Writing Dongba", the sacred writing of the religion Dongba, which some experts code in 50.000 volumes. In them they include numerous aspects of the religion and culture naxi, of his history, of his music, of his dances and medicines, and of course, of his myths and legends. This is because, on having celebrated a ceremony, it is necessary to narrate the origin of each of the spirits or sacred objects that are summoned.
The construction of the pictographs Dongba is really curious. In fact little more than thousand used pictographs stem possibly from only a hundred of basic pictographs. For example, we see that a man is represented like the basic lines of a man in a comic. To represent a man of the different peoples who live in the neighborhood: Tibetan, Chinese, Bai, Yi, Lisu or Pumi, emphasize some of the characteristics from his outfits. If what loves is to express some of the activities of the man, the affected part of the body is emphasized: the mouth, hand, leg, etc. In the top image, we see from left to right, the pictographs to represent: "person", "Naxi", "Tibetan", "Bai", and "Pumi".
Looking at this aspect of the writing Dongba, it can seem very simple, since the basic pictographs can be learned without big difficulty. But the reality is a little different.
In this example we see the explanation of the title of a ceremony Dongba extracted from a book (2) of the explorer and student of the culture Naxi, Joseph F. Rock. The manuscript calls itself "to Count the Do-sau-ngo-tu history". The reading of the symbols of this title is the following one:
"The first top symbol is an ideogram and it denotes the action to see (do), the second one reads himself sau = to breathe; the two are used fonéticamente in the name of the Naxi which history is counted. The syllables "ngo" y "t'u" that might be used by the phonetics of the name are not written. In his place we have the figure of a man who takes a very big hat, like that the Tibetan nomads still go in the prairies of the northeast of the Tibet, especially in the region where the Yellow river is born. The last word represents dzoba, that means to speak about someone"
We see that this writing is complicated tremendously. In fact it was not a writing that was used for the administration or the literature, but only for the ritual and religious activities. As the only ones that were reading them were the priests Dongbas, who had been trained in the essentials of the religion, his ceremonies, and the use of the sacred books, these were turning into his hands, a few hardware purely mnemonics.
Now we can see this fragment again of "The war between Dong and Shu", one of the most important myths of the Naxi, with which we were presenting the section of the names. The scholar Naxi translates his first words Is Limin (3):
"In the ancient times, when the sky and the ground still had not formed, the sun and moon still had not been created, the stars still had not arisen, mountains and ravines still had not formed, trees and stones still had not arisen …"
It seems that those who dominate the writing Dongba are used to realizing a phonetic use of his pictographs to name strange names. But unfortunately we do not meet anybody who could write your name.
If you could have interest visit the following page. If there are many interested persons we will try to look an artist who could offer conditions similar to those of Wei Hua with the Chinese.
To the Naxi it does not seem enough to have the most original writing of the planet to them. They still use between them another writing more, the called characters Geba. A phonetic writing considered by the Naxi the small sister of the writing Dongba, although possibly they have the same antiquity. This writing relies on with 686 characters and a big complexity, due to the numerous homophonia that it counts the language naxi. In spite of his complexity, several hundreds of books exist in writing Geba. The origin of these characters is nourished in a great part of the pictographs Dongba and the Chinese characters. Here we present some of his characters to you.
According to one of the last encyclopedic works published in Chinese on Naxi (4), there are still another two types of writing:
The writing Ruanke, used by the branch Ruanke de los Naxi, through which they live in the Eya region. His culture is very similar to that of the Naxi, but after the death of a person, it must be a Dongba Ruanke the one that leads the ceremony in his language. For what they count with 35 sacred books. Here we present a sample of his writing to you.
Nevertheless, the writing Masha is that better sample the love for the culture of the people Naxi, since this one was developed by a community of scarcely 100 families that came 200 years ago to the outskirts of Weixi, from the characters Dongba with which a shaman instructed.
(1) Spensley, Alys. - Under the Snow Mountain: Development in Lijiang and Its Effects on Naxi Culture. In Mitchell, Sam (ed). - Tourism and development in Yunnan. Kunming. 2003
(2) Rock, J.F. - The Na-khi Naga cults and related ceremonies. Rome. 1952
(2) Office of Publication and organization of ancient documents of the minorities of Yunnan. - Translation of the principal ancient documents of Dongba Naxi. Kunming. 1989
(3) Naxi zu wenhua daguan (Panorama of the culture Naxi). Publishing house of the Nationalities of Yunnan. Kunming. 1999
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