You notice on the writing Nonuse (Yi)
The writing Yi has such a slightly clear history, like the proper Yi. Perhaps be the inherent difficulty which we meet when we want to define and know strange concepts to our culture, according to our own way of perceiving them. There are some legends that they speak that the writing Yi was invented about the VIIth or VIIIth century, although there is no steadfastness of his use up to the documents recorded in stone in writing Yi in the XVth century. Nevertheless the students have the suspicion that some of the books used by his pimos or traditional priests, they can be more ancient than the already well-known inscriptions.
On the other hand, his writing shows certain resemblances with the used one by the neolithic settlers of the village of Bampo, a population who lived more than 5.000 years ago in the outskirts of the current city of Xian, although the essays dedicated to this matter have not reached a conclusion.
The writing Yi supposes the whole challenge for the science and the traditional linguistics, since on one hand he does not keep relation with any of the writing of his nearby peoples, and on the other hand, considering his religious and ritual use limited to a priests' caste, numerous local changes exist, and at least four forms of writing have been recognized with important differences.
The writing Yi is a syllabic writing. But since the language Yi is fundamentally monosyllabic, traces of a possible evolution can be discovered in the writing from more archaic pictographs.
This way, the student Yi, Ayutieri, has dedicated big effort to investigate this relation of the characters of the Nuoso (the branch of the Yi that from his mountainous Liangshan bastion has preserved better his traditions) with the pictographs. (1) We Reproduce his interesting explanation on some of the characters related to the women.
We see that the ancient character for "mother" forms from the evolution of a pictograph of a pregnant woman, with the long hair and a long skirt. In the image simplified (to the right) he still emphasizes his protuberant belly and his long hair.
The character for "skirt" and "pants" we see that at first it was consisting of a pictograph of a woman getting up the skirt. Now there are emphasized the hands (the circle of the center) and the rims of the skirt that fall down up to the soil.
"Older sister" is represented like a woman with the long hair and the arms up. It dresses a skirt, which comes to him up to the soil, as it is habitual between the Nuoso. And two points stand out in the center of his body that represent his breasts.
"Younger sister", on the other hand, shares with the "older sister" all the attributes of the femininity. Unless his breasts still do not prove to be clear.
On the other hand we see that in some occasions, the modifications of certain characters, they continue rules that we might call pictográficas, like the derivatives of the eye. In those that we see as from a basic line used for eye, organs and functions are defined related to him, for the addiction of different affixes.
(1) Ayutieri. - Yi wen zixiang tangyuan. Publishing house of the Nationalities of Sichuan. Chengdu, 2001
(We request remove "nospam" of the direction of the message)