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Dongba script
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Dongba | ||
|---|---|---|
| Type: | pictographic with some phonetic elements | |
| Languages: | Naxi language | |
| Time period: | 1000 C.E. to the present | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
The Dongba script, also known as Tomba or Dto-mba is used by the Dongba of the Naxi people. Together with the Geba script and the Latin alphabet, it forms a component of the Naxi script. It is about a thousand years old. Most of the symbols in the script are pictographic in nature, but some of them are used phonetically, as in the cases of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Sumerian scripts.
The script is written on handmade paper, with sheets sewn together at the left edge, forming a book. The pages are ruled horizontally with the ideographs written in three or five sections within these rules.
The script is used solely as an aid to the interpretation of ritual texts during ceremonies, it is reputated to have more than 2000 symbols in 20,000 religious scriptures.
The Ethnologue project claims that it is "not practical for everyday use, but is a system of prompt-illustrations for reciting classic texts".[1]. A scholar concludes it is "unlikely that it [the Dongba script] would make the minor developmental leap to becoming a full-blown writing system. It arose a number of centuries ago to serve a particular ritual purpose. As its purpose need not expand to the realm of daily use among non-religious specialists — after all, literate Naxi today, as in the past, write in Mandarin Chinese — at most it will but continue to fulfill the needs of demon exorcism, amusing tourists and the like."[2]
- ^ Naxi at the Ethnologue
- ^ Seaver Johnson Milnor, "A Comparison Between the Development of the Chinese Writing System and Dongba Pictographs"
- Dr. Richard S. Cook, Naxi Pictographic and Syllabographic Scripts: Research notes toward a Unicode encoding of Naxi
- Lawrence Lo, Ancient Scripts: Naxi