Archive for August, 2010

The Origin of the Horse, ho ʐua33 kɣ33 in Dongba, is a story that forms part of the Dongba ceremonial scripture used for redeeming the souls of the deceased, known as ‘presenting the funerary horse’. On the day of the ceremony, a funerary horse is presented to the deceased by their surviving children, to thank their parents for their upbringing. The funerary horse acts as a means of travelling to the land of the ancestors in the underworld.

You can see the scripture in full in the scriptures section of the website.

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Harvard University has a rather excellent digitised collection of Naxi manuscripts online here.

The collection contains 598 manuscripts and three funereal scrolls originally collected by Joseph Rock and Quentin Roosevelt, although only 21 manuscripts are dated (traditionally the Dongba scriptures are not dated), with the earliest being from 1826 and the latest from 1910.

The manuscripts all have their titles recorded in Naxi script and Naxi pinyin, presumably work done by Li Lincan and Zhu Baotian at the Institute.  The collection is worth a browse, but nothing is actually translated; they do however have a great collection of divination scriptures that I’m sure I will return to in the future.