I’ve always wanted to translate some more examples of secular Dongba text as there are plenty of people who still believe the script to be not much more than a ritual tool. The following text (essentially a record of a prescription payment) was collected and published by Naxi scholar Yu Suisheng 喻遂生 in his Naxi Dongbawen Yanjiu Conggao 纳西东巴文研究丛稿 (pp 264-66). It is an extract from the notebook of an old Dongba priest, who would jot down notes to help him remember important pieces of information. The text is not dated, but is a good example of everyday use of the script.

In the book (read from top to bottom, starting from the left):

In IME (read from left to right):

Line 1

Naxi: he33 / hua33 / to21

English word for word: He / Hua/ board (Yu Suisheng gives no gloss for this line; I believe this character is used as a loan for ‘mixing together medicine’, ie. prescription, as Rock gives the meaning: “to put together; to mix, as medicine” in his Na-Khi English Encyclopedic Dictionary)

Line 2

Naxi: tʂhər55 / ɤɯ33* / tshe21 / ŋi21 / thɯ21

English word for word: generation / bull* / salt (loan for tshe21, ten) / two / to drink, used here as a measure word, indicating number of draughts, the Chinese tie 帖

* the first two characters read together are phonetic loans for medicine, tʂhər55 ɤɯ33. Naxi script has its own character for medicine, with the same pronunciation

Line 3

Naxi: thɯ21 / se21 / me33,

English word for word: drink / mountain goat (loan for se21, auxiliary indicating finished action) / modal particle

Line 4

Naxi: dɯ21 / thɯ21 / dɯ21 / tʂu55 / ua33 / ɕi33 / iə21.

English word for word: large (loan for dɯ21, one) / draught / one / awl (loan for tʂu55 , string (of money – valued at about 1,000 copper coins)) / five / hundred / tobacco plant (loan for iə55, give)

Line 5

Naxi: he33 hua33* ɕɘ24 fv55 me33

English word for word: moon / white bird* / phonetic geba character ɕɘ24, chicken / mouse (loan for khv55, year) / modal particle

*these two characters are used together phonetically to represent ‘He Hua’, a name

Line 6

Naxi: tʂhua33 / ŋi21 / py33 / tɕɘ55 / iɘ55* / ua33 / tʂu55.

English word for word: rice / two / litres / scissors / tobacco* / five / strings

*the characters ’scissors’ and ‘tobacco’ are used together as loans for tɕɘ55 iɘ55, money

English Translation:

Prescription for He Hua

12 draughts of medicine were drunk, 1,500 wen were given for each draught. In the year of the rooster, He Hua (gave) two litres of rice and 5,000 wen.

Extra notes:

There are 27 syllables and 27 characters (26 Dongba pictographs, and 1 geba phonetic). There are 15 phonetic loan characters, 58% of the total. 11 of those loans are of identical phonetic value, the other 4 are of similar phonetic value.

The most recent year of the rooster was 2005.

A note on some of the terminology
The article was originally written in Chinese, and did not contain any Naxi phonetics or Dongba script. Proper Naxi nouns are therefore transcribed in pinyin. Using my dictionaries I have traced the original Naxi for some of the terms:

sɪ55 – the family or life god, analogous to the Tibetan ’srog lha’, God of Life. The pictograph depicts a sacrificial bowl.

sɪ55 tɤ21 – the name of the ritual (Suzhu) and also the sacrificial ‘basket’ used therein (see picture).

ɕy55 le33 dʑi21 – the pine ladder (one of the implements placed into the basket). Here pine is read ‘ɕy55′ and the ladder is ‘le33 dʑi21′.

tse55 tse33 hæ21 lɤ33 me33 – the sacred stone. ‘hæ21′ meaning gold, in the top right corner, is a phonetic element.

dʑy21 na55 ʂɪ55 lo33 – the sacred mountain.

Worship of the family God – the wedding ritual of “Suzhu”

translated by Zhao Xiuyun

During a traditional Naxi wedding, a ritual named Family God Worship, or “Suzhu” [sɪ55 tɤ21], must be held. “Su” [sɪ55] is the life god of the whole family according to the Naxi traditional belief system. When a traditional wedding is held, the bride’s family should hold a ritual named “Separation of the God Su” so as to separate the bride’s soul from the collective souls of her family, as well as to prevent the loss of other family members’ souls. At the bridegroom’s house, the God Su should be worshipped, a ritual which includes putting butter on the foreheads of the new couple. This ritual is held so as to put the ‘Su’ soul of the bride into the ‘Su basket’ (pictured) where the life god of the bridegroom’s family resides. The holding of this ritual indicates that the bride formally becomes a member of the bridegroom’s family, and that their marriage will be accepted by society. The essential aspect of this ritual is to join the souls of the bride and bridegroom together, and allow the soul of the bride to become a member of the life god of the bridegroom’s family.

In the ritual of ‘Suzhu’, many Dongba scriptures should be chanted, including: “Invoking God Su·Expelling Impurities “, “Invoking God Su·Burning the Sacred Lamp”, “Invoking God Su·Burning Incense “, “Invoking God Su·Sacrifice Animals”, “Invoking God Su · the Origin of Sacred Medicine”, “Invoking God Su·Sacrifice Food to God Su”, “Invoking God Su·the Origin of Sacred Butter and Smearing the Butter”, “Invoking God Su·Praying for Good Luck”, and “Invoking God Su·Saying Auspicious Words”.

In the basket that represents the place where the God Su resides, there are Su arrows, a pagoda made from green cypress, a pine tree ladder [ɕy55 le33 dʑi21], a yellow oak sacred Su stick, and a sacred stone. Among them, the arrow represents the three generations of the family, including the father, the son and the grandchildren; the five color silk strings or cloth stripes represent the main elements of life, namely wood, fire, earth, metal and water. The pagoda represents the place where Su rests. The pine ladder has nine steps and represents the necessary path that the God Su must pass to bless the family with luck and prosperity.

In the Dongba manuscripts, there are many origin stories regarding the smearing of butter in the ritual of Suzhu, or the sacred arrow or sacred stones in the Su basket. For example, in the Dongba manuscript entitled “Worship God Su – Smearing the Sacred Butter”, the following is written:

“(If you) don’t know the origin of the nine cakes of butter, you cannot do anything related to the sacred butter; and you cannot say anything related to the sacred butter either. Hence, (we) should talk firstly about the origin of the sacred butter. Danpanyuhua, is a man who lives in heaven beside the heavenly gate. Beside him, lives Jiushou, a divine lady who smiles all the time and never becomes old. There is also a domestic animal named Ketaolabeng which whistles all the time. Its milk never runs dry. Jiushou milks Ketaolabeng, the domestic animal every day, bringing her a silver milk pail. She gets three pails of milk each morning, and nine pails over three days. One morning’s milk can make three cakes of butter, and three days’ milk makes nine cakes of butter. The butter is taken as God Su’s sacred butter and that is the origin of the sacred butter of God Su.”

“The Origin of the Sacred Arrow” is narrated as follows:

“When there is change between the father of rattan bamboo and the mother of rank grass bamboo, blackish bamboo appears. The white sickle comes to cut the blackish bamboo and makes the God Su arrow by using the three joints of the bamboo. The metal arrowhead is then divided into three joints. These represent the father, son and the grandchildren, three generations of the family, and the five color silk strings or cloth stripes on the three joints of the metal arrowhead represent the main elements of life, including wood, fire, earth, metal and water. Later, the arrow should be placed into the Su basket…”

The following is recorded in the “Origin of Sacred Stone”:

“Sibajibu went out to find sacred stones. He found a sacred stone, a stone which looked like silver, from a mountain; Gemajimu went out to find sacred stones. She found a sacred stone, a stone which looked like gold by the riverside. A change occurred in a place where the river and mountain did not notice, and 360 stones were formed. (Let’s) make a God Su Stone by using the stone that looks like black jade and put it into the Su basket. It is as stable as the sacred Junaruoluo [dʑy21 na55 ʂɪ55 lo33] mountain and its life is as long as the life of the sacred stone named Zhenzenhanllumei [tse55 tse33 hæ21 lɤ33 me33].”

If jade is not polished,
it cannot become a thing of use

If a man does not learn,
he cannot know his duty towards his neighbour

(translation by Herbert Giles)

Interestingly, this can be rendered in Naxi thusly (according to my collection Dongba aphorisms 常用东巴文字明言俗语, written by He Baolin 和宝林):

Naxi:

o21 tʂ’u21 me33 ze33 na21 me33 piə33

so21 bɯ33 me33 ɣ33 du21 me33 sɪ33

English word-for-word:

green jade / black jade / not / cut (phonetic loan from ze33, flying ghost) / item, instrument (phonetic loan, from na21, black) / not / become (phonetic loan from piə33 seashell)

study / want (phonetic loan from piə33 kɯ55, belt) / intention (phonetic loan from ɣ33, dance) / wisdom (this character represents the male God of wisdom)/ not / understand (phonetic loan from sɪ33, sage)

So the Naxi is roughly equivalent to the English “jade that is not cut will not become an instrument, [he] who does not have the desire to study will not understand wisdom”.

I find it odd that the three character triplets have been mangled in the Naxi by the seeming insertion of extra characters: the first line uses two characters for jade (one for green, one for black), and the second line by the use of both ‘want’ and ‘intention’, which again seems superfluous.

That said, I am by no means fluent in Naxi so there may be reasons for the wording beyond my (very) limited comprehension.

On a path leading up the hill that is, according to legend, the final resting place of the mythical tribal leader, we passed a large ceremonial cauldron with two characters inscribed on its front (see below).

I immediately recognised the second character (on the left) as the (in this case pictographic) Dongba character for ‘garlic’, gɤ33, which is often used in Dongba scriptures as a phonetic loan for the Naxi gɤ33, roughly equivalent to the modal ‘will’. Of course, there’s no way that it actually meant ‘garlic’, after all this is in Western Zhejiang province, not Northwest Yunnan, right? It’s actually fairly obviously a pictographic representation of a 鼎 ding (cauldron), and a quick visit to Chinese Etymology confirms that it is indeed a Bronze character for 鼎 – . The first character is Bronze script for 禹, so the characters translate to ‘Yu’s cauldron’. The cauldron itself is classified as a 方鼎 fangding (square cauldron).

It’s neat that two pictographs can be so exactly alike, and yet have such different meanings. In fact I’d be interested if anyone can elucidate the pictographic representation of ‘garlic’ in gɤ33, as I’m just not seeing it. If you told me it was a cat’s head in upward motion, now that’s something I could believe…

I noticed on a recent trip to Lijiang that the shop signs along some of the city’s major shopping streets have all been redone – now with added Dongba script – sometime over the past half year. Previously a majority of shops in the old town proper had shop names translated into the Dongba script on their signs, but now most of the shops on Minzhu Road 民主路 (a busy new-town thoroughfare that loops round the western edge of the old town) boast Dongba script on their signage as well. I assume this is the result of local government policy.

This is interesting because many major brands have been forced to come up with Dongba names, but it’s also slightly irrelevant because the vast majority of people will have no idea what the script says.

I have photographed a couple of examples

1. China Unicom

You can’t go very far in urban or rural China without seeing a China Unicom shop or logo. The Dongba script here is a simple phonetic translation of 中国联通: , tʂu33 kuə55 lər21 t’o33,the four characters here literally translate to awl, scraper, shout and pine. Note there has been no attempt to translate the meaning of zhongguo – China, and liantong – link together (certainly the Naxi have a word for ‘China’, ha33 ba33 dy21, that translates as ‘land of the Han’. I suppose it’s easier this way when actually speaking Naxi, as people will recognise the name China Unicom phonetically.

2. Crossstitch shop

This little shop sells various cross stitch DIY kits. Notice that the Chinese for cross stitch, 十字绣 shizixiu has been translated into Naxi as the single character da33, a verb meaning ‘to sew/stitich’. Also check out the incorrect pinyin ‘xiou’, I guess the farther you get from the centre of the universe (Beijing), the more mistakes crop up in pinyin.


This cannot be a really serious measure to promote the local written language, and I’m more inclined to think of it as a tourism gimmick. I can hardly imagine a distressed KFC or China Unicom Lijiang area manager calling head office asking for an official translation of the company name in Naxi, and the translations were probably all done by a team of several Naxi Dongba priests with no system of verifying translations for their phonetic/semantic accuracy. But its interesting nonetheless.

Anyway, Li points out that the character , monkey, read y21, is also used to represent y21, ‘ancestors’ in the Naxi language (as they share the same pronunciation). In Fang’s dictionary, it appears as a phonetic loan character for ‘ancestors’. It’s worth noting that father-in-law, y21 p’e33, is ; the y21 is represented phonetically by the monkey head and the p’e33 by the character for washcloth, p’e33.

Whilst Rock doesn’t note ‘ancestor’ as a common reading for y21, he does have the entry y21 gə33, with the meaning “the ancestors’ (belonging to the ancestors)”. gə33 is the possessive particle in Naxi, similar to the Chinese 的.

But Li, while not going so far as claiming that the Naxi were the first to discover evolution, does note that the fact the monkey character is so used points to an implicit understanding that we share common ancestry with primates. I’m not quite convinced; a lot of research would need to be done to prove that it’s not just a phonetic loan, but it’s still an interesting little bit of knowledge. At any rate, some Dongba scriptures I’ve come across say that people evolved from frogs…

I was fairly surprised to see what looked like Dongba characters on an advert whilst riding the bus (on one of those horrid bus televisions) over the Qiantang River in Hangzhou, advertising the new Hangzhou Taobao/Koubei discount card. So as soon as I got home I did a quick check on the internet, and lo and behold, the card design has five Dongba characters representing the Chinese 吃喝玩乐行, or, eat, drink, play, have fun, travel.

Everyone in China will already know all about Taobao (an online marketplace) and Koubei (an online review site). The card allows you to get discounts in various stores across Hangzhou, and you can accumulate points that can then be exchanged for goodies, or so I gather.

There are a few differences in these characters to the ones in my IME (based on those collected in Fang Guoyu’s dictionary), for example the character they use for ‘drink’ depicts someone sitting down and the beverage is distinctly tea, but they are all completely recognisable.

We have (from top, clockwise):

dzər33, sing

dʑə21, travel

ts’o33, dance

dzɪ33, eat

t’ɯ33, drink

I can’t find any high res images of the card, and I’m probably not going to be getting one myself, but here’s a low res version:

(Note the ‘VIP’ in gold letters; the acronym has been so devalued of late in China that it’s basically meaningless now).

For a start, it looks like a guy trapped in the sun. But it actually represents the reflection seen in a circular copper mirror, and the lines along the circle depict the shining, reflective nature of the mirror’s surface.

In contrast, the oracle bone character for the Chinese jian 监, observe from above, depicts a person looking into a bowl of water, to see their own relfection: ; water being the most primitive form of mirror.

According to the oracle bone researcher Dong Zuobin, there is a pictographic Ruoka (’若喀’, a branch of the Naxi ethnicity) character for mirror that looks something like this: .  Again, this is a copper mirror, and Dong proposes that the markings along the edge indicate that it is of a Tang dynasty style, and thus comes to the conclusion that these copper mirrors only reached the mountainous Naxi areas of Northwestern Yunnan by the Tang dynasty.

I’ve seen a lot of copper mirrors in museums around China, and they have never seemed particularly reflective; but I suppose that’s just due to age and a thick layer of copper oxide. Genuine antique copper mirrors are, naturally, extremely valuable, so they’re definitely something to look out for in Lijiang’s many antique and bric-a-brac shops.

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

During the ceremony, the bereaved buys the funerary horse; and whilst the Dongba reads the Origin of the Horse story, the horse is cleansed, and presented to the deceased. The deceased then rides the funerary horse toward the ancient kingdom of the ancestors. Thus the happiness and positive energy of the deceased is passed onto their descendants.

The horse’s origins as related by Naxi researcher 和力民 He Limin:

In the very beginning, the great roc and the peacock were the father and mother of the horse. Together they laid nine pairs of white eggs, which many animals came to try and incubate, but none could hatch the horse. In the end, the eggs were carried to a lake by a stream of water, where the White Wind and the Black Wind blew, creating a large wave. The wave crashed the eggs against a cliff face, causing the eggs to crack, and the horse was born.

The horse, the wild horse and the yak were all brothers from the same father but different mothers. The horse and the wild horse held a test of strength, which the wild horse lost, and the horse and the yak fell out. The horse said to the wild horse, “go and throw in your lot with man”, but the wild horse replied “man eats the meat of the animals, wears the skin of the animals; I will not throw in my lot with them, but turn instead to Shu [the Naxi God of nature].” The horse said “man will feed me wheat in a silver dish, and bring me water in a golden bowl”, so the horse threw in his lot with man, and became the domesticated horse.

A ball of fire fell from the sky, landing on the palm tree to which the domesticated horse was tied. The palm tree burnt to the ground, and the horse fled. Man went into the mountains looking for the horse, taking with him a lump of salt and grains of red wheat. When man found the horse, the horse said that it had had three nightmares. Man consoled the horse, saying that the dreams were not nightmares, but good portents. Man also promised in front of the Gods that he would care for the horse, and never eat its meat or wear its skin. Man then helped the horse take revenge on its brothers, killing the yak and shooting the will horse. He then used the yak’s meat and the wild horse’s heart as a sacrifice to the God of Victory, and used the blood of the wild horse to purge the God of Victory of uncleanliness.

The wild horse is substituted for a wild donkey in some versions of the story.

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.