Naxi Dongba

CENSUS: Dongba Manuscripts General Catalogue

CENSUS GENERAL CATALOG of DONGBA MANUSCRIPTS: the CATEGORIES

• + Nature ancestral ceremonies
  1. Sacrifice to the heaven
  2. Sacrifice to the spirit of victory
  3. Ancestral rituals
• Ceremonies for serpent deities (Naga cult)
• + Funerary ceremonies
  1. Cult of ancestors
  2. Cult of Dongba Shilo
  3. Cult of the Worthy

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CENSUS, a general catalogue and index of Dongba manuscripts

   

Introduction to CENSUS categories

Manuscripts belonging to Dongba pictographic tradition are religious scriptures, dedicated to certain ceremony of Naxi Dongba religious tradition. This is a foundamental and common feature to all manuscripts which CENSUS means to reflect into manuscripts' general index implementation, thus this structure shoud be reproduced into manuscript's catalogation and layout.

Moreover, being CENSUS a global catalog of Dongba manuscripts, and because of existence of many collections of Dongba manuscripts organized and implemented with criteria and solutions, one independently to the others, CENSUS aims to be convergence system, a resuming resource-point of Naxi - Dongba manuscripts.

This, in practice, consists in implementing a new type of archive, a databse system projected directly on the whole manuscripts' corpus of Dongba tradition, and not just implemented over a local collection, which the wider it could be, it always could be considered as a partial representation of Naxi - Dongba pictographic literature.

CENSUS thus is thougth to be implemented grounding on Dongba ceremonial corpus, which to every pictographic manuscripts written was dedicated, so adopting this skeletons as its architecture CENSUS system is implemented as a meta-system, able to cross-over the etherogeneity and differences made by peculiar approaches used by idependent collections and various institution which possess Dongba manuscripts.

The first step for CENSUS architecture implementation then consisted in understanding the local colections' architecture for catalogation and layout of manusctipts; again the pilot resources because of web-availability of data were the Library of Congress and the Harward Yenching Library, which evinced the following cathegories:

1. The Harvard Yenching Library Naxi Manuscript Collection
   1. Worship to Dongba Shiluo
   2. Worship of the Dragon King
   3. Worship to the Wind
   4. Prayers for Long Life
   5. Worship for the Worthy
   6. God of Victory
   7. Worship to the House Gods
   8. For the Living
   9. Remove Filthiness
   10. Closing the Door to Death
   11. Venerating the Dead
   12. Divination
   13. Lingza Scripture
   14. Scrolls
2. The Collection of Naxi Manuscripts of the Library of Congress, Asian Division, Washington, D.C.
   1. Sacrifices to Heaven - Ji tian
   2. Sacrifices to the Highest Deity - Ji shi luo
   3. Sacrifices to the Serpent King - Ji Long wang
   4. Romance and love-related ceremonies - Ji feng
   5. Blocking malicious ghosts - Guan si men
   6. Prayers for longevity - Qiu shou
   7. Aspirations for wisdom - Ji xian
   8. Sacrifices to the God of Bravery and Victory - Ji sheng li
   9. Ancestral worship - Ji zu
   10. Casting out evil spirits - Chu sui
   11. For a better reincarnation - Ti sheng
   12. Divination - Zhan bu
   13. Ghosts and Spirits - Gui shen lei
   14. Naxi pictographic art - Hui hua
   15. Harrison Photostat Collection

Analysys and cross-study of manuscripts and manuscripts' indexes of the two collections permitted the identification of the following concordances:

Library of Congress	Harward Yenching
Sacrifices to Heaven - Ji tian
Sacrifices to the Highest Deity - Ji shi luo	Worship to Dongba Shiluo
Sacrifices to the Serpent King - Ji Long wang	Worship of the Dragon King
Worship to the Wind
Blocking malicious ghosts - Guan si men	Closing the Door to Death
Prayers for longevity - Qiu shou	Prayers for Long Life
Aspirations for wisdom - Ji xian
Sacrifices to the God of Bravery and Victory - Ji sheng li	God of Victory
Ancestral worship - Ji zu
Casting out evil spirits - Chu sui	For the Living
For a better reincarnation - Ti sheng
Divination - Zhan bu	Divination
Ghosts and Spirits - Gui shen lei
Naxi pictographic art - Hui hua
Harrison Photostat Collection
	Worship to the House Gods
	Remove Filthiness
Sacrifices to the Deceased - Ji si zhe	Venerating the Dead
	Worship for the Worthy

 

Such concordances then were cross-referred to Jospeh Rock classification of Naxi - Dongba ceremonies with the following scores:

Joseph Rock	Library of Congress	Harward Yenching
Nature worship (earliest primitive ceremonies)	Sacrifices to Heaven - Ji tian
Funerary ceremonies	Sacrifices to the Highest Deity - Ji shi luo	Worship to Dongba Shiluo
Propitiation of Nagas 1Ssu, serpent spirits	Sacrifices to the Serpent King - Ji Long wang	Worship of the Dragon King
2Har 2la 1llu 3k'o - propitiate soul of suicides or people died an unnatural death
Romance and love-related ceremonies - Ji feng	Worship to the Wind
Prevention of Evil arising from the Sky and Land	Blocking malicious ghosts - Guan si men	Closing the Door to Death
Prolongation of life	Prayers for longevity - Qiu shou	Prayers for Long Life
	Aspirations for wisdom - Ji xian
Nature worship (earliest primitive ceremonies)	Sacrifices to the God of Bravery and Victory - Ji sheng li	God of Victory
Nature worship (earliest primitive ceremonies)	Ancestral worship - Ji zu
Propitiation and eviction of demons	Casting out evil spirits - Chu sui	For the Living
	For a better reincarnation - Ti sheng
Books of divination	Divination - Zhan bu	Divination
Propitiation and eviction of demons	Ghosts and Spirits - Gui shen lei
	Naxi pictographic art - Hui hua
	Harrison Photostat Collection
Ceremonies for prosperity of family and herds
Propitiation of Mountain and Tutelary spirits
Marriage ceremony		Worship to the House Gods
Purification		Remove Filthiness
Funerary ceremonies	Sacrifices to the Deceased - Ji si zhe	Venerating the Dead
Funerary ceremonies		Worship for the Worthy
Inviting ancestors
Elimination of accumulated sins
Ceremonies performed by Llu-bu or San-nyi

According to identified concordances CENSUS General Cataolgue cathegories were deduced, implementing wider set named according to Rock wider groups of Naxi Dongba ceremonial corpus and labelled with capital roman letter, nesting inside such wider gropus smaller sets labelled with lower roman letters implemented according to Dongba ceremonial corpus subdivision and collections' internal classifications.

Joseph Rock categories	Zhu Baotian (Library of Congress)	Harward Yenching Library	CENSUS MAIN	CENSUS sub	CENSUS Id
Nature worship (earliest primitive ceremonies)	Sacrifices to Heaven - Ji tian		Nature ancestral ceremonies	Sacrifice to the heaven	Aa
Funerary ceremonies	Sacrifices to the Highest Deity - Ji shi luo	Worship to Dongba Shiluo	Funerary ceremonies	Cult of Dongba Shilo	Hb
Propitiation of Nagas 1Ssu, serpent spirits	Sacrifices to the Serpent King - Ji Long wang	Worship of the Dragon King	Ceremonies for serpent - Naga cult		F
2Har 2la 1llu 3k'o - propitiate soul of suicides or people died an unnatural death			Funeray ceremonies for innatural deaths	Violent death	Oa
	Romance and love-related ceremonies - Ji feng	Worship to the Wind	Funeray ceremonies for innatural deaths	Suicides	Ob
Prevention of Evil arising from the Sky and Land	Blocking malicious ghosts - Guan si men	Closing the Door to Death	Ceremonies for prevention of evil coming		D
Prolongation of life	Prayers for longevity - Qiu shou	Prayers for Long Life	Ceremonies for longevity		L
	Aspirations for wisdom - Ji xian		Undefined	Aspirations for wisdom - Ji xian	Ra
Nature worship (earliest primitive ceremonies)	Sacrifices to the God of Bravery and Victory - Ji sheng li	God of Victory	Nature ancestral ceremonies	Sacrifice to the spirit of victory	Ab
Nature worship (earliest primitive ceremonies)	Ancestral worship - Ji zu		Nature ancestral ceremonies	Ancestral rituals	Ac
Propitiation and eviction of demons	Casting out evil spirits - Chu sui	For the Living	Ceremonies for propitiation and evicting of demons		N
	For a better reincarnation - Ti sheng		Undefined	For a better reincarnation - Ti sheng	Rb
Books of divination	Divination - Zhan bu	Divination	Divination		M
Propitiation and eviction of demons	Ghosts and Spirits - Gui shen lei		Ceremonies for propitiation and evicting of demons		N
	Naxi pictographic art - Hui hua		Undefined	Naxi pictographic art - Hui hua	Rc
	Harrison Photostat Collection		Harrison Photostat Collection	Harrison Photostat Collection	S
Ceremonies for prosperity of family and herds			Ceremonies for prosperity		B
Propitiation of Mountain and Tutelary spirits			Ceremonies for propitiation of tutelary spirits		C
Marriage ceremony		Worship to the House Gods	Ceremonies for marriage and family		E
Purification		Remove Filthiness	Ceremonies for purification		G
Funerary ceremonies	Sacrifices to the Deceased - Ji si zhe	Venerating the Dead	Funerary ceremonies	Cult of ancestors	Ha
Funerary ceremonies		Worship for the Worthy	Funerary ceremonies	Cult of the Worthy	Hc
Inviting ancestors			Ceremonies for ancestors		I
Elimination of accumulated sins			Elimination of accumulated sins		P
Ceremonies performed by 2Llu 1bu or 2Ssan 1nyi			Ceremonies performed by Lu-bu or San-nyi		Q
	Scrolls	Scrolls	Scrolls		T
		Lingza Scripture	Undefined	Geba titlepage	Rd

Finallly, from previous resuming table implemented doruing CENSUS categories identification, an ordined list of CENSUS cathegories of Dongba manuscripts corresponding to the left navigation main menù.

     

Xiulong - Stefano Zamblera, 02/01/2010 h. 10:34