CENSUS, a general catalogue and index of Dongba manuscripts

You have selected to browse the collection of Dongba manuscript actually preserved in the Collection of Naxi Manuscripts of the Library of Congress, Asian Division, Washington, D.C.

The Collection of Naxi Manuscripts of the Library of Congress, Asian Division, Washington, D.C. is one the biggest of the Western world, and together with Harward Yenching collection (598 manuscripts), constitue the most important treasure of Naxi culture and Dongba tradition outside China.

The Library of Congress’s collection counts 3.342 Naxi manuscripts, thus is also the largest collection outside China and is considered the finest in the world—unrivaled in quality, quantity, and variety among Naxi collections in Europe, the People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan.

For detailed information about the collection please, consult the dedicated link: http://memory.loc.gov/intldl/naxihtml/about.html

Library of Congress’s collection staff also implemented a digital resource: selections from the Naxi Manuscript Collection were digitized by the Digital Scan Center, of the Library’s Information Technology Services Directorate. The image capture also took place at the Library of Congress. In order to preserve the originals, bound works were scanned face-up in their bindings, one page at a time. The master, or archival version of the pages (containing typography and line art), is a 300-dots-per-inch (dpi) color image in the TIFF format.

Actually the digital resource contains 185 manuscripts, a 39½ -foot funerary scroll, and an annotated catalog of the entire collection, the latter compiled by Professor Zhu Baotian and his staff.

Detailed information about the making of digital library of the selection of Naxi manuscripts here: http://memory.loc.gov/intldl/naxihtml/build.html

Manuscript collection was organized and displayed manuscript by manuscript in a numbered ordered list ordered by identification code of manuscript as catalogued from The LC staff:

Screenshot from LC website. Index of manuscript by Subject

Classification of manuscript by subject evinced some cathegories which coud be resumed below:

  1. Sacrifice to the Heaven (tag NZA, 20 mss.)
  2. Sacrifices to the Serpent King (tag NZC, 15 mss.)
  3. Romance and love-related ceremonies (tag NZD, 6 mss.)
  4. Sacrifices to the deceased (tag NZE, 6 mss.)
  5. Blocking malicious ghosts (tag NZF, 6 mss.)
  6. Sacrifices to the God of Bravery and Victory (tag NZI, 6 mss.)
  7. Ancestral worship (tag NZJ, 10 mss.)
  8. Casting out evil spirits (tag NZK, 4 mss.)
  9. For a better reincarnation (tag NZL, 7 mss.)
  10. Divination (tag NZM, 22 mss.)
  11. Ghosts and spirits (tag NZN, 21 mss.)
  12. Cards (tag NZ0, 59 items with related subject of previous categories)
  13. Zhu annotated catalog of manuscripts collection (tag letter form A to P related to previous tags for categories: 15 categories)

Sets represent a very good criterius for ordering and gathering manuscripts.

CENSUS will be implemented acccording to Zhu Baotian categorization work, with some integration (specification of sub-categories which will be nested into Zhu tree); CENSUS and Zhu Baotian categories will also be related and concordated with Harward-Yenching Collection criteria of classification of manusccripts.

Being the collection of more then two hundreds of items, it seemed useful to give to the user some instruments to select and browse a sub-groups of manusctipts: the author thought again as the ceremony to which manuscripts belong as the best system to sub-group them; all manuscripts of the collection, however, could be browsed at once.