Yang jie-hong  Yunnan University

Abstract: There are three main viewpoints to the nature of Naxi nationality’s Dongba religion: a primitive religion; a primitive polytheism religion, a transitional religion which from the primitive religion to the artificially founded religion. Owing to above different views of the Dongba religion’s nature, The paper again discussed this problem which Based on principles of historical development hierarchical, polytrophic, and Come to a conclusion that the nature of Dongba religion is a primary religion of Naxi nationality, which regarded the God worship as it’s core, and it including nature worship, ancestor worships, sacrificial offering activity and others corresponding system. This article unifies the cultural theory of relativity viewpoint, proposed owns view that how to treat; appraise a national main body culture in dialectically, and historically.

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Gao Huiyi  East China NORMAL University

Lisu’s Zhushu is one of primordial syllabic ethical character created by Wang Renbo in the very beginning of 1920s, who was one of Lisu wizards in Weixi county of Yunnan Province. There are certain unique but cherished cognitive values to the Written Language History, General Written Languages and Written Linguistic Comparison because of Zhushu’s special essence. The spoken culture about the generations is extensive and fairly valuable to the complete recognition on Lisu people. However, there is quite few persons who can recognize Zhushu at present. Zhushu is an endangered character through the analysis on the factors of religion, main culture and so on. The purpose is to appeal to save endangered characters so as to maintain harmonious society and multi-culture co-existence.

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Dr. Christine Mathieu

Professional anthropologist, independent scholar .

Ph.D Murdoch University Australia

“Divine Kings and Pictographs: the genealogical chronicles of the Lijiang Tusi and the Dongba manuscripts in the light of ethnohistory.”

Topic #1: Studies on Naxi history, language, scripts (writing systems), historical chronicles, religion, philosophy, literature, art, thoughts, politics, military, law.

Contents: a reading and analysis of the Mu genealogical chronicles; an ethnohistorical enquiry into the development of the Naxi Dongba scripts and ritual books.

Method of enquiry: An ethnohistorical method and anthropological method: kinship analysis, functionalist approach, structuralist approach, practice theory, discourse analysis, Marxist analysis, the comparative method in anthropology (mythology, ethnology); the history of religion; archaeological considerations; linguistics.

This paper explores two significant topics in Naxi history: the mysteries of the genealogical chronicles of the Mu Tusi, and the origins of the Naxi Dongba pictographs.  The author analyses the two genealogical chronicles of the Mu Tusi from the perspective of the ethnohistorical method. She argues that the differences in the lists of ancestors, names, dates and number of generations in those two chronicles can be explained in light of the known historical record, comparative mythology and kinship theory.  Her conclusions argue for the importance of these documents to the recovery of Naxi history, and in particular the history of the Naxi feudal system, the legitimacy of its successions and territorial appropriations, and Naxi ideological convictions.  The discussion will show that from the mid 16^th century, the Mu Tusi made a conscious and willing turn towards Confucianism, Chinese civilization and a stricter patrilineal regime, whilst within their realm, they remained attached to more traditional “Naxi” definitions of kingship and ritual.  The paper will also show that the Naxi custom of patrilateral cross-cousin marriage begins with the Mu Tusi, and that it is not symptomatic of a shift from matrilineality to patrilineality, or indicative of a historical split between Naxi and Moso, but rather it is indicative of a far reaching political reform that shifted the system of inter-tribal alliances from a matrilateral or bilateral system of marriage to a patrilateral system and played a significant role in transforming Lijiang from a tribal realm to a feudal territory.  The author will also argue that the Dongba played a central role in the feudalization of Lijiang and present a theory of the origins of the Dongba scripts and ritual books, in light of this historical proposition.

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