Dongba script

The Dongba script is the picture writing of the Naxi people of Lijiang in Yunnan, named after the dongba, the ritual specialists who used it to write down their religious texts. Its signs, more than a thousand of them, are small drawings of people, animals, plants and objects, and they work largely as a memory aid: a dongba reads a manuscript by chanting a text he has learned by heart. How and when the script began is uncertain, and Naxi tradition tells its origin as a sacred legend. The handwritten books on handmade paper record myths, rituals and divination, and in 2003 UNESCO added the Ancient Naxi Dongba Literature Manuscripts to its Memory of the World register. Only a few masters can still read the scriptures fully, but the lively pictographs are everywhere in Lijiang, on shop signs and souvenirs and in courtyards where you can learn to write your own name.