Chinese scientists have computerized the world's only living
pictorial language as part of their efforts to save the
Naxi
Dongba, an endangered ethnic minority culture.
Che Wengang, a professor with the Kunming
Science and Technology University, and Li Xi, a researcher with
the Dongba Culture Museum of Lijiang, says they have succeeded in
putting 2,120 Naxi pictograph characters into computer.
"It will provide a platform for protecting the 3,000-year-old
script, and help keep the precious culture alive," says Li, who has
spent ten years rescuing the language.
Che says it is a miracle to put an ancient pictorial language into
computer. "We have solved a lot of problems including coding
difficulty, because compared with alphabetic writing pictograph isa
sort of picture which is too complicated for a computer to
read."
Naxi people are a throwback to an earlier age when China's grandeur
flowed to the West along ancient caravan routes and richly robed
Taoist magicians commanded royal respect. With a population of
270,000, they live high in the rugged snow-capped mountains of
southwestern China's
Yunnan Province.
The group represents one of the world's last remaining matriarchal
societies, and is known to the world for its unique hieroglyphs,
ancient Naxi music and mysterious shaman-style rituals.
With their specific figures, fine form and special social and human
meaning, the Naxi hieroglyphs bear a striking resemblance toancient
Chinese characters and are considered the only pictorial language
still in use in the world.
Most of the Dongba scriptures were written at the height of the
Tang Dynasty (618-907) and represent the collected wisdom of
ancient Naxi tradition. Regarded as an encyclopedia, they include
works on philosophy, history, medicine, folklore and
literature.
Other pictorial languages, including Chinese bone-and-shell scripts
and those of ancient Egypt and Babylon, have already died out with
the passage of time.
"The pictograph is the Naxi's spiritual substance. People are
afraid that it will become extinct as the country rushes toward
market economy in the course of globalization," says Li.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization has put Lijiang, where most Naxi live, on the World
Cultural Heritage list. But incoming tourists and commercial
feverare putting pressure on conservation.
Although the Naxi pictograph is still used by older people,
fewyoung people understand the ancient language. Li reckons that
onlyten people can fully explain its meaning.
"Time is precious. So are resources. The question is, how can we
keep this culture alive?" says Zhao Shihong, who founded the Dongba
Cultural Research Center to preserve the dying heritage.
Zhao's center has managed to produce a Dongba dictionary and
translated more than 1,000 scriptures into modern Chinese.
As
training courses are opened for young people, more that 120 are
studying the old language.
Experts believe that in the information age the best way to protect
the Naxi pictograph is to computerize it, creating a database so
more young people can study it and experts worldwide can contribute
to protection efforts via the Internet.
( July 22, 2002)