When Shelley and I began collecting Tibetan art, we knew very little about its deep and complex religious and historical significance. We acquired what we liked and let experts in the field interpret the iconography. And so, in those early days, we acquired some works that looked to us like Tibetan Buddhist paintings but were in a few cases Bon or Naxi. The art of the three traditions have some basic structural and aesthetic similarities, and the untutored admirer can easily confuse them. Once we began to learn more about these other traditions, we began to enjoy our few Bon and Naxi paintings even more.

The Naxi people are an ethnic minority of Yunnan Province, in southwestern China. Their culture has developed at a crossroad of the civilizations of China, Tibet, and South and Central Asia to produce a rich mythology and religious culture called Dongba. A folk religion with ancient roots in animism and shamanism, Dongba is a syncretic practice with elements of Chinese and Tibetan traditions and especially the Bon religion. Its corpus comprises about one thousand ceremonies and subceremonies, contained in extraordinary manuscripts written in the world's only living pictographic script. The Dongba priests are also artisans, and artists. While their art and artifacts show a connection to Tibet, China, and India, the Dongba religion is endowed with a unique aesthetic freedom and a vigorous and distinctive art and iconography.

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to Naxi art and culture through rare artifacts, many collected by Quentin Roosevelt--the grandson of the U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt--on his travels to China in 1939 at the age of nineteen, and Joseph Rock,who lived among the Naxi from 1922 to 1949. The objects include funeral scrolls, ceremonial banners, paintings, and crowns and ritual implements such as trumpets, bells, and swords, as well as pictographic manuscripts. The book provides essays on Dongba art, religion, ritual language and scripts, Naxi history and society,and biographical pieces on Quentin Roosevelt and Joseph Rock.

Donald Rubin / Foreword

Lenders

Christine Mathieu/Notes to the Reader

Cindy Ho/Quentin Roosevelt's China: Eighteen Years in the Malting

Christine Mathieu / Acknowledgme nts

Christine Mathieu / I ntrod u ctio n

Martin Brauen/A Memorable Journey to the Naxi: Quentin Roosevelt's Legacy

Guo Dalie/A Brief History of the Naxi People

HeLimin/My Experience of Dongba Religion and Art

Christine Mathieu /The Oongba Religion

Alexis Michaud/Pictographs and the Language of Naxi Rituals

He Zhonghua/Naxi Women and the Dongba Tradition

Lamu Gatusa/On the Mosuo Daba Religion

Christine Mathieu/Interview with Professor Yang Fuquan

Silvia B. Sutton/Joseph Rock: Restless Spirit

Reprinted with permission of The China Institute

Catalog

Bibliography

Index