Naxi Dongbahua
01 · Historical Records
Dongba painting emerged along with the formation of the Dongba religion of the Naxi people; its origins can be traced back to the ritual images drawn by Naxi ancestors in the Tang and Song dynasties. Dongba wooden tablet paintings are historically related to the 'human-faced wooden tablets' of the ancient Qiang people of the northwest during the Han period.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Dongba painting is an important component of the Dongba culture and art of the Naxi people, circulating in the ancient city district of Lijiang and Yulong Naxi Autonomous County, Yunnan Province. Its main subjects are the deities of Naxi folk belief, legendary ancestors, animals and the like, expressing the harmonious relationship between humanity and nature. The principal forms include scripture scroll paintings, wooden tablet paintings, paper tablet paintings and hanging scroll paintings. Dongba scripture scroll paintings include Dongba pictographic script, cover and binding paintings, scripture title pages and frontispiece illustrations. Dongba wooden tablet paintings are images painted on simply made wooden tablets; they are used mainly in the Naxi people's ground-insertion rituals, and are historically related to the 'human-faced wooden tablets' of the ancient Qiang people of northwest China during the Han period. Dongba hanging scroll paintings are mostly painted on linen or homespun cloth, mounted with blue cloth around the edges, with a mounting rod at the top and a roller at the bottom; the subjects are mostly the deities worshipped by the Naxi people. While inheriting traditional Naxi painting, the hanging scrolls also drew on the painting techniques of the Tibetan, Han and other peoples, and absorbed elements of Buddhist and Taoist culture, in particular the characteristics of Tibetan thangka iconography since the Yuan and Ming dynasties; incorporating all these influences, they formed a new kind of painting. The hanging scroll The Path of the Divine (Shenlu Tu) is a magnificent masterpiece of Dongba painting art: over ten meters long in total, composed of more than one hundred paneled sequential scenes, it depicts more than 360 human and animal figures on a vertical long scroll. Its scale is grand, its momentum spectacular and its craft superb, reflecting the Naxi consciousness of the immortality of the soul and the ethical ideal of perfecting life. Dongba painting uses mainly wooden boards, Dongba paper, linen and similar materials; outlines are drawn with a self-made bamboo pen dipped in pine-soot ink, and the areas are then filled in with various natural colors. The results are brilliant and colorful and do not fade even after several hundred years. Its painted images carry a strong primitive quality: expression is primarily linear, with little attention to the external proportions of things, yet they are plain and vivid, strange and mysterious, brimming with rustic vitality; the colors are mostly primary and dazzling to the eye.
Scripture pictures, wood-board paintings, cards and scrolls
The four main forms of Dongba painting: pictures in the manuscripts, board paintings planted in the ground for sacrifice, paper cards used for worship or as painters' models, and scrolls on hemp or homespun cloth with rod and axle.
The Road of the Gods
The masterpiece of Dongba painting: over ten metres long, made of more than a hundred framed episodes and depicting some three hundred and sixty figures and animals, it embodies the Naxi sense of an undying soul and of ethical self-perfection.
Bamboo pens dipped in pine-soot ink
Dongba painters draw outlines on wood slips, Dongba paper or hemp cloth with home-made bamboo pens dipped in pine-soot ink, then lay on natural colours that stay brilliant for centuries; line dominates and pure hues prevail.
He Shixian's Dongba paintings and pupils
He Shixian produced thirty-five scrolls of Dongba deities, a hundred and two board paintings, sixty-six divination cards and over a hundred and fifty illustrated manuscripts, and took eight disciples including Yang Jun, He Wanqiao and He Xiushan.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Naxi Dongba painting is found mainly in the ancient city district of Lijiang and Yulong Naxi Autonomous County, Yunnan Province, and is also transmitted in Naxi settlement areas such as Sanba in Shangri-La and Yongning in Ninglang; among these, the hanging scrolls of the Lijiang basin are the most exquisitely made.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Dongba paper tablet paintings are executed on self-made local paper and fall mainly into two categories: one is painted deity images, either set upright on the altar for worship or worn on the head of the officiating priest; the other consists of painting model books, which serve either as norms for painters or as teaching texts in the transmission of painting. These model books come in many kinds and can form a system of their own. Many of the images combine writing and painting, retaining strong characteristics of pictographic script; they are a 'living fossil' for the study of primitive painting art of humankind. He Xun (official archive record of the associated inheritor): Among the Naxi, anyone who can be called a 'Dongba' must fully master Dongba culture and be able to transmit it in its entirety. Painting is an essential requirement for a Dongba. He presided over hundreds upon hundreds of ritual ceremonies, each of which required a batch of Dongba paintings, so his painting ability and expressive technique continually improved. The content he depicted consisted mostly of all kinds of Buddhas and deities, plants and animals, demons and monsters, and various ritual implements, all of which the Naxi people worship and offer sacrifices to. Owing to advanced age, He Xun later painted rarely, but he continued to take on apprentices. Male, Naxi ethnicity, born in 1926, died in 2009, from Lijiang, Yunnan. Representative inheritor of Naxi Dongba painting, a national-level intangible cultural heritage item from the first batch. He Shixian (official archive record of the associated inheritor): Male, Naxi ethnicity, born in December 1942, from Yulong Naxi Autonomous County, Yunnan Province. He created 35 Dongba deity-image hanging scrolls, 102 wooden tablet paintings, 66 paper tablet paintings for divination, and illustrated more than 150 Dongba scripture books. He has collected more than one hundred Dongba scriptures and Dongba paintings predating the Republican era. For many years he independently and completely presided over various kinds of ritual ceremonies. In addition, every year he serves as a training instructor at the Dongba painting transmission base, passing on the craft. He enjoys high prestige among the Naxi Dongba and is honored as a great Dongba master. Representative inheritor of Naxi Dongba painting, a national-level intangible cultural heritage item from the fifth batch. He has successively taken on eight apprentices, including Yang Jun, He Wanqiao and He Xiushan, who have now mastered the Dongba painting skills indispensable to Naxi ritual ceremonies.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- He Xun 01-0062
- He Shixian 05-2580
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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