TALES FROM THE YUNNAN WOODS
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A Selection of Nashi Manuscripts. Only
priests, or "tombas," wrote and used the Nashi's unique
pictographic manuscripts, a selection of which is shown
here. The oblong books, usually about 9 by 28 centimeters
and bound on the left margin, were used by priests to
guide them through ceremonies. The other books are Nashi
funeral
books, with drawings on one side and pictographic writing
on the other. (Nashi Manuscript Collection, Asian Division)
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Among those who contributed to the Library's Asian collections,
perhaps the most colorful was Joseph Rock. Explorer, adventurer,
and scientist, Rock was an Austrian who became a U.S. citizen
and spent much of his life in remote areas of western China,
sponsored at different times by National Geographic,
Harvard's Arnold Arboretum, the U.S. Department of Agriculture,
and the University of Hawaii. Despite the harsh local conditions,
Rock insisted on living in style. He trained a native cook to
prepare Western food and usually dined at an elegantly set table,
covered with a linen tablecloth. In photographs taken in some
of the most rugged territory of western China, Rock is seldom
seen without a coat and tie. The exception was when he posed
in elaborate local costumes, apparently for readers back home
who followed his adventures in the ten articles he wrote for National
Geographic between 1922 and 1935.
For many of the twenty-seven years he was active in China, Rock
made his headquarters near the town of Li Kiang in northwestern
Yunnan province, a remote territory of rugged mountains bordering
the Tibetan highlands to the west and north. It was there that
the explorer developed his lifelong interest in the people of
the area, the Nashi, called "Moso" by the Chinese.
Speaking a language belonging to the Tibeto-Burman family, the
Nashi were affected by both Tibetan and Chinese cultural influences.
They practiced a religion that drew heavily on Bon, the pre-Buddhist
religion of Tibet. Rock found that the Nashi used three different
forms of writing. The contemporary form was essentially a mix
of Chinese and Nashi. An older system, found in manuscripts dating
as far back as the fourteenth century, was a syllabic or phonetic
script called "Ggo-Baw" that was used only for transcribing mantras
and dharani (magic formulas). Ggo-Baw consisted of simple characters,
resembling those used by the nearby Lolo and Nosu tribes, as
well as Chinese characters. But Rock was most fascinated by the
third system, a unique form of pictographs dating back to at
least the thirteenth century and recorded in manuscripts used
in religious ceremonies. Rock devoted much of his time to studying
this system of pictographs and the religious ceremonies of the
Nashi. He also purchased as many of the manuscripts as possible.
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Nashi Priest (Tomba) Performing Naga
Cult Ceremony. During the Naga cult ceremony, the
tomba propitiates the serpent spirits, or Nagas, with
various offerings,
including medicine. On the table are symbols representing
the nine houses of the Naga, while the tomba holds a pictographic
book used to aid his memory during the ceremony. (Joseph
Rock Collection, Prints and Photographs Division)
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The Library holds a unique collection of over three thousand
Nashi pictographic manuscripts, about two-thirds of which came
from Rock. The remainder came to the Library in 1945 from Quentin
Roosevelt, a grandson of Pres.Theodore Roosevelt. Quentin's father,
Theodore, Jr., and his uncle, Kermit, met Rock when they passed
through Nashi territory on a hunting expedition in 1929. Their
stories apparently left a mark on the young Quentin who traveled
to Yunnan in 1939 to collect Nashi books that he used for his
undergraduate dissertation at Harvard. During World War II, Quentin
was back in China to serve as the Office of Strategic Service's
liaison with Chiang Kai-shek. After the war, he worked in China
for Pan American Airways and the China National Aviation Corporation
but died in an air crash on one of Hong Kong's islands in 1948.
Besides the Nashi manuscripts, the Library holds two rare Nashi
funeral scrolls, one painted on cloth and the other on paper.
The scrolls, both about forty feet long, contain a series of
individual paintings depicting devils, humans, and gods that
represent the three worlds through which the spirit must travel
after death. In a Nashi funeral ceremony, the coffin is placed
at the end of the scroll representing the levels of hell where
the soul must begin the journey to the realm of the Nashi gods.
The scroll is extended from the coffin toward the northeast,
with the farthest end containing the images of the gods, the
goal of the soul's journey. A Nashi priest, or "tomba," guides
the soul along the route. The visions of the underworld and the
various tortures the soul must endure are especially vivid in
the Library's scrolls.
A complete research guide to the Library's Nashi collection
is currently being prepared by Prof. Zhu Bao-Tian of the Yunnan
Provincial Museum.
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