The Dongba Sutras are ancient scriptures written in Naxi Dongba pictographic script and phonetic Geba script. They derive their name from being frequently chanted during Dongba cultural rituals. The Dongba Sutras originated from the oral chants of Dongba culture, the primal cultural tradition of the Naxi people. These oral scriptures gradually formed by absorbing a wealth of ancient historical legends, mythological tales, and folk sayings, as well as elements from the Tibetan Bon religion and original Naxi ritual practices. The language is refined and lyrical, making it easy to memorize and transmit from master to disciple across generations.
The Dongba Sutras are the sacred religious texts of the Naxi Dongba religion in Yunnan Province. They are written by Dongba priests using the ancient pictographic script known as Dongba script—often referred to as “the world’s only living pictographic writing system.” Their content is wide-ranging, encompassing creation myths, sacrificial rituals, nature worship, moral teachings, astronomy, calendars, medicinal knowledge, and more. As such, they serve not only as religious scriptures but also as an encyclopedia of ancient Naxi society.
Between approximately the 11th century and the mid-14th century—a span of about 300 years, from the reign of Emperor Renzong of the Northern Song Dynasty to the late Yuan Dynasty—Dongba culture began to systematically record its oral scriptures using pictographic writing on a large scale.
According to legend, the founder was Amin, a man of the Baidi people who is revered as a deity. Over generations, the Dongba priests—heirs and transmitters of ancient Naxi culture—continued to record, compile, and refine these texts. Through their efforts, the Dongba Sutras were gradually enriched and developed into the widely known and celebrated body of literature we see today.
Over the past century, the primary reason the Dongba Sutras have attracted the attention of scholars both in China and abroad is the uniqueness of their script. The sutras are written in Naxi pictographic script and phonetic Geba script. The Naxi pictographs are in a transitional stage between pictures and written language, forming a unique and complex hybrid of imagery and text. This system can convey abstract and intricate ideas.
Beyond their use in cultural and religious rituals, Dongba priests also employed this script in everyday life—for bookkeeping and correspondence—making it truly functional. For this reason, it is hailed as the world’s only existing “living” pictographic writing system.
Geba syllabic script, which came after the pictographic script, is a phonetic system where each character represents one syllable. The strokes are simple and unrelated to the shapes of things. The evolution from Naxi pictographs to Geba script demonstrates the progression of written language; it confirms that writing universally originated from drawings—there is no exception globally. From this, several shared principles of writing evolution can be deduced. Understanding these principles is of immeasurable value for deciphering ancient scripts and for the study of linguistics across all humanity.