Language

The nationality has a language of her own in both spoken and written form that identifies with the Yi branch of the Tibeto-Burman family in the Sino-Tibetan laguage system. As early as 1,000 years ago, the Naxi people had already created pictographic characters called Dongba script, the only living pictographic writing system in the world today. The Naxi forebears left their descendants with a rich, unique cultural "Dongba" heritage enriched by assimilating many foreign elements.

The Dongba characters are a rare pictograhic script still in use today. The classical work Dongba Jing written in the language consists of more than 1,000 volumes covering an amazingly wide range of knowledge or subjects: the origin of the human kind, social history, animal husbandry, religion, philosophy, linguistics, astronomy, geology, arts, literature, medical science, and relations between ethnic groups. Of these volumes, the most outstanding one is the heroic epic titled Congbangtong. It deals with the creation of the world from a unique point of view held by the Naxi people. It also touches upon many philosophical issues in classic Naxi dialectical wit showing the deep insights of the ancient Naxi culture.