These ancient handwritten copies of Yi ethnic documents preserved in Tsinghua University Library were collected by distinguished ethnologist Ma Xueliang (1913-1999) during the 1940s in Yunnan Province.

 

The study of ancient ethnic documents is a discipline focusing on documents written in Chinese languages other than Hanzi characters before the Revolution of 1911.

An interdisciplinary study of ancient Chinese documents and Chinese ethnic group languages and literature, it is considered a branch of Orientalism in international academia. It collects and collates ancient documents of China’s ethnic groups, to offer insight into the linguistic, historical and cultural context of the periods in which these documents were produced.

“Chinese people began to pay attention to ancient languages of ethnic groups one hundred years ago. But at the time, scholars tried to interpret these ‘strange’ writings just out of curiosity, without systematic theories and methodologies. Hence it was not an academic study in the real sense,” said Sichuan University Professor Nie Hongyin, who is vice-chairman of the Association of Chinese Ancient Ethnic Characters Research.
 

It was not until after the 1920s that scholars realized the importance of ancient documents of ethnic groups in China. These documents were plundered by foreign expeditions from China’s northwestern regions and then proved valuable for academic research, especially for Dunhuang research, a discipline that was in its infancy at that time.

Since then, Chinese scholars have set about collecting and studying ancient ethnic documents. In the 1950s, the authorities implemented a nationwide survey of languages used by ethnic groups, through which people became familiar with the intricacies of the usage and preservation of ethnic documents, and some writings that had previously been confined to a small community or ethnic group were discovered by the public.
 

These writing systems were created by ethnic groups. Some of the writings are thousands of years old, while some others were created at the beginning of the 20th century. They are of distinctive historical and cultural value because they are part of the culture of ethnic groups, said Li Jinfang, a professor from the Department of Minority Languages and Literature at Minzu University of China.

Despite their great value, some of them are still in urgent need of exploration and rescue, especially those on the verge of disappearance, Li said.

“The imperative task now is to carry out in-depth investigation and rescue work,” Li said. This is because ancient documents keep disappearing, and the number of people who can understand ancient documents is decreasing due to their age, and in some cases there is nobody who can read the documents, he added.
 

Nie identified another reason for shrinking of research in this area. He said some research institutions that used to lead the world are suffering from a lack of research personnel.

Therefore, what we should do is to organize documents we have collected, build databases, publish them and call for more capital input and more scholars to join this field, Nie said.
 

One way to expand the research is to employ digital technology to manage ancient documents, scholars said. Information technology can be used to take photos of documents, search and analyze characters, and carry out the extensive collection of materials, to help preserve, search and encode these documents.
 

One premise of this practice is to invent a set of codes for ancient documents, said Sun Bojun, a research fellow from the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. This work has been conducted for about 20 years. Currently, there are now 11 types of ethnic writings included in the international standard.
 

Nie said that in 2011 the predecessor to the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television launched “Database of Chinese Characters.” One program within the project, “Collection of and Building Database for Ethnic Ancient Writings,” is set to encode and build databases for 30 ancient writings, which will further promote research in this field.

 

 

 

Li Yongjie is a reporter at the Chinese Social Sciences Today.