Do.M.En.I. introduction & presentation

Do.M.En.I. Research project targets could be resumed as follow:

  • defining and building a codify schema for encoding Dongba pictograph manuscripts according to TEI recommendetions
  • implementing Corpora of encoded Dongba manuscripts according to TEI recommendetions
  • creation a global index as convergence of available resources for Dongba manuscripts litterature

Do.M.En.I. - Dongba Manuscript Encoding Initiative project originates and takes by applying to Dongba pictograph manuscript tradition study some digital humanities techonologies, and is focused about implementing an on-line resources enjoyable for Dongba manuscripts and Naxi pictograph literature.

Do.M.En.I. project target is thus focused about implementation of a growing and up-to-date open on-line archive of Dongba texts as annotated corpus, following L.C. and W3C standards recommendations.

Making up of Do.M.En.I. means also to struggle against some difficult factors as:

  • Peculiarity of Dongba manuscript, wrote in pictograph and Geba syllable-graphic writing systems
  • Few just-implemented and available digital reproduction of Dongba manuscripts
  • Etherogeneity of such few available digital reources
  • Objective difficult in retrieving original manuscripts for making new digital resources
  • Mis-information of available manuscript in Europe and Western world

I feel just listed problems as incentive in hard-working for Do.M.En.I. implementation and realization.

Why Do.M.En.I. ?

World Wide web technology at today should be seen as the wider library to be consulted for information retrieval and documents browsing, especially in Academic world for exchanging of material and up-to-date information which run faster then every paper-publication or review.

Many digital humanities application is dedicated to texts browsing and documents retrieving, and cover large range of kind of information: from daily newspapers to linguistic annotated corpora or more specialized archives.

Plenty of digital texts and their extreme heterogeneity pushed W3C consortium (among other questions) to define some basic guidelines for digital encoding of texts: at today W3C recommends TEI standard for digital texts encoding.

Do.M.En.I. is a project of diffusion and acculturation about Dongba pictograph manuscript tradition and Naxi people culture, and in its intention of opening such cultural and artistic treasures both to all members of human kind and to academic world for further and deeper investigations, needs to accords with W3C standards.

Do.M.En.I. thus operates in double direction:

  1. retrieving of just-available on-line resources re-organizing them in a TEI groups and corpra and manuscripts encoding
  2. production of new online available resources by encoding of paper-manuscripts

At today two are the only available on-line resources for Naxi pictograph manuscripts tradition, both displaying some tens of digital reproduction of manuscripts pages:

they both have heterogeneous standards for digital reproduction of manuscripts gathered by ceremony and/or by titles.

Moreover both corpora's manuscripts encoding stops to just to "0 level" of texts encoding (Lenci et al., 2005: 57), alias some sequences of images without any annotation.

Do.M.En.I. projects if focused about integration of such available sources, at first by making of:

  • manuscripts digital facsimiles of just available digital images according to TEI standard
  • implementing parallels and related groups of encoded manuscripts facsimiles (by group and teiCorpus modules) gathering them by common characteristics
  • creation of a generl Do.M.En.I. index for sub-corpora and groups resources retrieving

making Do.M.En.I. an open for up-to-dating initiatives (other encoding levels, other reources integrations, manuscripts and group of manuscripts adding, etc...) playing for:

  • safeguard and conservation of Dongba manuscripts and Naxi pictograph literature
    • conservation of Dongba manuscripts as non-perishable documents
    • standard files records (easyer storage, easyer exchanging, implementation of standard-based applications, etc...)
    • availability of virtual facsimiles for academic study
  • diffusing and enjoying Dongba tradition and Naxi pictograph literature
    • acculturation to Dongba tradition
    • acculturation to Naxi culture and history
    • acculturation to China ethnic variety
  • convergence and unification of just-existing online resources
    • preventing dispersion of resources by making of a general index
    • preventing heterogeneity of material by applying W3C standards (TEI)
    • linking of different institution for more easy cooperation
  • implementation of new resources according to W3C standards
    • Dongba manuscripts census in world libraries (I mean census of world libraries Dongba manuscripts papers collections: see below - Dongba manuscripts corpus - for details)
    • upgrading of Do.M.En.I. general index, preventing new resources to be spread out
    • proposing digital encoding initiative for "just-paper" Dongba manuscripts collections
    • programming of more mirated initiatives, aimed to compensate what's at today is worse done about Dongba culture and Naxi literature
  • study of Dongba pictograph writing system
    • as the only alive pictograph writing system
    • relationing to others death pictographic and hieroglyphic writing system
    • relationing to modern multimedia and iconic communication
  • study of Naxi language
    • definition, according to Naxi people authorities, of a definitive standardized pinyin system for latinization of Naxi and transliteration of Dongba pictographs and Geba syllable-graphs
    • creation of equivalence latinization plates with previous main works about Naxi, Dongba and Geba
    • implementation of an ancient Naxi lexicon with linguistic annotation
    • implementation of a modern Naxi lexicon with linguistic annotation
    • implementation of cross ancient <-> modern Naxi language applications for studying and patterns identification

How to Do.M.En.I. ?

As introduced before Do.M.En.I. project consists in defining and implementing an encoding schema according to TEI and it work should be resumed in two focal targets:

  1. encoding Dongba pictograph manuscripts by TEI calibrated elements from TEI modules:
    • infrastructure
    • header
    • text structure
    • representation of Non-standard Characters and Glyphs
    • manuscript Description
    • tables - formulae and Graphics
  2. gathering Dongba manuscripts into corpora by:
    • group element
    • teiCorpus modules

For TEI standard recommendations please cfr official guideline: TEI – Text Encoding Initiative: http://www.tei-c.org

Dongba manuscript encoding

As introduced before Dongba manuscripts encoding in few words consists in projecting and implementing an useful encoding schema calibrated for Dongba manuscripts and according to TEI standards.

Among many excellent samples of calibrated encoding schema TEI accorded here is quoted ME.NO.T.A. - Medieval Nordic Text Archive http://www.menota.org, “a network of leading Nordic archives, libraries and research departments working with medieval texts and manuscript facsimiles. The aim of Menota is to preserve and publish medieval texts in digital form and to adapt and develop encoding standards necessary for this work. The archive will contain texts in the Nordic languages as well as in Latin.” (http://www.menota.org/index_en.page ? 2009, June 27th )

Making treasure of ME.NO.T.A. some experiments about manuscripts encoding available as DRAFT-WORKS on www.xiulong.it:

As underlined uper, both are attempts, experiments! Made for firming-up of some drafts, all focused about ancient manuscripts study approaching by human technologies: Do.M.En.I. project springs also out from this drafts.

Do.M.En.I. ENCODING SCHEMA for Dongba manuscripts encoding ad Corpus making consists in:

  • detecting of characteristics to be marked-up in Dongba manuscripts
    • what kind of mark-up?
      • meta-structural
      • structural
      • linguistic
      • syntactic
      • semantic
      • others information to be marked-up
  • implementation of Do.M.En.I. markers to explicit what previous detected
    • adopting TEI elements as markers for Do.M.En.I. schema
    • if it's required, implementation of new markers or re-calibration of TEI elements to eventually supply lacks

Once decided what is needed to be marked-up and relative markers, thus porceeding with:

  • implementing a Xml Document Type Definition for Do.M.En.I. encoding initiative , alias domeni.dtd
    • available as Dongba encoding manuscripts core, a standard DTD to work-over any Dongba manuscript
    • directly derived and compatible with TEI DTDs
  • implementation of a Do.M.En.I. ready-to-use resources
    • implementation of an domeni.xml file, well-formed and validated to domeni.dtd, as ready-to-use prototype for starting encoding a Dongba manuscript
    • writing of a Do.M.En.I. guideline with elements description and markers recommendations

Implementation of Dongba manuscripts encoding schema is not limited or just related to creation of a TEXTS ENCODING INITIATIVE, but assuming a fundamental role of:

  • pictograph writing system
  • presence of illuminated portion of manuscript

and considering OBJECTIVE DIFFERENCES AMONG

  1. WHAT IS EFFECTIVELY WROTE IN PICTOGRAPHS on a MANUSCRIPT
  2. WHAT IS EFFECTIVELY SPELLED BY DONGBA PRIEST WHILE CHANTING MANUSCRIPT during ritual celebration (in other words red text and written text aren't equivalent)

Encoding manuscripts operation also has to explicits:

  • all graphics and artistics characteristics of manuscripts and pictographs
  • objective translitteration of written pictographs
  • integrated translitteration of spells red by Dongba priest

Dongba manuscripts corpora

One of the most distinctive features of Naxi culture is Dongba tradition and related pictographic texts: they are wrote in form of some thousands of manuscripts, and according to Jackson and Anshi (Oppitz M., Hsu E., 1998: 240) 5.118 manuscripts actually held in libraries of Europe and America:

  • British Library
  • India Office Library in London
  • John Rylands Library in Manchester
  • Staatsbibliothek in Berlin
  • Library of Congress in Washington D. C.
  • Chinese-Japanese Library of Harvard-Yenching Institute in Boston, Massachusetts

Dongba pictographs manuscripts could be divided in three main kinds:

  1. books for chanting religious ceremony, containing religious texts, tales, formulas and mantras to be chanted during rituals performing
  2. index books, alias guides wrote to explicit how to perform rituals and/or ceremonies, fingering the paraphernalia to be used and listing the manuscripts to be chanted
  3. books of divination, determining in which circumstances which is the ceremony to be performed.

Jackson and Anshi study focused about style of manuscripts writing and schools of Naxi Dongba authors (ibid: 237 - 274) pointed out 5 main styles of writing manuscripts labeled as A,B,C,D and E style group:

  • A group: manuscripts are related to Baisha’s school (see below), of profitable production center of fine artistic styled manuscripts. Jackson and Anshi divided A style in 5 sub-category:
    • A1: authors, who coincided with Rock’s Dto-la Dongba brothers, possessed very artistic skills, superior to common Dongba writer, with colored miniatures onto 1st page of manuscripts.
      Most of the cover-titles were set in decorated frame on the top by draperies with a precious object in the middle as:
      • pearl in flames
      • eight-spoked wheel
      • conch-shell
      • purification Amirta vase
      • love-knot of good-luck knot

      Iconographically associable also for incipits as:

      • incipit pictograph of a Dongba priest miniature depicted three-lobed crowned while sitting and chanting.
      • incipit symbol at the beginning of manuscript as the beginning of Tibetan books, representing the Tibetan letter ཨ a [á] which refers to the great god in the Naxi pantheon.
    • A2: wrote by Dongba doted of very skilled artistic features: Jackson and Anshi states about Ho Ho-shou as the author, Dongba from the village of Nankow (Nankou Xin Cun, Naxi La’-ts’u wua) south-east of Lijiang
    • A3, coinciding with Rock’s He Huating Dongba, who taught Rock to read religious texts, also the drawer of pictographs in Rock’s dictionary and other publications. He also wrote some title-pages and added them to some ritual manuscripts written by different hand.
    • A4 fine and neat drawings unique in character
    • A5 similar with A4, with neat drawings, but coinciding with Rock’s Dto dsu Dongba.
  • B group: presents more complicated pictures, and authors used more elaborated symbols for decorating title-pages; decorative draperies differs iconographically from A type.
    According to Rock, manuscripts collected in B group were produced from Mun-shua-wua village, identified by Jackson and Anshi with Runanhua village of Tai’an township: they also divides B group in 9 sub-groups because of their iconography variety of decorations.

  • C group: C type presents titles very more elaborated that A and B, being decorated with six draperies, and among them Jackson and Anshi identified 7 different writers hands.
  • D group: they aren’t not sophisticated as those of A, B and C groups, with title-pages set side-way. Many of this manuscripts are divination books and mostly came from Baidi and Baoshan.
  • E group: presents non-elaborated title ornamentation, made by authors not as skilled as A, B, and C authors: Jackson and Anshi states they probably were novices.

Jackson and Anshi also studied style groups distributions and identified 4 main regional nucleus of manuscripts production, and they called them as “school”, alias focal centers of distribution of manuscripts:

  1. Baisha: including Dongba of Lijiang plain, at today economic and cultural center of Naxi community. Baisha school appears to be specialized in production of book for chanting religious and ceremony, and they used to write both in pictographs and syllable-graphs. According to Jackson & Anshi Baisha center comprises 5 mains areas in 2 or 3 miles around Lijiang:
    • Baisha market place, north of Lijiang
    • Wenbi and Changshui villages in Lashi township, south-west of Lijiang
    • Guifeng and Liangmei township, east of Lijiang
    • Wutai township, south of Lijiang
    • Lijiang township itself, also named Dayanzhen
  2. Tai’an and Ludian: Tai’an township is south-west of Lijiang, expecially known for Dongba activities in Runanhua village. According to Dongba tradition, the founder of Dongba religion Shilo stayed for sometimes in a cave called “spiritual cave of Shilo” just in front of Runanhua village. Such school included also:
    • Dongba from Ludian town itself, west of Lijiang, near Weixi country
    • Dongba from Yilong village and Tacheng township, near Ludian
    • Dongbas of Tai’an and Ludian wrote both in pictographic and syllable-graphic writing systems
  3. Baidi: located in Sanba township of Zhongdian country, north of Lijiang, beyond Gold Sand River. According to Naxi tradition, Shilo had his seat in Baidi itself: there’s a spiritual cave here dedicated to, and Baidi is considered to be the place of origin of Naxi/Dongba religion, infact it was a destination for a Dongba adepts to went here in pilgrimage in order to become Dongba masters. Baidi’s manuscripts corpus didn’t include texts dedicated to the great ceremony Har-la-llu- k'o for suicides as in their rituals, Baidi’s Dongba didn’t perform sword dancing as they not use syllable-graphics.
  4. Baoshan: school comprising townships of
    • Fengke
    • Mingyin
    • Daju
    • Baoshan itself
    all in the north of Lijiang, within the loop of the Gold Sand River. Divination was very popular among Baoshan’s Dongbas, and they used to write – as Baidi’s Dongbas – only by pictographs.

Corpus Encoding

From a L.C. point of view, Dongba pictographic manuscript literature is a perfect ecologic setting characterized by high verticality: manuscripts are infacts all about Dongba religion, thus such corpus is extremely SPECIALISTIC, or VERTICAL CORPUS, with:

  • A SPECIFY LINGUISTIC VARIETY
  • A PECULIAR THEMATIC DOMAIN

In such vertical corpus previously introduced subdivision and classification of manuscripts by

  1. kind of manuscripts
  2. style
  3. regional distribution

represents basilar features which Do.M.En.I. has to reflect and represents in its texts encoding.

For instance, considering the 1st kind of manuscripts, alias books for chanting religious ceremony: encoding texts belonging to 1st group also requires specification of which ceremony (or ceremonies) manuscripts are dedicated to.

Thus Do.M.En.I. should reflects such organization, and has to be structured in a hierarchical succession of nodes and leafs

Diagram could well be reproduced in Xml well-formed tree:

Another level of mark-up apply-able to Do.M.En.I. corpus should describes bigger groups of ceremonies pooled by some common meta-features according and reflecting Dongba tradition, as i.ex.:

  • all ceremonies belonging to worship to heaven
  • all ceremonies belonging to worship of ancestors
  • all ceremony dedicated to demon suppressing
    • etc…

Moreover, another kind of featured mark-up of Dongba literature that Do.M.En.I. has to esplicits is about writing system used in manuscripts, distinguishing at among:

  1. manuscripts written just by pictographs
  2. manuscripts written just by Geba syllable-graphics
  3. manuscripts written with both writing systems

Conclusion, or a new and real starting point for Do.M.En.I.

Resuming what previously stated, characteristics identified and projected a general guideline to define what's necessary for Do.M.En.I. implementation:

  • There are some available resources about Dongba manuscripts
    • Among them 2 online corpora of digital images of Dongba manuscripts sorted by ceremony: Library of Congress and Harward corpora
    • Do.M.En.I. project at 1st is focused about
      • Realization of TEI standard facsimiles of each manuscripts of both corpora
      • Grouping together encoded manuscripts in digital corpora
      • Realizing a (virtual) unification of digital corpora by unique index
  • According to Jackson & Anshi, in western institutions there are more then 5.000 manuscripts.
  • Do.M.En.I. project is focused about
    • Realizing a complete census of manuscripts
    • Encoding manuscripts choosing them as representative parts of relative collection
    • Grouping together encoded manuscripts in digital corpora
    • Update digital corpora unique index with this new resources

DoMEnI will adopt

  • TEI standard
    • <teiCorpus> and <group> modules to structure and codify Dongba manuscripts as corpora of texts
    • TEI modules for texts and manuscripts encoding for each Dongba manuscript