Keeping a living language alive

Dongba pictographic manuscripts were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2003.[Photo proviced to China Daily]

"Though people's studies are separate at first, needs of cultural comparisons through time and space urge different institutions to join hands for their wider-range studies," Oppitz says.

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He points to the similarities between Dongba art and Tibetan thanka paintings, and between ethnic cultures in southwestern China and Southeast Asia.

"The pictograph is a medium between painting and writing," he says.

"It represents Naxi people's identity and show an aesthetic genius, which is rare in other places. We will know so much more if people do the research together."

The Beijing symposium offers hope, since UNESCO appealed to all custodians to "support the virtual reunification" in a document on the meeting.

"There are some young inheritors of the old Dongba shamans, with different levels of skills, but they do not have the capacity to interpret more complex Dongba scriptures. The boom of tourism has also made some of the Dongba shamans abandon their traditional lifestyles," the document says.

An agreement has been made to build an international database under UNESCO's framework, which will make it easier to fund such projects as Zhang's, UNESCO communication and information adviser Andrea Cairola says.

But a detailed timeline has yet to be released by the UN agency.

"Through these efforts, the study of the old manuscripts may provide new social, scientific and philosophical concepts, creating an essential link between the ancient world and modern civilization," Zhang says.