dongba

noun

1. A priest of the Nakhi people.

   “By 1949 there were dongba practising only in the rural areas of Lijiang. We have no figure on the exact number, but according to interviews many Naxi villages had a dongba at that time, or would invite one from a neighbouring village. After the Communist take-over the dongba's activities were prohibited as expressions of feudal superstition (mixin), and partly for this reason there are extremely few dongba today.”

   “Dongba of the Baisha schoolwere skilled and prolific in the script, and they could read and write geba script as well. In an analysis of the title pages of seven thousand dongba books in Western libraries, Pan and Jackson found 1,233 written by some forty-five authors from the Baisha school.”

   “When the Buddhist monks and the dongbas went to the west to seek the sacred scriptures, the dongbas won the race and got the pants. This is why Tibetan Buddhist monks only wear robes, while we dongbas wear robes and pants.”