Book Title: Alphabet Key To History Of Mankind
Author(s): David Diringer
Publisher: Hutchinsons Scientific and Technical Publications
View full book text
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142
THE ALPHABET
The Lolo are termed Lo-lo or Lu-lu or Lo-man or else T'swan. The name Lo-lo appears in Chinese sources since A.D. 1275; the indigenous term, however, is Ne-su, meaning "We" (ne)-"men" (su).
The proper home of the Mo-so or else Mos(s)o or Musu is the valley of the Mekong immediately to the east of Upper Burma and the valley of the Yang-tse round Li-kiang (N.-W. Yün-nan); they are also scattered throughout other provinces of south-western China. The term Mo-so is Chinese; the indigenous name is Na-khi or Na-shi; the Tibetan term is Djong, which has an insulting meaning, as has also (according to Sir Ellis Minns) the Chinese term Mo-so, "miserable."
The Moso are mentioned several times in Chinese historical sources; first at the end of the eighth century A.D. In the second half of the thirteenth century they became a vassal state of Qubilay Khan, and later they recognized the shadowy
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Fig. 71
1, Lo-lo horizontal script.
2. The characters for "sun" (a), "rain" (b), "wind" (c), and "mountain" (d), in three local variants: I, K'ang-siang-ying; 11, K'iac-kyo; III, Yei-ming-cheu
authority of China. They finally lost their independence to China about 1725, but some tribes even to-day live under the rule of their own chiefs.
Lo-lo Script
The existence of the Lo-lo script was noted by Europeans in the seventies of the last century. In 1886, Mr. F. S. A. Bourne obtained from a Lolo-man a list of all the characters he could remember, and their total does not go beyond 376. According to some scholars, however, the Lo-lo script contains some 3,000 symbols. There are many Lolo manuscripts extant, and some of them are finely illuminated.
On the whole, symbols are apparently ideographic, and are said to be mainly adaptations, contractions and combinations of Chinese signs,
