Introduction

According to the sixth census of China in 2010, the total population of the Nakhi is 326,295. Among them, 295,464 Nakhi people live in Yunnan. They are mainly distributed in Lijiang City in the Northwest Yunnan, the rest ofthem are in other counties and cities in Yunnan Province and a few in Mangkang County, Tibet. The ancestors of the Nakhi were a branch of the Qiang people, living in Hehuang area of northwest China (now the valley of the Yellow River and the Huangshui River in Qinghai Province) in ancient times. And then they gradually migrated to the south region of China and finally inhabited the valley of Jinshajiang River at the border ofYunnan and Sichuan about 2000 years ago. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, they were officially named “the Nakhi” with the approval ofthe State Council according to the wills ofthe majority ofthis ethnic group.

Most of the Nakhi in mountainous areas dwell in the wooden houses roofed with stone tiles in civil structure. The Nakhi commonly believe in “Dongba religion”^[18]. They had created Dongba pictographs one thousands years ago and then wrote their classics by using such pictographs. The Dongba classics record all facets ofthe ancient society ofthe Nakhi,including myths about nature, flood and their ancestors, epics of wars, love poems and a large number oflegends, which makes the Nakhi culture enjoy a high reputation around the world. The “Dongba classics and “Dongba culture”, which have been handed down to the present day, are of great academic value to the study of comparative philology and human cultural history.

There are a host of festivals for the Nakhi, among them the major festival is the Sanduo Festival. “Sanduo” is the guardian god believed by some Nakhi people and also known as“Apu Sanduo” which means “ancestors (or grandfather)” in the Nakhi language. It is said that he is the god ofwar. The Nakhi, in the past, went to the Sanduo Temple to worship and pray for the blessing ofthe Sanduo god and offered sacrifices to this god on the first day of the lunar new year; the Nakhi believers now come to the Sanduo Temple to burn incense as an act ofworship on February 8 ofthe lunar calendar per year.

The Nakhi place much emphasis on accepting the outstanding culture of other groups.Today, through the Nakhi architecture, music and murals we can observe that they bear the characteristics integrated with the Han, Tibetan, Bai and Nakhi cultures.