昆明瑶族手稿收藏 [Yao manuscripts collection in Kunming]

This collection contains around 200 volumes of Yao manuscripts. All manuscripts have been used and kept by Yao people in southern Yunnan, western Guangxi and northern Vietnam for generations. They are religious texts, partly of localized Daoist and partly of indigenous beliefs, in nature. They were used in ceremonies associating with almost every major aspects and significant moments of a Yao people's life, from cradle to grave. They are written in Chinese language, but in a mixture of scripts of both Chinese and those invented by Yao people. The scribe could be Yao people with limited Chinese proficiency or contracted Han Chinese. All manuscripts are written by brushes, in ink and on cotton paper.