Mother of Writing: The Origin and Development of a Hmong Messianic Script

by William A. Smalley, Chia Koua Vang, Gnia Yee Yang

In February of 1971, in the Laotian village of Nam Chia, a forty-one year old farmer named Shong Lue Yang was assassinated by government soldiers. Shong Lue claimed to have been descended of God and given the mission of delivering the first true Hmong alphabet. Many believed him to be the Hmong people's long-awaited messiah, and his thousands of followers knew him as "Mother (Source) of Writing."

An anthropological linguist who has worked among the Hmong, William A. Smalley joins Shong Lue's chief disciple, Chia Koua Vang, and one of his associates, to tell the fascinating story of how the previously unschooled farmer developed his remarkable writing system through four stages of increasing sophistication. The uniqueness of Shong Lue's achievement is highlighted by a comparison of Shong Lue's writing system to other known Hmong systems and to the history of writing as a whole.

In addition to a nontechnical linguistic analysis of the script and a survey of its current use, Mother of Writing provides an intriguing cultural account of Shong Lue's life. The book traces the twenty-year-long struggle to disseminate the script after Shong Lue's death, first by handwriting, then by primitive moveable type, an abortive attempt to design a wooden typewriter, and finally by modern wordprocessing. In a moving concluding chapter, Smalley discusses his own complex feelings about his coauthors' story.

Genres: History, Asia, Linguistics

229 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 1990

Reviews

[Leland Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting history of the origins and development and nature and use of an indigenous Hmong alphabet and of the messianic religious grounding of the alphabet's creation. I would have given it a five if it had contained complete tables of all four of the alphabet's stages of development. Unfortunately, Mr. Smalley died before the turn of the millennium, so a new improved second edition is not to be hoped for. I have been unable to trace the Hmong coauthors' current whereabouts. The religious history and Mr. Smalley's attempts to compensate for his own worldview were of at least as much interest to me as the linguistic end of the story. Mi ne opinias, ke rekta kaj simpla traduko en Esperanton utilus, sed se mi iam verkos la enciklopediecan libron Skribsistemoj de Tero la

Pahawh Hmong

nepre meritos plenan ĉapitron.