The Epic of King Gesar is the premier epic poem of Tibet and much of Central Asia. With about 140 Gesar ballad singers surviving today (including singers of Tibetan, Mongolian and Tu ethnicities), it is prized as one of the last living epics (although parts of the Turkic Epic of Manas are also still regularly performed by manaschi in Kyrgyzstan). The epic, believed to be approximately 1000 years old, concerns the fearless king Gesar, who ruled the legendary Kingdom of Ling. It is an adventure story, with strong allegorical roots in Tibetan Buddhism. The epic is a broadly defined genre of poetry, and one of the major forms of narrative literature. ... Tibet (older spelling Thibet; Tibetan: བོད་; Wylie: Bod; Lhasa dialect IPA: [; Simplified and Traditional Chinese: 西藏, Hanyu Pinyin: XÄ«zàng; also referred to as 藏区 (Simplified Chinese), 藏區 (Traditional Chinese), ZàngqÅ« (Hanyu Pinyin), having the two names different connotations; see Name section below) is a plateau region in Central Asia and the... Map of Central Asia showing three sets of possible boundaries for the region Central Asia located as a region of the world Central Asia is a vast landlocked region of Asia. ... 68. ... Ethnolinguistic Groups of Tibet, 1967 Ethnic Tibetan autonomous entities set up by the Peoples Republic of China. ... The Tu (土) people are an ethnic group. ... This is the disambiguation page for the terms Turk, Turkey, Turkic, and Turkish. ... A traditional Kyrgyz Manaschi performing part of the epic poem at a yurt camp in Karakol The Epic of Manas is a traditional epic poem of the Kyrgyz people and the name of the epics eponymous hero. ... Tibetan Buddhism is the body of religious Buddhist doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet, the Himalayan region (including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim), Mongolia, Buryatia, Tuva and Kalmykia (Russia), and northeastern China (Manchuria: Heilongjiang, Jilin). ...

Elements of the story

Versions of the story often begin with the creation of the world and a compacted pre-history of Tibet. This is followed by a brief traditional account of how Tibet was converted from barbarity to Buddhism under the three great Dharma Rajas (Tibetan: chos rgyal) of the Tibetan Imperial Period (7th-9th centuries AD), in particular by the great magician and founder of Tibetan religion, Padmasambhava (Tibetan: padma 'byung gnas), who subdued Tibet's violent native spirits and bound them by oath. It is then explained how later on the world in general and Tibet in particular, fell into a state of anarchy, since the many negative spirits and demons of Tibet had not been fully conquered. As a result the world came under the dominion of hordes of flesh-eating and human-eating demons and goblins, headed by malignant and greedy kings of many kingdoms. Guru Rinpoche - Padmasambhava statue - near Kulu Padmasambhava (also Padmakara or Padma Raja) (Ch: 蓮華生上師; Tib: Padma Jungne), in Sanskrit meaning lotus-born, founded the Tibetan or Tantric school of Buddhism in the 8th century. ... St. ...

In order to remedy this situation, various gods-on-high, including Brahma (Tibetan: tshangs pa dkar po) and Indra (Tibetan: brgya byin) in concert with celestial Buddhist figures such as Padmasambhava, and both cosmic and abstract tantric deities such as Amitabha (Tibetan: 'od dpag med) and Samantabhadra (Tibetan: kun tu bzang po), as well as the spirits below the earth or nagas (tib: klu), decide that a divine hero must be sent from the heavens to the land of men to conquer these evil sovereigns. It is decided that the youngest son of Tshangs pa or brgya byin (the Gesar texts tend to conflate Brahma and Indra), should be sent. He is known by various names in various versions, sometimes thos pa dga', sometimes bu tog dkar po, but perhaps the most universally used is don grub. This god-child is not very keen on his mission, and tries to evade it, but eventually agrees. Brahma (written Brahmā in IAST) (Devanagari ब्रह्मा, pronounced as ) is the Hindu god (deva) of creation, and one of the Hindu Trinity - Trimurti, the others being Vishnu and Shiva. ... Indra (Sanskrit: इन्द्र or इंद्र, indra) is the god of weather and war, and lord of Svargaloka in Hinduism. ... Amitabha Buddha and his two acolytes, Mahasthamaprapta and Avalokitesvara Amitābha is a celestial Buddha described in the scriptures of Mahāyāna Buddhism. ... Samantabhadra (also Viśvabhadra, 普賢 Chinese: Pǔxián; Japanese: Fugen) is the Lord of the Truth (理) in Buddhism, who represents the practice and meditation of all Buddhas. ... // Nagas In India there is an ancient belief in a subterranean race of divine serpent people who dwell in patalas or palaces in the underground city of Bhogavati. ...

He is then born, with various celestial companions, and after singing to his mother from the womb, asking the way out, as the son of 'Gog bza, who is sometimes depicted as a beautiful naga princess captured from a neighbouring tribe, but in other versions, is an old woman, and of Seng blon, who one of the respected elders of the Kingdom of Ling, which in most Tibetan versions is located in eastern Tibet (Tibetan: mdo khams), and often located specifically between the 'Bri (Yangtze) and rDza (Yalong) rivers, which is where the historical kingdom of Lingtsang (Tibetan: gling tshang). Length 6,380 km Elevation of the source  ? m Average discharge 31,900 m³/s Area watershed 1,800,000 km² Origin Qinghai Province and Tibet Mouth East China Sea Basin countries China The Chang Jiang (Simplified Chinese: 长江; Traditional Chinese: 長江; pinyin: Cháng Jiāng... The Yalong River (also called Ya-lung River) is an 822 miles (1,323 kilometers) long river in the Sichuan province of southern China. ...

The hero has an older half-brother called rGya tsha, who is a brave warrior and important figure in the epic. He is sometimes said to have been the grandson of the emperor (Tibetan: mi chen, literally: "big man") of China, and is killed in the battle with the great enemy of Ling, Hor (often identified by Tibetans with Mongolia). This struggle between Ling and Hor is the central and most important part of the epic.

The young hero has two uncles. One is the wise and very aged elder of Ling, known as the "old hawk", sPyi dPon rong tsha. He supports the child as he has received divine prophecies indicating his importance. The other uncle is Khro thung, a cowardly and greedy rascal, who sees the child as a threat and tries to do him ill. Khro thung is normally a comic character in the epic, but his role as the provocateur of many incidents is absolutely central.

The hero as a child grows precociously and vanquishes various diverse foes that present themselves. His behaviour is wild and fearsome, and soon he and his mother are banished from Ling. They go to the deserted lands of the land of rMa (the upper Yellow River) where they live a feral life, and the child is clothed in animal skins and wears a hat with antelope horns. The Yellow River or Golden River (Traditional Chinese: ; Simplified Chinese: ; Hanyu Pinyin:  ; Wade-Giles: Hwang-ho, sometimes simply called the River in ancient Chinese) is the second longest river in China (after Yangtze River) and the seventh longest in the world. ...

When the child is twelve a horse race is held to determine who will become the King of Ling and who will marry the beautiful daughter, 'Brug mo, of a neighbouring chieftain. The hero-child, who in many versions is known as Joru during these early years, returns to Ling, wins the race, marries 'Brug mo, and ascends the golden throne. He thenceforth assumes the title "Gesar".

Once he is king, his first major campaign is against the man-eating demon of the north, Klu bTsan. While he is on this campaign, his wife is kidnapped by Gur dKar (literally: "white tent"), the King of Hor. When Gesar returns from a long absence to find this out, he uses his magic to enter the king of Hor's palace, kills him and retrieves his wife.

These two episodes - (the demon of the north, and the war with Hor) constitute the first two of four great campaigns against "the four enemies of the four directions". The next two are King Sa dam of 'Jang (sometimes located in Yunnan), and king Shing khri of Mon (sometimes located in the southern Himalayan region)   (Simplified Chinese: ; Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ; literally south of the clouds) is a province of the Peoples Republic of China, located in the far southwestern corner of the country. ... Perspective view of the Himalaya and Mount Everest as seen from space looking south-south-east from over the Tibetan Plateau. ...

After this he goes on to defeat the "18 great forts", which are listed differently according to different versions and different bards, but nearly always include, sTag gZig (Tajik), Kha che (muslim) adversaries. Many (in fact an open-ended number) of other "forts" (Tibetan: rdzong) are defeated besides, sometimes listed as forty.

When Gesar reaches his eighties, Gesar descends to Hell as a last episode before he leaves the land of men and ascends once more to his celestial paradise. Medieval illustration of Hell in the Hortus deliciarum manuscript of Herrad of Landsberg (about 1180) A hell, according to many religious beliefs, is an afterlife of suffering where the wicked or unrighteous dead are punished. ...

Roots in early Tibetan Buddhism

The epic concerns Gesar, the superhuman warrior ruler of the Kingdom of Ling, who waged war with the nearby Kingdom of Hor. Distinctly Tibetan in style, the epic appears to date from time of the second transmission of Buddhism to Tibet (marked by the formation of the Kadampa, Kagyu and Sakya schools), although the story includes early elements taken from Indian tantricism. The oral tradition of this epic is most prominent in the two remote areas associated with the ancient Bönpo (Ladakh and Zanskar in the far west of Tibet, and Kham and Amdo regions of eastern Tibet), strongly suggesting that the story has Bön roots. The Kadampa (Bka-gdams-pa) Tradition was a Tibetan Mahayana Buddhist school. ... The Kagyu (Tibetan: བཀའ་བརྒྱུད་; Wylie: Bka-brgyud) school, also known as the Oral Lineage and the Spotless Practice Lineage school, is one of four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism, the other three being Nyingma (Rnying-ma), Sakya (Sa-skya), and Gelug (Dge-lugs). ... Sakya is one of four major schools (Nyingma, Sakya, Kagyu and Gelug) in Tibetan Buddhism (Vajrayana). ... Tantra (Sanskrit: weave), tantric yoga or tantrism is any of several esoteric traditions rooted in the religions of India. ... Oral tradition or oral culture is a way of transmitting history, literature or law from one generation to the next in a civilization without a writing system. ... Bön has typically been described as the shamanistic religion in Tibet before the arrival of Buddhism in the 7th century. ... Ladakh (Tibetan script: ལ་དྭགས་, Hindi: लद्दाख़, Urdu: لدّاخ; IPA: , land of high passes) is a region in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in Northern India sandwiched between the Karakoram mountain range to the north and the Himalayas to the south. ... Zanskar is a region in the Kargil district, part of the north-west Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. ... Kham (Wylie transliteration: Khams, Tibetan: ཁམས, Simplified Chinese: 康, Pinyin: Kāng) province is one of several provinces comprising traditional Tibet (the others Amdo and Ãœ-Tsang). ... Amdo (Tibetan: ཨ༌མདོ, Chinese: 安多, Pinyin: Ä€nduō) is considered the northern part of Tibet by Tibetans and is the place from where the present Dalai Lama comes from. ... Bön has typically been described as the shamanistic religion in Tibet before the arrival of Buddhism in the 7th century C.E. With the recent exile of many Bönpo lamas to India, however, a more complex description of Bön is emerging and is now being considered by...

The earliest manuscript versions are believed by some to have been written by Buddhist monks at the beginning of the 11th century. In the late 19th century a woodblock edition of the story was compiled by a monk from Lingtsang, a small kingdom north-east of sDe dge under the tutelage of the prolific Tibetan Philosopher Ju Mipham Gyatso. Tales of King Gesar are also popular in Mongolia, and have travelled as far west as the Caspian Sea, reaching Europe with the Kalmyk people, who also profess Tibetan Buddhism as their religion. A replica of an ancient statue found among the ruins of a temple at Sarnath Buddhism is a philosophy based on the teachings of the Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, a prince of the Shakyas, whose lifetime is traditionally given as 566 to 486 BCE. It had subsequently been accepted by... Munichs city symbol celebrates its founding by Benedictine monks—and the origin of its name A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, the conditioning of mind and body in favor of the spirit. ... As a means of recording the passage of time, the 11th century was that century which lasted from 1001 to 1100. ... Yuan dynasty woodblock edition of a Chinese play Woodblock printing is a technique for printing text or images used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China sometime between the mid-6th and late 9th centuries. ... Jamgön Ju Mipham, Mipham Jamyang Namgyal Gyamtso (Mipham the Great, 1846-1912) was a prominent Tibetan Buddhist monk and teacher. ... The Caspian Sea is the largest lake on Earth by both area and volume,[1] with a surface area of 371,000 square kilometres (143,244 mi²) and a volume of 78,200 cubic kilometres (18,761 mi³).[2] It is a landlocked endorheic body of water and lies between... World map exhibiting the location of Europe. ... The Republic of Kalmykia ( Russian: Респу́блика Калмы́кия; Kalmyk: Хальм Тангч) is a federal subject of the Russian Federation (a republic). ... Buddhism is a dharmic, non-theistic religion, which is also a philosophy and a system of psychology[]. Buddhism is also known as Buddha Dharma or Dhamma, which means the teachings of the Awakened One in Sanskrit and Pali, the languages of ancient Buddhist texts. ...

A large number of variants have always existed, and no canonical text can be written. Combining the variants together, the epic is perhaps the longest literary work in the world, containing over 20 million words in more than one million verses. A given Gesar singer would know only his local version, which nonetheless would take weeks to recite. The Second King of Bhutan retained a Gesar singer as a full-time entertainer for the royal court, and listening to the Epic of Gesar was said to be the king's favorite edification. There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ... Verse is a writing that uses meter as its primary organisational mode, as opposed to prose, which uses grammatical and discoursal units like sentences and paragraphs. ... Jigme Wangchuk (1905 – March 30, 1952) was the second king of Bhutan from August 21, 1926 until his death. ...

Locating the Kingdom of Ling

The mythological and allegorical elements of the story defy place and time, and several places lay claim to being the former Kingdom of Ling, however both Tibetan and Chinese experts have generally agreed that the strongest claim as the birthplace of King Gesar is Axu town in the prairie of Dege County located in the Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of southwest Sichuan Province. Gesar's "soul mountain", in turn, was the famous snow peak of Golog, Amnye Machen, in modern Qinghai Province.[1] Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Prairie refers to an area of land of low topographic relief that historically supported grasses and herbs, with few trees, and having generally a mesic (moderate or temperate) climate. ... Garze Tibetan Autonomous Region (Chinese: 甘孜藏族自治州; pinyin: GānzÄ« Zàngzú Zìzhìzhōu, Tibetan - དཀར་མཛེས་བོད་རིགས་རང་སྐྱོང་ཁུལ་ / Dkar-mdzes bod-rigs rang-skyong khul) is an autonomous prefecture in Sichuan whose capital is Kangding County. ... Sichuan (Chinese: 四川; pinyin: Sìchuān; Wade-Giles: Ssu-ch`uan; non-standard transliteration: Szechwan) is a province in central-western China with its capital at Chengdu. ... Qinghai (Chinese: 青海; pinyin: Qīnghǎi; Wade-Giles: Ching-hai; Postal System Pinyin: Tsinghai) is a province of the Peoples Republic of China, named after the enormous Qinghai Lake (Koko Nor). ...

Memorisation of the epic by balladeers, as a means of orally transmitting the work across multiple generations

It is reported that ballad singers in Tibet and surrounding regions sometimes begin their career by experiencing a strange dream during sleep, after awakening from which they mysteriously and inexplicably gain the ability to recite large sections of this huge epic "King Gesar" poem. They may be able to continuously recite sections of the poem for several hours on end. Sometimes, young children even gain this ability, this very sudden and profound memorisation of the poem. There is a research interest in determining the exact brain mechanism that allows this extraordinary and remarkable memorisation to occur. See [2], [3].

Translations

The the first three volumes of the version known as the Lingtsang-Dege woodblock, which was composed in the late 19th century, was published with a very faithful though incomplete French translation by Professor Rolf Stein in 1956. Stein followed this publication with his 600-page magnum opus on the Tibetan Epic entitled Recherches sur l'Epopee et le Barde au Tibet. This remains the most in-depth study of the Tibetan Gesar tradition. Rolf Alfred Stein (1911-1999) was a noted 20th century sinologist and Tibetologist. ...

Another version has been translated into German by Prof. Dr. P. Matthias Hermanns (1965). This translation is based on manuscripts collected by Hermanns in Amdo. This book contains the epic itself plus annotations and an extensive study by Hermanns explaining the epic in its different versions and its cultural and historical background. Amdo (Tibetan: ཨ༌མདོ, Chinese: 安多, Pinyin: Ānduō) is considered the northern part of Tibet by Tibetans and is the place from where the present Dalai Lama comes from. ...

The most accessible rendering of Gesar in English is by Alexandra David-Neel in her "Superhuman Life of Gesar of Ling", published in French and then English in the 1930s.

References

• Stein, R.A. l'Epopee Tibetaine dans sa Version Lamaique de Ling. Paris. Presses Universitaires. 1956.
• Stein, R.A. l'Epopee et le Barde au Tibet. Paris Presses Universitaires. 1959.
• Hermanns, Prof. Dr. P. Matthias: Das National-Epos der Tibeter Gling König Ge Sar, 1965, Verlag Josef Habbel, Regensburg.

External links

• King Gessar
• King Gessar preserved
• King Gessar and Samzhug

See also

• Geser
• Epic of Manas
• Etymology of the name of Julius Caesar