Epic of King Gesar
From Freepedia
The Epic of King Gesar is a Tibetan epic poem about King Gesar, who ruled the mythical Kingdom of Ling. Believed to be over 1000 years old, the epic was passed down collectively by oral tradition among the Tibetan people. The tradition is strongest in the Kham and Amdo regions of Eastern Tibet, but a lively tradition of gesar stories have also survived in western tibeta regions such as Ladakh and Zanskar. The earliest manuscript versions are believed by some to have been written by Buddhist monks at the beginning in the 11th century. In the 1860's a woodblock edition of the story was compiled by monks at Dzogchen Monastery 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.
The epic is considered the longest literary work in the world. Although there is no one definitive compilation, if completed it would fill some 120 volumes, containing over 20 million words in more than one million verses.
About 140 Gesar ballad singers survive today who can recite large tracts of the poem in parts, mainly from Tibetan, Mongolian and Tu ethnicities. The Axu prairie in Dege County, southwest of China's Sichuan Province, is considered by Tibetans and Chinese experts as the birthplace of Gesar, the legendary hero of the Tibetan ethnicity. His "soul mountain" was the famous snow peak of Golog, Amnye Machen, in modern Qinghai Province.[1]
In the legend, King Gesar of the Ling tribe defeated demon kings of the four directions, including King GurKar of Hor, King Sa dam of Jang and King Sinchi of Moin which is considered to be located in Shannan Prefecture of China.
