Epic of King Gesar

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.

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.

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.

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) which existed as a semi-independent principality up until its conquest by Chinese communist forces in the early 1950s.

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.

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)

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.

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 school), 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 earliest manuscript versions are believed by some to have been written by Buddhist monks at the beginning of the 11th century. In the 1860s 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.

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.

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]

Translations

The the first three volumes of the version known as the Lingtsang-Dege woodblock, which was composed at Dzogchen monastery 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.

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.

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