The first four volumes of the carefully chosen works of King Gesser in the Tibetan language were recently published by the Chinese Nationalities Publishing House.
This is the most important literary work for studying the social, cultural and historical development of Tibet Nationality and a major achievement in the research of Tibetan culture, said a Tibetan research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).
The academy plans to publish 40 volumes of King Gesser with 16 million Chinese characters in total. It will take five years to complete the epic.
King Gesser, a Tibetan epic portraying the legendary hero Gesser, is believed to be the longest epic in the world. It tells stories of how King Gesser conquered the ghosts when he came to man's world and then returned to the heaven.
For generations, stories about Gesser had actually been told in ballads by folk artists.
To protect this outstanding epic from being lost, the CASS, the Ministry of Culture and the State Ethnic Affairs Commission formed a joint leading group on the compilation of King Gesser. The state has allocated special funds for its compilation.
To date, experts and scholars organized by the group have visited minority-inhabited areas and collected more than 100 handwritten and wood-carved versions of the tale told in Tibetan and Mongolian languages. Some have been published.
(People’s Daily 12/20/2000)
