Epic of King Gesar

The Epic of King Gesar, also spelled Kesar or Geser, is a traditional epic originating from Tibet and Central Asia. Folk balladeers continued to transmit the story orally, enriching its plot and embellished its language over time. The narrative reached its "final" form and peak popularity in the early 12th century.
The epic recounts the heroic deeds of the culture hero Gesar, the fearless lord of the legendary kingdom of Ling. It is preserved in both poetry and prose, primarily through oral poetic performance, and is widely sung across Central Asia and South Asia. Its classic version originates in central Tibet.
Approximately 100 bards of this epic remain active today in the Gesar belt of China. Tibetan, Mongolian, Buryat, Balti, Ladakhi, and Monguor singers continue to uphold the oral tradition, and the epic has drawn significant scholarly interest as one of the few surviving oral epic traditions still performed as a living art. Versions of the epic among the Yugur and Salar peoples have also been recorded among the Balti of Baltistan, the Burusho people of Hunza and Gilgit, and the Kalmyk and Ladakhi people in Nepal, and various Altai, Turkic, and Tungus tribes. The first printed version was a Mongolian text published in Beijing in 1716.
There are numerous versions of the epic, each with many variants, and some sources regard it as the longest in the world. Although no single definitive text exists, the Chinese compilation of Tibetan versions has so far filled approximately 120 volumes, comprising more than one million verses divided into 29 “chapters.” Western estimates refer to more than 50 distinct editions published to date in China, India, and Tibet.

Etymology of the title

It has been proposed on the basis of phonetic similarities that the name Gesar reflects the Roman title Caesar, and that the intermediary for the transmission of this imperial title from Rome to Tibet may have been a Turkic language, since kaiser entered Turkic through contact with the Byzantine Empire, where Caesar was an imperial title. The medium for this transmission may have been via Mongolian Kesar. The Mongols were allied with the Byzantines.
File:Phromo Kesaro. circa 738-745 CE.jpg|thumb|300px|Coin of Fromo Kesaro, king of the Turk Shahis, circa 738-745 CE
Numismatic evidence and some accounts speak of a Bactrian ruler Phrom-kesar, specifically the Kabul Shahi of Gandhara, which was ruled by the Turkic king Fromo Kesaro, who was father-in-law of the king of the Kingdom of Khotan around the middle of the 8th century CE.
In early Bon sources, From Kesar is always a place name, and never refers, as it does later, to a ruler. In some Tibetan versions of the epic, a king named Phrom Ge-sar or Khrom Ge-sar figures as one of the kings of the four directions – the name is attested in the 10th century and this Phrom/''Khrom preserves an Iranian form for Rūm/Rome. This eastern Iranian word lies behind the Middle Chinese word for Rome, namely Byzantium.
A. H. Francke thought the Tibetan name Gesar derived from Sanskrit. S.K. Chatterji, introducing his work, noted that the Ladakh variant of Kesar, Kyesar, in Classical Tibetan Skye-gsar meant 'reborn/newly born', and that Gesar/Kesar in Tibetan, as in Sanskrit signifies the 'anther or pistil of a flower', corresponding to Sanskrit kēsara,'' whose root 'kēsa' is Indo-European.

Gesar and the Kingdom of Ling

In Tibet, the existence of Gesar as a historical figure is rarely questioned . Some scholars have argued that he was born in 1027, based on a note in a 19th-century chronicle, the Mdo smad chos 'byung by Brag dgon pa dkon mchog bstan pa rab. Certain core episodes appear to reflect events recorded at the dawn of Tibetan history. For example, the marriage to a Chinese princess is reminiscent of legends concerning king Songtsän Gampo's alliance marriage with Princess Wencheng in 641. Legends variously place him in Golok, between Dotō and Domé, or in Markham, Tanak, Öyuk or the village of Panam on the Nyang River.
Given the mythological and allegorical elements of the story, which defy place and time, the historicity of figures within the cycle remain indeterminate. Although the epic was sung all over Tibetan-speaking regions, with Kham and Amdo long regarded as centers of its diffusion, traditions do connect Gesar with the former Kingdom of Ling. In Tibetan, gling means "island" but like the Sanskrit word dvīpa, it can also carry the secondary meaning of "continent". Ling was a petty kingdom located in Kham, between the Yangtze and Yalong River. The Gsumge Mani Stone Castle, situated near the source of the Yalong River, houses a shrine dedicated to Gesar at its centre. A historical kingdom of Lingtsang existed until the 20th century.

Growth of the epic

The success of the Turk Fromo Kesaro, whose name is a Persian pronunciation of "Rome Caesar", in overwhelming an intrusive Arab army in Gandhara sometime between 739 and 745, may have formed the historic core behind the Gesar epic in Tibet. In the records of the earliest rulers of Ladakh, Baltistan, and Gilgit, whose countries were later overrun by Tibetans, royal ancestry is connected to the Bactrian Gesar.
In its distinctive Tibetan form, the epic appears to date from the time of the second transmission of Buddhism to Tibet, marked by the emergence of the Sarma or "new schools" of Tibetan Buddhism. However, the narrative also incorporates early elements derived from Indian tantricism. The oral tradition of this epic is most prominent in two remote regions associated with the pre-Buddhist ethnic religion known as Bon, strongly suggesting that the story has indigenous roots. According to R. A. Stein, However, the oral versions known today are not earlier than the written versions, but rather depend on them.
As an oral tradition, a large number of variants have always existed, and no canonical text can be written. However, the epic narrative was certainly in something similar to its present form by the 15th century at the latest as shown by the mentions in the rLangs-kyi Po-ti bSe-ru by Byang chub rgyal mtshan. Despite the age of the tradition, the oldest extant text of the epic is actually the Mongolian woodblock print commissioned by the Kangxi Emperor of Qing China in 1716. None of the Tibetan texts that have come down to us are earlier than the 18th century, although they are likely based on older texts that have not survived. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries a woodblock printing of the story was compiled by a scholar-monk from Ling-tsang, a small kingdom northeast of Derge, with inspiration from the prolific Tibetan philosopher Jamgon Ju Mipham Gyatso.
The wide variety of cultures in which the Gesar epic is encountered means that the name for the hero varies. In Tibetan legends Gesar is variously called Gesar of Ling, Ling Gesar, and Gesar Norbu Dradul. Among the Buryat he is known as Abai Geser Khubun. The Khalkha oral version calls him Altan Bogdo khan. An Altai version calls him Sädängkäi Käsär and Sartaktai Käsär. Among the Balti and Ladakhi people he is most famously known as Gyalpo Kaiserr.

Story and narrative motifs

The epic has a vast number of variants in plot and motifs, but the core of the story, similar to that of many legendary cycles, has been summed up as follows:

King Ge-sar has a miraculous birth, a despised and neglected childhood, and then becomes ruler and wins his wife 'Brug-mo through a series of marvellous feats. In subsequent episodes he defends his people against various external aggressors, human and superhuman. Instead of dying a normal death he departs into a hidden realm from which he may return at some time in the future to save his people from their enemies.

For Samuels, the Gesar epic lies towards the shamanic pole in the continuum of Tibetan culture and religion, which he sees as evincing a constant tension between 'clerical' and 'shamanic' Buddhism, the latter grounded in its earlier Bon substrate.
The received versions of the Ge-sar cycle are thickly overlaid with Buddhist ideas and motifs, and detecting the original 'heroic' form is difficult. Historical analysis to sift out an ancient core narrative winnows the archaic folkloric leitmotifs from features that show distinct and historically identifiable Buddhist influences. Samuel, comparing three Gesar traditions, Mongolian, Eastern Tibetan and Ladakhi, that developed relatively autonomously, postulates the following core narrative shared by all three:

The Lha gling episode.
The ′Khrungs gling episode.
The rTa rgyugs episode.
The bDud 'dul episode.
The Hor gling episode.
The China journey episode.

To which one might add:

The Srid pa'i le'u cosmogenic prelude.
Tibetan versions

Tibetan versions differ very greatly in details. Often Buddhist motifs are conspicuous, with episodes on the creation of the world and Tibet's cosmic origins. In other variants, Gautama Buddha is never mentioned, or a certain secular irony is voiced against the national religion. According to Samten Karmay, Gesar arose as the hero of a society still thinly permeated by Buddhism and the earlier myths associate him with pre-Buddhist beliefs like the mountain cult. In most episodes, Gesar fights against the enemies of dharma, an old warrior ethos, where physical power, courage, a combative spirit, and qualities such as cunning and deceit prevail.

Cosmic prelude and Tibet's early history: One motif explains how the world collapsed into anarchy; numerous demon kings had avoided subjection. As a result, hordes of cannibalistic demons and goblins, led by malignant and greedy rulers of many kingdoms, wreak havoc. Tibet's conversion from barbarity to Buddhism under the three great Dharma Kings often features. Episodes relate how Padmasambhāva subdued Tibet's violent native spirits.
Gesar's miraculous or mundane birth: In one account, he was fatherless, like Padmasambhava, who assists his celestial creation by creating a nagini who then serves the king of Ling, and is impregnated by drinking a magic potion, and is born from his mother's head, like Athena in Greek mythology. In another version he is conceived by his mother after she drinks water impressed with his image. Alternatively, he is born from the union of a father, who is simultaneously skygod and holy mountain, and of a mother who is a goddess of the watery underworld, or he is born, Chori, in the lineage of Ling in the Dza Valley, to the king Singlen Gyalpo and his spouse Lhakar Drönma of Gog.
Relatives: He has a half-brother, and two uncles. One uncle is the "old hawk", the wise elder of Ling, who supports the child; the other, the cowardly and greedy Khrothung, sees the child as a threat and tries to do him ill. Khrothung is portrayed comically, but his role as a provocateur is central to the narrative.
His early years: Gesar's mission as a divine emissary is to vanquish powerful demons on earth. Until his adolescence he is depicted as black, ugly, nasty, snotty, and troublesome. His paternal uncle, or the king's brother Todong, banishes both mother and son to the rMa plateau, where he grows up living a feral life, clothed in animal skins and wearing a hat adorned with antelope horns.
Horse race and kingship: When he is 12, a horse race is held whose winner will marry 'Brugmo, the beautiful daughter of a neighbouring chieftain, and become king of Ling. Returning to Ling, Gesar wins the race, marries 'Brugmo, and ascends the golden throne. His victory marks his coming of age; he proclaims himself "the Great Lion, Wish-fulfilling Jewel, Subduer of Foes," and takes the name Gesar. Mounted on his miraculous steed Kyang Go Karkar, he subsequently wages military campaigns, together with 30 companions, against the frontier countries that represent evil.
The kidnapping of 'Brugmo: While Gesar is away on his first campaign, his wife is kidnapped by Gurdkar, the King of Hor. Upon his return, Gesar uses magic to infiltrate Gurdkar's palace, kills him, and retrieves his wife.
Two further campaigns: Gesar wages war against King Sadam of 'Jang, and king Shingkhri of Mon.
The 18 fortresses : Gesar sets out to conquer the 18 great forts. They are listed differently according to singers and texts, but these battles nearly always include Tajik and Khache Muslim adversaries.
Lhasa: Some versions say that, aged 39, he made a retreat on Red Hill, where the Potala Palace was later built.
Old age: When Gesar reaches his eighties, he briefly descends to Hell as a final episode before he leaves the land of men and ascends once more to his celestial paradise.