Gesar

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: Gesar

Applicant: Gansu Province

Item No.: 27

Project No.: i-27

Time of publication: 2006 (the first batch)

Category: Folk Literature

Region: Gansu Province

Type: new item

Applicant: Gansu Province

Protection unit: Northwest University for Nationalities

About Gesar:

Applicant: Gansu Province

The epic Gesar (Si'er), which has been sung for thousands of years, is popular among the Tibetan, Mongolian, Tu, Yugu, Naxi, Pumi and other nationalities in the Tibetan Plateau of China. It tells the story of King Gesar's heroic achievements of subduing demons and demons, restraining the strong and supporting the weak, unifying the various departments, and finally returning to the kingdom of heaven.

Gesar is the longest epic ever found in the world. It is not only a melting pot of ethnic cultural diversity, but also a witness of the sustainable development of multi-ethnic folk culture. This oral epic, which is shared by many nationalities, is the crystallization of grassland nomadic culture and represents the highest achievement of ancient Tibetan and Mongolian folk culture and oral narrative art. Countless minstrels have been singing and performing about it for generations.

The earliest extant copy of the epic was written in the 14th century, and the Beijing woodcut version of the biography of Geser Khan in 1716 is the earliest printed version. Up to now, there are more than 120 epic storytelling books recorded, with more than one million lines of verse alone, and this living oral epic is still expanding. Gesar is the main carrier of religious belief, local knowledge, folk wisdom, ethnic memory and mother tongue expression in related ethnic communities. It is the source of inspiration for traditional folk art creation such as Thangka, Tibetan opera, playing and singing, and also the source of modern art forms.

For thousands of years, epic artists have been playing the role of telling history, conveying knowledge, standardizing behavior, maintaining the community and regulating life, and educating the national members with epics. Epic singing has the functions of expressing national emotions, promoting social interaction, upholding traditional beliefs, strengthening national identity, values and influencing folk aesthetic orientation.

The spread of Gesar is not only an important link of inheriting national culture and condensing national spirit, but also a vivid witness of the mutual exchange and understanding among different nationalities. In addition, the epic also spread to Mongolia, Buryat and kalmek areas of Russia, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan and other countries and surrounding areas south of the Himalayas. The influence of this kind of cross-cultural communication is extremely rare.

The artists of Gesar are the most direct creators, inheritors and disseminators of epic. Most of them are illiterate, but they have extraordinary memory and narrative creativity. The usual epic singing reaches tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of lines.

Since the 1950s, affected by the process of modernization, the livelihood of Tibetan, Mongolian and other nationalities has changed, and the professional artists began to shrink. In recent years, a number of old artists have died one after another, and the situation of "singing and breathing after death" has appeared. The audience of Gesar is shrinking, and the epic tradition is facing the danger of extinction, so the protection work should be carried out immediately.