༄༅། །གླིང་རྗེ་གེ་སར་རྒྱལ་པོའི་སྒྲུང་ལ་དཔྱད་གླེང་། ། རྒྱང་འཁོར་ཚེ་བརྟན། Talks on epic of Ling Gesar

Living literary tradition
The Epic of King Gesar is considered the longest literary work in the world, containing over 20 million words in more than one million verses, longer than the world’s other five great epics combined: The ancient Babylonian Gilgamesh (3,000 verses), the Greek Iliad (over 15,000 verses ) and Odyssey (12,000 verses), and the Indian Ramayana (18,000 odes with two verses each) and Mahabharata (more than 100,000 odes comprising over 200,000 verses).[1]
A valuable historical source, the Epic of King Gesar, reflects two important periods in Tibetan social development, and includes depictions of almost 100 tribes, kingdoms, and regions. The epic is distinctly Tibetan in style, although the story includes early elements taken from Indian tantricism. It contains countless references to religion, ideology, and local customs, and incorporates many fairy tales, legends, poems, and proverbs from traditional Tibetan folk literature. Some Tibetan proverbs are in their original form; others have been polished and adapted.
If seeds are not sown in spring,
No corn will be harvested in autumn
If cows are not fed in winter,
There will be no milk in the spring.
If fine horses are not well bred,
They will not gallop into the face of your enemies.
Tibetan Proverb
The epic also preserves a number of ancient songs of praise, such as Ode to Wine, Ode to the Mountains, Ode to Tea, Ode to Horses, Ode to Swords and Knives, Ode to Dress, and Ode to Armor. The famous Ode to Wine begins:
The bowl of wine in my hand has a long history.
The sky is blue like jade.
The blue-jade dragon roars in the sky.
The lightning flashes red,
And drizzle falls like sweet dew.
By using the clean sweet dew,
Heavenly nectar can be brewed in the human world.
The epic incorporates both prose, and poems in a circular style from the Tubo period, with multiple paragraphs ending in the same sound. The six-word stanzas of Tubo songs and poems were replaced with eight-word stanzas, a form which has remained relatively unchanged since the 11th century, and which is widely used in Tibetan folk songs, narrative poems, lyrical poetry, and drama, as well as in the works of scholars and poets.[1]
The epic is made up of three parts: The birth of Gesar; his expeditions against his enemies; and his return to heaven. The stories of his battles and exploits contain the most detail and shed the most light on Tibetan history and culture. The second part includes four subsections: Defeating Demons in the North, Battles Between Hor and Ling, Defense of the Salt Sea, and Battles Between Mon and Ling; as well as battles to conquer 54 zongs (minor kingdoms).
Origins and dispersion
The epic concerns Gesar, the superhuman warrior ruler of the Kingdom of Ling, who waged war with the nearby Kingdom of Hor. Various elements of the epic began to evolve between the third and sixth centuries, and were consolidated after the establishment of the Tubo Kingdom (mid seventh century-842). During the time of the second transmission of Buddhism to Tibet (marked by the formation of the Kadampa, Kagyu and Sakya schools), Tibetan Buddhist monks, particularly those of the Nyingma (Red) Sect, began to participate in efforts to compile and popularize the story of the Life of King Gesar.[1] 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.
References to the Epic of King Gesar in the Rlangs kyi po ti bse ru, a centuries-old Tibetan text, show that the narrative was in something similar to its present form by the fifteenth century at the latest. The oldest extant text of the epic is a Mongolian woodblock print commissioned by the Qing Emperor Kangxi in 1716. None of the surviving Tibetan texts date from earlier than the eighteenth century, though they are likely based on older texts. In the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, a woodblock edition of the story was compiled by a scholar-monk from Lingtsang (a small kingdom north-east of sDe dge) with inspiration from the prolific Tibetan philosopher Ju Mipham Gyatso.
Tales of King Gesar are also popular in Mongolia, the Tu and Yugu regions, and the Tibetan-inhabited areas in China, and have traveled as far west as the Caspian Sea, reaching Europe with the Kalmyk people, who also profess Tibetan Buddhism as their religion.
Oral transmission
A large number of variants of the oral tradition of the Epic of King Gesar have always existed, and no canonical text can be written. Each Gesar performer is familiar only with his regional version. Weeks are required to complete a full recitation of the Epic of King Gesar.
Unlike other folk artists, performers of the Gesar epic do not pass their legacy from master to apprentice, or from father to son. Most Gesar narrators are illiterate and rely entirely on memory.

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