The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has designated 2002 and 2003 for marking the millenary of the world's longest epic poem King Gesser.
King Gesser was written about 1,000 years ago in Tibet and quickly spread around the Himalayan mountains region. It tells the story of an ancient Tibetan king who conquered the devils of other Tibetan tribes and made Tibet stable.
Foreign scholars first read the epic in 1716 when a Mongolian edition was printed in Beijing.
Perlath, a Russian traveler brought the epic to his country in 1776 and commented on the character of Gesser.
King Gesser has been studied around the world for more than two hundred years. In 1836, the Mongolian edition of the epic was printed in Russia and in 1839, it was translated into German and published in the Russian city of St. Petersburg.
The publication of King Gesser in 1939 attracted wide attention in international academic circles and sparked Western research into the epic. Later, two schools of thought developed.
One branch represented scholars from Mongolia and the former Soviet Union. Ce Darmutinsullen, a Mongolian scholar wrote a treatise on the historical sources of the poem.
Research into the epic blossomed around the 1960s. Two French scholars, Alexander Davy Nell and Professor Stillen made a great academic contribution during this period.
Professor R.A. Stein wrote and published “Research on King Gesser and Folk Artists" in 1959. It was regarded as a masterly summary of Western research.
The seventh international forum on Tibetan studies, held in Austria in June 1995, discussed King Gesser as a special topic for the first time. The epic's rich and legendary content plus unique ethnic features again deeply impressed international academics.
The Chinese government took nearly 50 years researching King Gesser. The results proved that epics existed during China's ancient history and negated the idea that China has no epic poems.
Noted as "the world's only surviving epic," King Gesser has been translated into many languages, including English, French, German, Russian and Indian and has spread to more than 40 countries and regions worldwide.
(Xinhua News Agency July 18, 2002)
