13 year old Tibetan boy able to tell world's longest epic (fwd)

[Phil CashCash]

13 year old Tibetan boy able to tell world's longest epic

www.chinaview.cn  2003-10-22 16:40:05
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2003-10/22/content_1137240.htm

LHASA, Oct. 22 (Xinhuanet) -- Allegedly having had a dream, a
13-year-old  Tibetan boy has since been able to tell Tibetans' most
respected story about a legendary hero -- King Gesser, which is also the
longest epic in the world.

This has aroused enormous interest among experts to explain the boy's
mysterious capability.

The boy, named Sitar Doje in the Tibetan language, is a fifth-grade
student at a local elementary school in Shading Town, Banbar County in
Qamdo Prefecture.  He said he fell asleep one day when hewas 11 years
old, and woke up miraculously  able to tell the story of King Gesser.
Now the boy can talk and sing about the  story for six consecutive
hours.

The 10-million-word Tibetan epic portraying legendary hero King Gesser
has more than 200 parts that have been passed down from generation to
generation as  oral works of folk art.

According to Tibetan tradition, people who learned to tell the epic
story through dreaming are addressed as "God-taught Master." In Tibet,
many  epic-tellers since ancient times claimed that they had learned to
tell the story  in dreams.

Cering Puncog, vice director of the Ethnic Institute of the Tibetan
Academy  of Social Sciences, said there have been many excellent
talkers of the King Gesser story in Qamdo Prefecture. Hesaid Sitar
Doje became a capable talker probably because he had listened to old
talkers' presentations many times, thought of themvery often in his
mind and dreams, and finally recited the epic  asa "natural" talker.

The Cultural Bureau of Qamdo Prefecture has dispatched staff to check
the boy's  ability and video tape a live performance of the boy.

Cering Puncog said the most interesting point is that the boy was an
educated person who has almost finished his elementary schooling,
receiving a  modern education. So he is far different from old story
talkers most of whom were illiterate. Among the 40 best talkers
publicly acknowledged in Tibet, only  four can read.

For example, Samzhub, a 82-year-old Tibetan folk story-teller, is
regarded  as the master of talking and singing Gesser. Although unable
to read a single  word, the old man can tell 65 parts of the epic,
totaling more than 20 million  words. The Tibetan edition of a
five-part King Gesser, compiled according to Samzhub's telling about
the long story, was published in 2001.

China has about 140 Gesser story-telling masters. They are mainly from
three ethnic groups that had some close relation with the legendary
King in  their ancient culture: Tibetans, Mongolians or Tu ethnic
people. These masters  are all now cherished as "national treasures."

According to Cering, far fewer people can talk and sing Gesser's story,
and  most living talkers are in their late years. The 13-year-old boy
who can talk  and sing about the epic indicates that the valuable oral
heritage has young  successors and can survive inmodern times.

To save the epic, the country has published the Academic Works
Collection  of Gesserology, edited by Zhao Bingli, a research fellow at
the Academy of  Social Sciences of Qinghai Province.

There are two different views about the time of the creation ofthe epic:
one says that the epic was produced in the period from the beginning of
the  Christian era to the 6th century, based on the story of a real
tribal chief who tamed forces of evil such as ghosts and goblins, and
safeguarded a stable  environment for people.

Some hold that the epic emerged between the 11th and 13th centuries,
when Tibetans hoped for a hero to appear and unify separated Tibet.

The Chinese government set up a special organization to save and
catalogue the epic in 1979, and listed the research work as a major
research program in  every Five-Year Plan.

Currently, Tibet has collected nearly 300 hand-written or woodcut copies
of  the epic. More than 3 million copies of the Tibetan version of the
epic have  been printed. The epic has been translated into Chinese,
English, Japanese,  French and other foreign languages.